By Pushkar Verma, Director, and CEO of Cloud Wizard
The advent of technology has helped India’s businesses become productive and efficient while delivering global-level services and products. With the rapid adoption of cutting-edge technologies, the nation today stands as one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, with a $3.5 trillion GDP, according to the World Bank. In order to achieve this success, the organisations had to re-design their modus operandi and undergo complex transformations. Cloud technology became a major supporter of this process, providing a plethora of solutions to organisations in order for them to thrive in the market. The rapid adoption of cloud computing by India Inc. across the nation is due to the benefits of this technology, including the pay-as-you-go costing model, scalability, flexibility, and more.
Cloud computing facilitates the availability of computer system resources and services for the organisation in terms of storage, software, database, and analytics. These clouds are situated at the data centers, which are spread across multiple locations across the nation. According to a Markets & Markets research report, the cloud computing market will grow at a CAGR of 17.5 percent by 2025, with market size of $ 832.1 billion. The landscape of the cloud is experiencing a surge in growth, and the demand for cloud tech experts and new career paths has erupted, creating lucrative opportunities for aspirants.
Cloud Computing: A lucrative career path to choose
The demand for reducing the hassle, cost, effort, and time of maintaining on-premise IT infrastructure gave birth to cloud computing. Enterprises realised the benefits of the cloud and accepted it widely as a tool to gain a competitive edge in the market. Adding to the gradual growth, the Pandemic acted as a catalyst to drive the growth of cloud adoption and helped to enable remote working, thus resulting in business continuity. Cloud computing is not only making conventional IT networking architecture more efficient but also enabling the rise of tech-enabled businesses that are thriving to serve customers with new-age products and services.
As the industry has come to accept the use of the cloud for a variety of applications, there has been an increasing demand for skilled cloud technology experts. According to a recent NASSCOM report, titled under the name ‘Cloud Skills: Powering India’s Digital DNA’, India will need 20 lakh cloud experts by 2025 to support the nation’s growth. This, in turn, appears to be a valid indicator of just how crucial cloud computing skills are going to be in the near future. These factors are further leveraging the demand for certified cloud skills, which can be gained easily with the help of authorised training partners. Listed below are some of the new-age skills that individuals can gain in order to start their careers and gain high-paying jobs in the industry.
Cloud Deployment and Migration Skills
As digitalization is on the rise, organisations will need professionals to help them migrate from native platforms to the cloud. To excel in this career path, individuals need to attain advanced cloud computing skills to minimise downtime while keeping organisational data secure. Professionals with AWS skills along with proper knowledge of cloud infrastructure, cloud security, data engineering, and identity access management are mostly in demand in MNCs. To gain an advantage over other contenders, experience in performance optimization techniques proves to be a significant factor. The amalgamation of all these skills in an aspirant can allow them to help organisations with cloud deployment and migration, thus making them a valuable assets.
Cloud Security
In addition to learning cloud technologies, education on cybersecurity and data security is also essential. Security and compliance issues always remain risk factors for an organisation. As the volume of data increases, the threats also soar while working in a complex data environment. Therefore, cloud security can act as a crucial accelerator in the cloud-first journey of an enterprise and will require experts who will get the job done. There is a chance that you will not be successful as a cloud professional unless you have a basic understanding of cybersecurity and encryption-decryption algorithms.
Furthermore, individuals need to understand the technicalities of Identity Access Management (IAM), which are effective against account takeovers and insider attacks. These IAM solutions typically include a number of services such as identity provider (IdP), single sign-on (SSO), multi-factor authentication (MFA), access control services, and others. Additionally, having sound knowledge of cloud firewalls is in high demand in the market.
Coding and DBMS skills
Organisations are spending more on the cloud than ever and are heavily investing in ICTs to cater to the needs of their consumers. The cloud has the capacity to handle a large volume of data, allowing organisations to build, host, and execute robust, scalable, and faster applications. Therefore, learning coding and DBMS (database management systems) skills can not only become a growth prospect for learners but can also provide them with several job opportunities in the domain.
Python PHP, Ruby, Perl, Java, and.NET are the most popular programming languages for creating cloud applications. Knowing how to code in these languages gives you an advantage when pursuing a career in cloud computing. Similarly, database management is an important skill to have if you want to achieve great success in the cloud domain. Furthermore, getting proficient in SQL, MySQL, MongoDB, and Hadoop is also essential as several enterprises prefer these database management systems for their data management.
Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence and machine learning are two technologies that have proven to be revolutionary in a wide range of industries. Businesses are able to improve performance and efficiency while driving digital transformation by utilising AI and ML in the cloud. For having a successful career in cloud technology, individuals need to be comfortable working with AI and ML-based models, as they are crucial to gathering efficient data, analysing data patterns, and performing predictive analysis.
Organisations that need the power of AI and ML at their disposal need cloud technology’s IaaS to deliver computing power and the desired infrastructure for optimising operations. Also, ML services over the cloud are becoming a new norm in the market under the concept of MLaaS (Machine Learning as a Service). A combination of technical skills with AI, ML, and cloud computing can lead to high-paying job opportunities.
Significance of cloud certification for high-paying jobs
There is rapid adoption of the cloud in the industry, and the demand for cloud experts is also surging. Having significant knowledge of cloud technology is a crucial element, but for validation and credibility, gaining a certificate is necessary. When compared to their non-certified peers, “cloud certification” signifies not only a commitment to knowledge excellence but also a deeper understanding of cloud offerings. Moreover, hands-on training followed by certification increases your field competency and definitely benchmarks the skills that you can demonstrate in an interview.
Cloud Architects, DevOps Practitioners, Data Engineers, SysAdmins, Network Ops, App Developers, and others are examples of job titles. The training and certification process can help them broaden their knowledge and improve their development using the cloud service. Individuals seeking to enter this domain must possess a combination of soft skills and technical skills to obtain high-paying jobs.
