People are exposed to so many technologies today that make our work easier. While customers are happy using them, only a few bother to go into depth and find how that technology works. For example, you must be using the Gmail application on your smartphone or computer. You receive and send so many emails daily, but have you wondered where do those emails get stored? Well, all those emails and attached data are saved over the cloud. In other words, it is cloud computing working at the backend.
Traditionally, whatever application one wanted to use had to install it on their system and all of its related data was stored in their hard disk. Fast forward to today, cloud computing is a technology that allows you to use any application on the browser just like you access websites. A simple example would be using Google Docs, an application that you can use to create documents rather than a Notepad application on your system. Every document will have a URL just like website addresses and accessed anytime.
This new way of accessing applications as services is proving to be more beneficial for organizations than individuals. There are many issues when any new software is to be used in an organization like licensing, installation, maintenance, getting software updates, renewal costs, and so on. Using software as cloud services saves companies from all such problems. Hence, more and more companies find it a cost-effective and efficient system to use these services. The growing demand has led to stiff competition among cloud service providers and many tech giants are trying to enter the cloud computing space. As of now, the key players that offer sophisticated cloud services are Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Google Cloud.
This article focuses on Microsoft Azure, introduces you to this cloud platform and why should achieve Azure certifications like the Azure Architect certification.
What is Microsoft Azure?
Created by tech giant Microsoft, Azure is a public cloud computing platform that offers more than 200 products and cloud services that bring new solutions to life. Companies of all sizes like Azure services and find it useful for their digital transformation, including 95% of the Fortune 500 companies. Using Azure services doesn’t involve any upfront cost, companies need to pay only for what they use with flexible purchasing and pricing options. The platform offers solutions for all industrial sectors through proven combinations of cloud services.
Compared to other cloud service providers, Azure is a consistent hybrid cloud that delivers exceptional developer productivity, multilayered security, and offers cost-effective services that work with a company’s existing investments. You’ll find a wide range of cloud services in fields like Analytics, Blockchain, Databases, Developer Tools, Compute, DevOps, Internet of Things (IoT), Networking, Security, and so on.
Looking at the ninth annual Flexera 2020 State of the Cloud Report, you would come to know that enterprises continue to adopt multi-cloud and hybrid cloud strategies by increasing their cloud spend considerably. Moreover, the enterprise adoption of Azure continues to draw closer to the leader AWS. Azure is narrowing the gap with AWS in both the percentage of enterprises using it and the number of virtual machines enterprises are running on it. Evidently, Azure will have a significant cloud market share in the years to come.
A Career in Microsoft Azure
People are always skeptical about starting a career in a relatively new domain. Though Microsoft Azure has its presence in the market for quite some time now, yet many professionals aren’t updated regarding the growing dominance of cloud technologies. So, you would be paving your way to a highly rewarding career if you are willing to start your journey in Azure. Whether you are a network administrator, software developer, DevOps engineer, or technical architect, you can explore your skills in the cloud. For these roles and many others, Azure offers different certifications to help people gain expertise in using different cloud services and validate their cloud skills.
Some of the top certifications offered by Azure are:
- Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals
- Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate
- Microsoft Certified: Azure Developer Associate
- Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert
- Microsoft Certified: DevOps Engineer Expert
- Microsoft Certified: Azure IoT Developer Specialty
Looking at the salary prospects of Azure certified professionals, the figures would surely grab your attention. According to Payscale, a professional with relevant Azure skills earn an average annual salary of around $97K in the US. Here are the role wise (with Azure skills) salaries:
- Software engineer – $89K
- Cloud solutions architect – $130K
- DevOps Engineer – $99K
- Systems Administrator – $66K
- Software Developer – $74K
You can clearly infer from the above stats that Azure certified professionals are highly paid. The next concern for anyone is the future demand of any domain. We have already discussed that many companies have migrated their existing workload to the cloud and a lot are planning to do so within the next two to three years. As such, professionals skilled in using cloud services will be in good demand to help companies with their cloud initiatives.
The future looks bright for cloud technology; are you ready to become a part of the global cloud computing talent by learning Azure?