Cloud Skills for the Future of Work
Cloud Computing has irrevocably changed the way we work, interact and go about our day to day lives. It is an evolutionary step in computing, building on top of advancements such as TCP/IP networking, virtualisation, and distributed computing to name a few; combined with the commoditisation of compute, network and storage.
The single biggest benefit of cloud computing is that it reduces the costs of failure dramatically, which conversely increases the rate of innovation. If someone wants to experiment they can just turn up capacity, test their hypothesis, then turn off capacity. No need to buy equipment that will depreciate over three years, no long term contracts, no need to rack, stack, water and feed infrastructure. Whether that experiment is testing the latest Operating System patch, or sequencing the human genome, you only pay for the time that the provisioned capacity is delivering value to you.
When Amazon Web Services (AWS) launched in 2006, they did so with Simple Storage Service (S3), closely followed by Simple Queue Service (SQS), and then Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). Simple foundational blocks that allowed AWS to innovate quickly, and build higher order services. AWS has exploited the reduced cost of failure provided by their own cloud to rapidly innovate, and in the 9 years since launch have expanded their service catalog to 10 groups with 50 underlying services, and numerous features underneath that. A brief look at the AWS Release notes (https://aws.amazon.com/releasenotes) shows 2,139 releases (as of 29 September 2015) since the launch of AWS. This is an incredible rate of innovation through small iterations.
Amazon Web Services themselves are a great case study for cloud computing, as they show the benefit of building higher order, higher value services, on top of utility underlying components. Their rate of innovation also creates another problem. Lack of skills to manipulate and exploit the services they deliver. They are innovating so quickly it is almost impossible to keep up to date with every service they release. Great value in using AWS, no skills to exploit that value.
As quickly as they release another service, there will be a recruiter asking for 5 years experience in that service. We have created A Cloud Guru to fill that gap.
Ryan, Sam and myself see A Cloud Guru as a community of cloud professionals looking to collaboratively share knowledge and improve skills around Cloud Computing. The platform today is a combination of forums and an online school with a mix of free and paid for courses. The value in the platform is that you will be dealing with a community of experts, where you will get an answer and the knowledge you're looking for from experts with experience.
As we embark on this A Cloud Guru journey we look to fill the knowledge gap that exists today, and to enable IT professionals to become Cloud Professionals, and remain relevant in a rapidly changing world.
Ant Stanley