What do I know about the Cloud?
Tags: cloud, aws, azure, gcp
Published: 2023-01-04 18:24:21

## I am "not" a cloud professional
Before you begin, I must mention that I am not a cloud professional right now. It has been more than a few months since I have been looking up about the cloud and a career in it. I am here for people like me who have nowhere to start but are interested in making a career in this domain, so you get a one-stop guide by following this series. Let's establish a base of my knowing of cloud technology so far.

## What I know so far - You might be the same as me.
It is most likely that you've just heard about this term, a buzzword in the IT market currently. Well, you are right! So cloud is basically the hardware resources of vendors (Amazon, Microsoft, Google) borrowed by clients so they skip setting up an infrastructure on-premise. Not just that, vendors provide services like Load balancing, Monitoring, Backups, etc. Well these are just starters, the most basic functionalities which are essential for any server whether on-premise or the cloud. Now, the business model of these vendors enable us to request hardware resources on-demand for rental and the organization never really has to buy and maintain the resources, unlike their on-premise infrastructure. Which enables the company to save a fortune. And which company doesn't want to save a fortune!

## Personal Findings Till Date
I looked up for AWS certifications because they are the vendors of more than 50% of the total cloud market. Second being Microsoft Azure. GCP follows. Then a few more like IBM, Oracle etc. 

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/1jwlxtunrmexktjzv4w6.png)

AWS Certifications:
You can refer all the AWS certification names from the image below:
![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/7eiao4wjr8w1x23aej17.png)

I, as per my research till now, recommend doing Cloud Practitioner (CCP) certification first. I know a lot of people on YouTube would recommend skipping this. Better you don't ignore this stepping stone while trying to take a leap and burden yourself with the all the tools in one go by taking an associate level directly. Most of the tools will be covered in CCP already if you are aiming for Associate only. But see the bigger picture. If you really want to grow, you will not want to skip this cert. 

CCP does not require any prior experience. However, they recommend 6 months of hands-on on the AWS platform. As per me, I'd say do a few projects. Not many but one or two with a wide skills coverage will work. You will learn quicker about it.

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) certifications:
Similar to AWS, GCP also has 3 levels of certifications. Cloud Digital Leader (CDL) is the starting point for GCP, like CCP in AWS. Then at associate level they call it Cloud Engineer. And for professional level, out of Cloud Architect, Cloud Database Engineer, Developer, etc., you can pick any according to your interest. GCP relatively demands less experience than AWS but the cloud certifications alone will get you nowhere if you have no experience, i.e., with theoretical knowledge.

## What Roadmap do I follow?
As mentioned before, start with a CCP or CDL certification no matter where you are in your career in IT. Then choose according to your profile.

AWS:
For a developer - CCP -> Developer Associate [-> SysOps Administrator Associate] -> DevOps Engineer

For an architect - CCP -> Solutions Architect Associate -> Solutions Architect Professional

For any specialty - CCP -> [any associate] -> [corresponding professional] -> specialty level cert

GCP:
Its pretty obvious
CDL -> CE -> [professional cert of your domain]

## Concluding...
Well I'm just a beginner but you now have a person to closely follow on his cloud journey who once was at the same position as you. As of now I believe GCP is easier and more data-oriented cloud platform but AWS is more general purpose with tons of tools loaded for each purpose/domain. But again AWS is more experience-oriented which may prove to make you follow a more disciplined approach.

## What do I look forward to? - What'll the next blog look like
I still haven't explored Microsoft Azure certs. I will update on that any time before the next week. A deeper study on course structure and study material/resources to learn the cloud.

Till then Ciao👋.