From IT Support To A Cloud Career | How You Can Make The Change

Today, I am going to walk you through the reasons you need to learn cloud technologies, how learning the cloud will help you earn more money, and finally I’m going to show you a blueprint you can follow to improve your cloud skills today.

Future Proof Career

The first reason you need to learn the cloud is that it will help future proof your career

I recently read a study that said that over 90% of companies use the cloud in some capacity and the majority of companies are looking to transition more of their traditional IT operations into the cloud.

This means that the cloud is becoming more important to IT operations and you need to make sure you are ready to adapt to this new world

I’m sure you’ve started to notice cloud services creeping into your organisation.. Maybe your company has started using Amazon S3 for file storage and backups, or maybe you’ve migrated your Active Directory to Azure AD.

As an IT professional you can’t rely on your old skills because times are changing. The IT professionals who are going to succeed in the future are those who embrace the cloud and learn the skills to be successful.

Those who resist learning risk becoming redundant because their skills don’t match up with the organisation's needs. But those who embrace the cloud will reap the reward through pay rises and increased job security

I believe that if you want to have a career in IT then you need to embrace the cloud and make sure you improve your knowledge in this department

New Career Opportunities

The second reason you should learn cloud is that it will open up new career opportunities.

I’ve spoken to a lot of IT professionals who feel stuck in their careers. Maybe you’ve been doing it for a couple of years and haven't seen much progression, and you might be asking yourself what the next step is.

The good news is that if you decide to embrace the cloud it will open up exciting new career opportunities for you.

For example if your company decides to migrate more services to a cloud provider like AWS and you have spent the last 3 months improving your AWS skills, you might be asked to be involved with that project which will not only increase your visibility in the organisation but will also increase your chances of getting a pay rise.

And this is only the beginning. If you decide to actively make a career transition to become a cloud engineer or a solution architect, you could significantly increase your earning potential.

As solution architects in the UK make between £80,000 and £120,000 plus, while in the US you can expect to make $100,000 plus.

For a full salary breakdown of what you can make in the cloud industry you can check out a video we created called Top Cloud Computing Careers, link will be in the description

A lot of IT professionals who make this career change find that they can double or even triple their salaries by learning cloud skills.

You might be wondering how difficult it would be to learn these skills, maybe you think you have to spend years learning new technologies and terminologies and you don’t know if you can be bothered to do all of that.

I’m here to tell you that learning cloud is probably easier than you think

Based on your IT experience you’re already familiar with a lot of technology concepts that the cloud uses.

At a fundamental level, the cloud uses the same technologies like Networking, Security, Servers, databases.

The only difference between the cloud and on-premises infrastructure is that with the cloud you have to learn some new terminologies and interfaces as well as new services, but realistically you will be doing a lot of similar tasks as your current role, for example configuring servers, managing databases, creating and restoring backups.

The only difference is that the cloud makes it easier and more efficient to do these tasks.

Now that you’re excited to learn cloud skills I want to walk you through the 3 step process that will help accelerate your cloud learning

The first step in your cloud journey should be to get a learning plan.

This is important because there are so many technologies to learn and it can quickly become overwhelming.

Beginners who don’t have a learning plan are more likely to get discouraged, burnt out, and eventually fail in achieving their goals

I don’t want that for you.

Having a plan helps to structure your learning and gives you confidence that you are working on the right skills at the right time.

I have been in the cloud industry for over 7 years and in that time I have developed a tried and proven learning plan that  cloud beginners from all over the world have followed to successfully learn cloud skills and build their technical confidence.

Here are the key technologies you need to learn:

• Linux
• AWS
• Terraform
• CICD
• Python
• And Docker

These are some of the key technologies that are used in the cloud industry and having experience of them will give you a huge advantage because they are skills that employers are looking for.

By learning them you will be able to take on more interesting cloud projects and you will become the go to person for your companies cloud needs.

Once you have a learning plan, the next step is to get your hands dirty.

This means that you need to start putting in the work to learn these skills and the best way to do that is by building high quality cloud projects.

I believe the best way to learn is by doing, sure you can spend a lot of time getting certifications and getting theoretical knowledge but the reality is that you won’t actually make progress till you start building projects and troubleshooting issues.

High quality  projects will give you a comprehensive understanding of what it takes to build best in class cloud infrastructure

It can be quite difficult to find the right projects that will help you learn cloud skills in a structured and engaging way, which is why I created a program called the cloud career acceleration program.

This has been designed for beginners like yourself to build the skills to be successful in the cloud industry.

When you sign up you will learn and build high quality projects with technologies like, Linux, Bash, AWS, Terraform, CICD, Docker, Python and much more

By the time you go through the program you will have gone from being a cloud zero to a cloud hero.

If you want to find out more, simply go to cloudcareermentor.com

Once you have learnt the cloud fundamentals and created a portfolio of high quality projects we can move on to the next phase, and I would argue that this is the most important step in the process.

What is this step you may ask?

The step is learning how to communicate your new experience and cloud skills

There's a famous saying that you’ve probably heard before:

If a tree falls down in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

This applies to you because if you have spent a lot of time building your cloud skills but no one knows you have developed these competencies because you haven’t shared your progress with them then it most likely won’t change your situation

Which is why I always encourage cloud beginners to share the new technologies they learn on social media platforms like LinkedIn

It also helps to tell your manager and people on your team all about the new technologies you are learning.

If your organisation has a cloud department, then reach out to people on that team and share your progress.

If the right people in your organisation know that you are interested in cloud technologies, they are more likely to reach out to you if an opportunity arises.

Every time there is change, some people see problems and others see opportunities.

Those who see opportunities will actively make the decision to upskill themselves and embrace the cloud. These people will be rewarded with more money and career progression

Those who see problems will bury their heads in the sand and get washed away.

I know who i’d rather be when the change comes.

If you’re ready to build your cloud skills, simply go to cloudcareermentor.com for more details, if you need more information simply shoot me an email at support@cloudcareermentor.com and I’ll get back to you