New AWS Cloud Technology Consultant Professional Certificate now available on Coursera

Companies are looking to understand and leverage the benefits of cloud computing and they need professionals with the talent, knowledge, and skills to power this transformation. Cloud Consultants play a vital role in helping companies realize the many advantages of the cloud, advising about the design, development and infrastructure of all cloud applications. The demand for entry-level Cloud Consultants is on the rise globally and it’s regarded as one of the emerging early cloud careers. Cloud Development & Management (a key part of the Cloud Consultant role) is the fastest-growing major skill cluster at a CAGR of 68% since 2019. (Draup Research).

Cloud Consultants help guide, shape, influence, and inform a company’s cloud strategy and execution plans. They work collaboratively with company decision makers on all areas of cloud computing, leading discussions, troubleshooting, and providing the operational, strategic, and technical direction they need.

Available now on Coursera, the AWS Cloud Consultant Professional Certificate is a holistic, nine-course program that will take an aspiring professional with little or no technical knowledge and provide them with the skills, knowledge, and context to understand the what, why, and how to become a successful AWS Cloud Consultant.

This blog will outline how you can start the first four courses of this professional certificate today, learn at your own pace, and gain the skills you need to start your career as a Cloud Consultant. When you enroll in this certificate, you’ll be first in line when courses 5-9 are available to start.

Courses one to four of the AWS Cloud Technology Professional Certificate

In the AWS Cloud Technology Professional Certificate’s first four courses, you’ll learn from AWS experts as they teach you the skills to understand business goals and drivers, translate those into an appropriate AWS technical solutions and provide technical direction and oversight to cloud implementation teams. You’ll learn what a Cloud Consultant does, how they work, and what tools they rely on to be successful in their job. This professional certificate program provides a broad and thorough overview of what you’ll need to understand as you move into this career path, as well as the technical and soft skills to be successful.

The first course in the certificate series is Introduction to Information Technology and AWS Cloud and gives learners with zero technical knowledge enough context to begin to understand how to build solutions in the cloud. It’s a gentle introduction to the IT industry and acts as a primer to give you enough background to launch into the next course, which focuses on building solutions on AWS. Before diving into the cloud, we will start with technology fundamentals: how do computers work (including software and operating systems), an introduction to information technology, the basics of modern IT infrastructure, and an overview of in-demand cloud careers. The course then shifts into the world of connected networks (the Internet), covering local hosts, web servers, web applications, web security, the inter-workings of a website, and the differences between static and dynamic content. The course closes by introducing cloud computing, it’s role in our world, the differences between public, private, and hybrid, and why APIs are so important.

AWS Cloud Technical Essentials is next and introduces you to essential AWS services and common solutions. The course highlights the fundamental AWS concepts related to compute, database, storage, networking, monitoring, and security. Throughout the course, students will start building highly-available, scalable, and cost effective applications step-by-step. Upon course completion, you’ll be able to make an informed decision about when and how to match the ideal AWS service for compute, storage, and database to an unique use case. You’ll also learn about cloud security with a review of AWS’ shared responsibility model and an introduction to AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM). And, you’ll learn how AWS services can be used to monitor and optimize infrastructure in the cloud. This course is fundamental-level, helping you build your competence, confidence, and credibility with practical cloud skills.

Providing Technical Support for AWS Workloads is the certificate’s third course and is focused on the types of AWS services available and their capabilities. You’ll deepen your understanding with the AWS Cloud infrastructure, and focus on expanding your knowledge to include support methods and mitigation techniques. The course begins with a review of AWS infrastructure, including foundational compute, networking, storage, and database AWS services. You’ll then dive into the troubleshooting mindset and learn about the tools available and the importance of building and sticking to a plan. Next, you’ll learn how to troubleshoot with AWS services, such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Amazon Lambda, Amazon VPC before ending the course by covering preventative controls and scenarios when using Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), Amazon RDS, AWS IAM, and AWS Organizations. After completing this course, you’ll be thinking and acting like a Cloud Consultant with the knowledge and skill to listen to a customer’s cloud technology concerns and then best position the most efficient and cost-effective AWS solution.

The certificate’s fourth course is Developing Applications in Python on AWS and is a good transition point from concepts, theory, and use cases to hands-on builds and exercises. In this three-week course, you get a high-level introduction to the Python programming language. You’ll start building at the end of the course’s first week by writing a python script to solve a problem. In week two, you’ll learn about serverless architectures on AWS and learn the differences between microservices, service-oriented, and monolith architectures. You’ll build a microservices architecture with tools such as: AWS Lambda, Amazon API Gateway, AWS Serverless Application Model (AWS SAM) and AWS Cloud9. You’ll then shift to AWS databases, learning how to use Amazon RDS and Amazon DynamoDB when writing Python applications. The course’s final week will cover application integration services. Amazon’s Simple Notification Service (SQS), Simple Queue Service (SQS), and EventBridge play a big role as important “glue” components for scalable, cloud-based applications. The course wraps up with a hands-on project giving you the chance to write some code that pushes data to DynamoDB and then convert it into an AWS Lambda function.

You can start the AWS Cloud Technology Consultant Professional Certificate today and gain the skills to understand business goals and drivers, translate those into an appropriate AWS technical solutions, and provide technical direction and oversight to cloud implementation teams. Once you complete all nine courses, you’ll be awarded a Professional Certificate completion certificate that you can share with recruiters, leadership, and colleagues, helping you stand out from the competition. Enroll for the certificate on Coursera today, for $39/month.