Taking up AWS Career? Know the Whys & Hows

Introduction

Since 2011, which was an era when Cloud had started to sky rocket into the IT market; job postings for engineers and professionals having work experience with Amazon Web Services has increased more than 1500%. Since almost a decade, billions of dollars are being spent on providing and utilizing Cloud resources and services across the globe. Indian IT market has always seen a steady adoption of Cloud and there has always been a dearth of skills sets in the market. Although the market demand has been growing rapidly over the years, the supply of skills has been rising at a very slow pace.  This opens a huge opportunity for professionals who are looking to move up their career and for job seekers to embrace Cloud and nurture these skills.

If you are taking up AWS Career, then below listed Whys and Hows are worth considering.

Why 1 – The Robust Cloud Market

According to the market research studies published by various journals and organizations, the spending on Cloud from both, the service provider’s and customer’s side will continue to increase. Gartner has specifically pointed out that India is one of the countries that is showing very strong growth in the Cloud sector and predicted India to be one of the fastest-growing countries in their Cloud forecast.

Not just Gartner, Zinnov, and the Wall Street Journal have also predicted a Robust Cloud Market over the next few years. India’s public cloud spend is set to reach 7.5 billion this year. The three Cloud Computing Giants viz AWS, Azure, and GCP have spent tens of billions of dollars to increase their Cloud reach globally and the pattern will continue for the next few years. This strong market growth has boosted investors’ confidence to invest in Cloud-based start-ups which has in turn led to a drastic increase in opportunities for people with Cloud skills.

Why 2 – High Demand + Low Supply = Huge Opportunity

With a robust market trends in Cloud Spending, Cloud skills have become more pertinent to the current situation. The International Data Corporation (IDC) and Microsoft have mentioned in their research that there are at least 14 Million Cloud Computing jobs worldwide. Jobs around AWS and Azure have seen a drastic increase over the last few years and Wanted Analytics published that there are around 18.2 Million Cloud Computing related jobs worldwide today.

With over 2 million jobs related to Cloud Computing skills, India is in the third position next to China and USA with 7 Million and 3 Million openings respectively. With innovation in IT growing tremendously, the skills currently present in the market are becoming redundant by the minute. With this general trend, Zinnov has pointed out that, 25% of Global IT Talent becomes redundant in the next 3-5 years. EMC also pointed out that it would be a challenge to close these positions due to a lack of skilled professionals. Significantly, the skills under discussion here were practically non-existent a decade ago

Why 3 – Digital Transformation Trends in Companies

One might be wondering if their organization is going through multiple changes due to the advent of the Cloud and would not be a fit for new organizational needs. This misconception has led to an alarming number of misnomers in Cloud adoption. Cloud would reduce the effort taken to perform a specific job role and would drive organizational focus to automation which in turn would lead to the creation of opportunities. One should always look for opportunities in the organization’s digitization that would help in upgrading one’s skills.

A Human Resources Research shows that 41% of IT professionals believe that their organization would be ready for Digital Transformation in the next couple of years giving time to articulate skills and become part of the transformation. 29% of IT professionals would be actively involved in digital transformation as their primary focus. This ranges from senior management to engineers across domains. Although 91% of the professionals believe that they would have a role to play in their organization’s transformation, there is less focus on gaining the required skills. During the transformation, the roles of individuals would also look at a transformation, for e.g., traditional Windows / Linux Administrators would be required to perform operations on Cloud-based infrastructure. Hardware management roles would turn into Cloud security and performance management-based roles. The traditional developer would have to learn Cloud APIs and be able to write applications that run on Cloud.

One needs to look at acquiring new skills soon to be able to be a part of the change. But, with the amount of information over the internet about Cloud and AWS, one can easily slip and give up. So, knowing exactly How to go about acquiring these skills would be the key to beginning one’s Cloud career.

How 1 – Know your Track

Depending on the current role that you are in, the role that you intend to land in, the skills that you possess and the years of IT experience you have, you can perform one of the below roles working with infrastructure on AWS. I have also tried to list down with my experience, the kind of skills that are expected from each of these roles.

Professionals in leadership, managerial, pre-sales and sales roles would also need to have a use case understanding. So, getting few skills of an AWS Architect would suffice for them to negotiate deals and proposals with clients.

How 2 – Get the Right Training

India has always been a hub for Cloud training. There are many online, offline, and classroom-based training available. The most secure route to take is with an Authorized Training Partner. This gives you access to certified expert trainers, Official curriculums, and hands-on learning.  CloudThat offers 4 – 5 days of training specially tailored towards AWS certifications. With offerings in the classroom and online-based training, CloudThat has proven to be a leader in Cloud training. You can visit www.cloudthat.com for more details on these training courses.

How 3 – Nurture Skills by Getting Your Hands Dirty

All major Cloud service providers have free offerings where one gets to experience working on their platform and allocate resources without having to pay a huge bill. AWS offers Free Tier for one year where you would be able to use specific resources for free during the first year of your account creation. Leverage the freebies to get your hands dirty by performing proof of concepts or deployment dry runs. Only by having continuous learning with hands-on practice, can you look at moving to the next step.

How 4 – Get the Right Certification

Below are the certifications offered by AWS:

Choose the right certification to go with depending on the current role and your career plans. All certifications have multiple choice questions extensively based on working with AWS. Working experience would be must to be able to clear any of the certification. An Associate Certification is mandatory to take up the corresponding Professional Certification.

Along with the three traditional tracks, AWS also has Speciality Certifications for Big Data and Networking Speciality. Clearing any one of the Associate Certifications would be mandatory to take up the Speciality Certifications.

Please visit https://www.aws.training/certification to register for any of the above certifications.

How 5 – Explore Opportunities Internally and Out in the Market

As mentioned before, many organizations are looking at Digital Transformation as a priority and are looking for professionals who could play a part in the transition. You could be the one driving the transformation or implementing the same for your own organization. In case you are looking for opportunities outside, then with a certification, your chances of landing an interview are far higher.