I write a lot of blog posts about a lot of different cloud subjects – but why should you listen to me? I don’t make a big deal of it, but I’m an AWS certified Cloud Solutions Architect. Yeah, I know, I exams and everything!
Where Did AWS Come From?
It makes sense to understand how Amazon Web Services started before we talk about learning it. AWS was built in order to support the rest of the Amazon business. You know, the book everything shop.
They needed a way to queue jobs up and be sure that one action would follow another. Each action should be performed exactly once, and in exactly the right order. So Amazon’s IT team built Simple Queue Service, or SQS. SQS was the very first of the, now, 175 AWS services. And things grew from there.
Why Get Certified At All?
Sometimes you can do a job to a really high standard without ever studying the subject. And it is certainly true to say that I find technical problem solving comes naturally to me. I have worked with technology all my working life. But cloud technology is different.
Completing certification programs for something like AWS gives you a background awareness of how the whole platform was conceived. You get to see why services are constructed in the way they are, and why cloud architecture is different from on-premises stacks. Once you understand these themes, you are able to build solutions which make the most of what is available in the cloud.
AWS Cloud Certification
It makes sense for AWS to handle their own training courses, given what we know about them building AWS services to suit their own business needs. They provide training, resources, documentation and white-papers to get you from knowing nothing, to a top-tier cloud ninja!
And it’s all sensible stuff in the main. Some technical qualifications will ask you which license you need to cover a given workload and things of that nature. Licensing is super important, and sometimes very complicated to get just right, but it’s something I am always going to look up. But AWS exams are different. They will describe a scenario to you, with a fictitious client and a made-up problem. They will ask you which AWS services you might use to solve a given problem. As in so many technical fields, there are lots of ways to achieve things, but one way has additional benefits. Or some solutions just won’t work because of one of the client’s needs. The AWS exams test you for these things.
Certification Is Important – Check It!
If you need cloud consultancy, it’s important that you use certified resources. These professionals are going to be working with cloud resources which are directly affecting your users, clients and customers. What your cloud consultant does will directly impact what people think of your business.
Luckily, you can check your consultancy’s certifications! Just ask them for their AWS certification verification link. Mine’s here; https://www.youracclaim.com/badges/ae4581b7-d6db-4a98-a64c-f1f9e32cdfc8
Okay, that’s enough shameless self promotion. But if you want to know more about our brand of cloud consultancy, read more here
