What Are Some of The Top Cloud Certifications?

The demand for certified cloud computing professionals is on a surge since the disruptive transformation in business operations.

The significance of cloud computing has grown exponentially over the last few years and the pandemic and the digital shift had a great role to play in it. Industries are going through a digital transformation and technologies like cloud and IoT aids in business growth in such a scenario. The delivery of computing services over the cloud enhances accessibility, scalability, and flexibility. Cloud services are the best way to reduce costs and enhance data storage capability. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS) are included in cloud IT solutions.

According to Forrester's report, the global public cloud infrastructure market will grow 35% to 120 billion dollars in 2021. The growing popularity of cloud computing increases the demand for certified and skilled people to manage IT operations on the cloud. There have been several cloud certifications offered by different IT solution providers. Let us take a look at some of the best known cloud certifications available today.

AWS Certified Solutions Architect- Associate

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is one of the reputed cloud services platforms that offers associate, professional, and cloud practitioner certifications. The AWS solutions associate certification is meant for experienced developers who can design scalable solutions. Expert developers who are looking forward to doing solutions architecture, designing, and installing web applications are good candidates to receive this certification. An understanding of AWS global services, basic architectural principles for building clouds, computing, and networking are some of the prerequisites to receive this certification.

According to AWS, the validation of three major abilities offered by the certification are:

• Effective demonstration of how to architect and deploy secure and robust applications on AWS technologies.

• Define a solution using architectural design principles based on customer requirements

• Provide implementation guidance based on best practices to the organization throughout the life cycle of the project

Microsoft Azure Solutions Architect Expert

Microsoft Azure is a growing cloud computing platform and many companies are voluntarily shifting towards Azure cloud. Thus, there is a high demand for skilled professionals who can actively compute, network, design, and secure technical solutions on Microsoft Azure.

According to Microsft, the certifications requires specific skills: "A candidate for this certification should have advanced experience and knowledge of IT operations, including networking, virtualization, identity, security, business continuity, disaster recovery, data platform, budgeting, and governance- this role should manage how decisions in each area affect an overall solution."

Google Professional Cloud Architect

A relatively new certification, Google enables professionals to efficiently leverage its cloud services to develop, design, and administer application infrastructures and IT solutions. This certification ensures that developers can design cloud architecture, manage cloud solution infrastructure, design for safety and compliance.

Google mentions that the eligibility for the exam is 3+ years of industry experience including 1+ years designing and managing solutions using GCP.

Certified Cloud Security Professional (CCSP)

CCSP certification is function-based and enables cloud professionals to implement and secure virtualization and it is provided by the International Information System Security Certification Consortium or (ISC)2. This is an expert-level certification that is ideal for IT engineers and information security leaders to understand how to design architecture and also manage and secure cloud infrastructures.

CompTIA Cloud+

This certification ensures that the professionals rely on a broad set of tasks rather than narrow vendor-specific features. CompTIA Cloud+ offers multi-vendor skills to developers. The prerequisites to attain this certification include a minimum of two-year experience in IT development, cloud computing, or CompTIA computing. CompTIA Cloud+ certification promises skill development in optimizing cloud infrastructure, and a bunch of skill sets that are required to efficiently operate a data center.

According to CompTIA, this Cloud+ certification is the only vendor-neutral, performance-based certification covering more than a specific vendor or a single function.