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Broadening your cloud skill set

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Cloud technology is a constantly evolving industry. If you don’t add new skills on a regular basis, you’re likely to get left behind. There’s no time like the present to get started—but how do you decide what to study? And how much time will it take?

This article will guide you to some of our top recommendations for broadening your cloud foundational skills, keeping up to date with short-form content, and areas to deepen your knowledge.

Choosing what to study

As an IT professional, you come to this platform with a lot of technical skills and understanding. This gives you valuable insight to how the underlying tech of cloud works and the business implications of features or restrictions. To build on that, you need to consider where to focus your efforts, and how much time you can afford to invest.

Whether you’re a total beginner, or versed in at least some cloud tech, many learners’ first inclination is to go deep with a vendor they're familiar with and become a specialist. Although this option may result in more lucrative career opportunities, it also brings the risk that you may become isolated if that specialty skill or vendor loses traction in your company or the industry.

Another option is to go wide. Become well-versed in multiple vendors' offerings so you can recommend the services that best support your clients' or company's needs.

A third option is to combine the two strategies and go deep in a particular service area across multiple vendors to best understand their pros and cons, and how to seamlessly integrate between them.

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Cloud foundations

Whichever direction of study you choose, we recommend that you start with a broad overview of cloud technologies, as well as how to study. While these courses may seem a bit basic, they reinforce your foundation and help put your understanding of the different vendors' services in context. Additionally, learning how to study and prepare for vendor certification exams will help you maximize your time investment and get the most value out of your courses.

A good foundational resource for improving your study efficiency and exam strategies is the AWS Certification Preparation Guide (opens in new tab). Regardless of where your cloud journey takes you, the techniques it teaches should help you prepare for any future certification exams you plan to take from any vendors in the industry.

Also, consider the following cloud foundational courses:

When you’ve completed these courses, you’ll have a good idea of what cloud encompasses. This will put you in a good position to run though short-form material and follow the content.

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Time-efficient content

With a solid foundation in place, you can self-pace with short material designed to help you keep up with the latest industry developments. Keep an eye out for product areas that are expanding. This is generally a good indication that cloud vendors see them as growth areas and are investing in new services to capture those markets.

Here are a few resources to brush up on cloud when you don't have a lot of time:

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Deeper technical content

Ready to take a deep dive into cloud? Whether you take a learning path, pursue a certification, or use the ACG course catalog as a technical library to access individual lessons in a variety of areas, the choice is yours for where to focus next. Here are just a few suggestions to consider:

No matter where your studies take you, good luck on your cloud journey.

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