David Linthicum recent wrote an article that got me thinking. In his article, In the cloud, you don't need a college degree, he made the simple point that employers need cloud computing skills. It doesn't matter where prospective employees get those skills. It matters that they have them, and can apply thing to implement cloud solutions and solve problems. He made the point that we are in a Cloud IT Professional seller's market.

If you have the skills, you have a lot of options regarding where you work, salary, benefits and more. This raises two questions. For IT Pros the question is, 'how can I enter this seller's market?' For employers question is, 'how can I get the best talent, to address my cloud computing challenges, for the best price, in the timeline I need?'

In this article, I'm going to answer both those questions and talk about how cloud IT training, and certification can be a win-win for employees and employers. I'll also talk about why both might want to think about cloud certification sooner rather than later.

The Landscape Today

Gartner forecasts that cloud computing, in all of its different iterations will grow 18% in 2017 to $246.8 billion in total worldwide revenue. Cloud skills are in high demand. The RightScale State of Cloud 2017 report, showed that cloud security and controlling cloud spend tied with lack of resources as the top three cloud computing challenges organizations face. The report also made clear that multi-cloud deployments are now the defacto standard.

With organizations selecting multiple cloud providers, needing to secure those services and infrastructure while managing costs, the complexity of cloud computing environments is not going to decrease anytime soon. Cloud IT certifications have always offered great pay, but today, if you have cloud computing skills, it's definitely a seller's market.

The Landscape is Changing

While it's a seller's market for cloud IT Pros, the current cloud revolution is changing the landscape for traditional IT Pros. As more services move off-premises, the need for traditional IT Pro skillsets will diminish. IT Pros that aren't trained or experienced in deploying, managing, and integrating cloud computing solutions will find it more difficult to find a decreasing number of jobs. If you want to stay in IT, the time to get cloud certified is now.

Organizations of all sorts also see pressure to move to the cloud. Cost savings, reduced deployment time, abundant scalability, and ubiquitous access are traditional incentives that have driven cloud adoption from the start. Now, there are other drivers. Competitors that are moving to the cloud, or that are already there may be able to realize those advantages sooner, putting your organization at a disadvantage. More than that, the fact that you need the talent to get to the cloud, and that Cloud IT Pros are in such high demand, makes creating a skilled cloud team that much more difficult.

As David Linthicum said in his article:

"Although many tech companies and enterprises state they want candidates to have at least a bachelor’s degree, I find that most don’t actually care these days. They see 20 cloud computing jobs chasing one candidate, so it’s a seller’s market."

Good News For Traditional IT Pros

In his article, David Linthicum stated:

"College is simply no longer a hard requirement for working in technology, including cloud computing. If you get focused training and certifications, you'll find that you're accepted more often than your high school counselor would've told you.

I’m not saying a college degree, and the loans that come with it, are worthless. It’s where you learn the fundamentals that give you an advantage in learning specific areas on the job, especially in areas that require understanding connections and patterns like architecture and security."

This is good news for traditional IT Pros. There's time, and plenty of focused training options that allow you to get certified, and step into this Cloud IT Pro seller's market. Vendor-specific certifications are in high demand, as they should be. However, with multi-cloud deployments being the defacto standard, and cost management a leading challenge, vendor-neutral IT training and certification, such as CloudMASTER is essential.

AWS or Azure training will provide great detail on how to interact with those platforms and services, but will they tell you how to control costs? CloudMASTER offers an entire course on Cloud Operations focused on management and operations, essential training for cloud infrastructure management and optimization.

Vendor specific training also won't go into detail about how to evaluate and compare cloud services. The Cloud Technologies class goes into detail about how to read and compare cloud provider Service Level Agreements, and how to think critically about how to integrate cloud solutions from different vendors.

And, in addition to providing abundant coverage of cloud security and cloud compliance training topics, CloudMASTER also offers a class dedicated to the role RightScale called out as the key emerging role in cloud IT, the role of Cloud Architect. The Cloud Architect class takes students through the entire process of planning a cloud project, from assembling a team to defining requirements, to comparing vendors, to presenting findings in a way to win project approval.

Good News for Employers

So far this sounds great for IT Pros, but, it's also great for employers. You have IT resources you know and trust. They have historical institutional knowledge. Leverage those resources to create your in-house cloud team. Research shows it can be considerably less costly to train IT staff versus hiring outside talent to get the cloud skills you need. Especially in this Cloud IT Pro sellers marketing.

Providing training is a win-win. It keeps your employees' skill up to date, helps them remain competitive, is seen as a benefit, and lets you assemble a great team from resources you already know and trust.

Now is the Time to Consider CloudMASTER Certification

As David Linthicum said:

"My recommendation if you’re going down the noncollege route is to map out a path for your training. This means not only taking certifications from cloud providers, but also some training around less tactical topics such as cloud architecture, security, and monitoring.

Your training path must also include on-the-job training—it is often more important than what you learn from certification and external training. On the job, you must learn to deliver solutions effectively, as well as understand them."

With its focus on topics that matter such as cloud vendor evaluation, multi-cloud, cloud operations, and cloud architecture, and providing hands-on experience with over 20 cloud platforms and tools, CloudMASTER is the first cloud it training you should consider for your career, and your organization.

CarverTC provides CloudMASTER cloud computing classes, and IT training and certification in Portland Oregon and throughout North America.