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The cloud adoption wave across the business landscape has created a global shortage of talent causing a huge demand for cloud computing engineers.
This global shortage has led cloud service providers and business end-users to hire cloud computing professionals on the remote work model. Pakistan has been among the list of countries where top global cloud companies posted for hiring in 2022.
Here’s your chance to work for top global cloud computing companies in 2023 by learning the most in-demand skills. This career guide shows how to become an expert cloud computing engineer by spending tiniest bucks as [80% of the skills can be learnt for free]. Our step by step career roadmap makes it easy for anyone aspiring to become a cloud engineer to learn cloud computing skills in the shortest time span.
This career guide also highlights top 5 cloud computing job roles and their salary information in Pakistan, along with answering why cloud computing is seen as a valuable technology in the top 10 industries including banking, automobile and healthcare.
Table of Contents
- What’s Cloud Computing?
- Cloud Computing application examples in Top 10 Industries
- Find remote work with top global companies hiring in Pakistan
- Cloud Computing Global Market Outlook
- Skills of a Cloud Engineer and how to learn for free?
- Become a Cloud Engineer in 5 Quick and Easy Steps
Cloud Computing makes doing business easiest!
Cloud computing is the delivery of computing services such as storage, computing power, softwares, analytics, and intelligence; over the Internet (aka cloud) to empower organizations in innovation, faster delivery and process optimization.
With powerful cloud services, companies can do countless things including for example: tracking business KPIs in real-time, developing software services at the fastest pace and using intelligence to perform hugely complex tasks on the go.
Recently, World leading Mahindra Group sought Google Cloud services for analytics and DevOps.
A musical show host Grammys uses Intelligent cloud tool by IBM Watson to extract celebrity facts from millions of content on the internet.
With cloud computing, companies have immense performance and cost benefits. End-users have the flexibility of upscaling/downscaling IT resources within minutes and paying only on the usage. Additionally, the IT resources are fully managed by the cloud vendor setting customers free in what is called serverless computing.
Name any industry and cloud computing is there!
Applications of cloud computing can be found in nearly any sector irrespective of the kind of services the industry provides. Following are Top 10 industries which have seen remarkable change in the way services are delivered, all using the digital cloud.
- Financial & Banking: With the emergence of mobile banking, the banking and financial sector moved their software development on the cloud. Moreover, the huge customer data generated as a result of digital services is stored and analyzed on the cloud for data analytics and intelligence.
- Education: Emergence of online teaching, after the corona outbreak in 2019, has successfully been carried out through scalable and cost-effective services of the cloud. Apart from that, school data and faculty information resides on a centralized cloud storage offering ease of access for the end-users. As another interesting application of cloud analytics, schools drive personalized education through analyzing and identifying distinguished learning needs of children.
- Healthcare: Better patient-doctor connection is achieved when cloud services are brought into the healthcare industry. Wearable devices on the patients upload data on the cloud servers and doctors receive insights with real time patient monitoring.
- Entertainment: When you’re streaming movies on Netflix, that’s happening on the cloud. Entertainment industry accesses the storage, processing and analytics on the cloud to enable real time streaming across millions of users, video transcoding and content recommendations.
- Retail: Retailers power their marketing strategies using the vast customer data stored on the cloud. Using cloud computational resources, marketing analytics are performed in real-time. Inventory management is also powered by the storage on cloud that lets quick tracking of countless products within an inventory.
- Automotive: Automotive simulation, marketing analytics and inventory data storage are three applications of the cloud in the automotive industry. These heavy workloads and colossal storage make cloud an ideal solution for innovation and fast service delivery.
- Real Estate: Secure storage of real estate files over the cloud is one application of cloud computing in real estate. Moreover, vast data of real estate locations and other details are easily accessible and managed at a single location making it easier for property dealers and brokers to make timely decisions.
- Insurance: Taking insurance to the cloud, companies opened up customer portals that have hundreds and thousands of customer profiles. Apart from tracking customer status, the data fed and generated from these profiles can be analyzed on the cloud to effectively develop marketing strategies.
- Hospitality: Guest experience on the cloud features the pre-arrival booking support across hundreds of hotels in a region. Hotels connected over the cloud make arrangements in parallel and customers make personalized service requests on the mobile application. The cloud ecosystem in the hospitality sector has made checkouts easier.
- Production: IoT and other industry 4 applications require the scalability, processing and cost-efficiency of the cloud to create an automated and digitally sound manufacturing system. Prediction of early malfunctions, supply chain management and operational intelligence are three key areas that use cloud technology.
Find remote work with top global companies hiring in Pakistan
Ever since the cloud computing industry has witnessed investment and demand boom, the cloud service providers are on a continuous hunt for global talent based on the remote work model. Saving them loads of hiring costs, the remote work model also works in favor of employees offering them immense benefits in the form of zero fuel and accommodation costs, and a global competitive salary.
Our research shows that there are five kinds of cloud computing job roles that are increasingly in demand in Pakistan and across the globe.
Following is the description of each cloud computing job role along with estimated basic salary in the US market that has been offered in the remote jobs in Pakistan.
Cloud Architects: The top role in cloud computing career is of a cloud architect. Taking years of experience, a cloud architect builds a strategy for cloud solution development. They lead a team consisting of cloud engineers, security analysts, administrators and developers.
Average Basic Salary in the US: $195,385/ yr.
Cloud Engineers: A cloud engineer builds and deploys cloud solutions. This role revolves around three core cloud skills: software development/DevOps, database administration and networking. Anything that’s related to planning, setting up and monitoring of the cloud comes under this role.
Average Basic Salary in the US: $84,331/ yr.
Cloud Security Analysts: Responsible for providing and maintaining security of the cloud service, a cloud security analyst knows how to detect and respond in case of a cyber attack. These professionals build and implement security strategies to protect data and infrastructure on the cloud.
Average Basic Salary in the US: $85,072 / year.
Cloud Administrators: Working closely with cloud engineers, cloud administrators configure, manage and monitor cloud infrastructure elements. They oversee day-to-day administration tasks such as configuration and troubleshooting.
Average Basic Salary in the US: $73,421/ yr.
Cloud Developers: Responsible for designing, development and maintenance of SaaS web applications on the cloud. A cloud developer also shares responsibilities with cloud engineers and architects thereby requiring sound grasp on design and development of virtual machines and database management.
Average Basic Salary in the US: $95,170/ yr.
Employability promise of Cloud Computing
The global cloud computing market outlook shows a promising career path due to cloud service providers reaching double digits in revenue and end-users increasingly seeking cloud services. Here are the latest and most credible highlights of the cloud computing market:
- According to Gartner (a world’s leading market research company), the end user spending on cloud services will reach $600 billion by 2023, an incredible 46% increase from $410.9 billion in 2021.
- Gartner says that by 2025, at least half of the enterprises’ IT spending will likely go on procurement of cloud services.
- As cloud computing started to lead the market in the digital industry, the IaaS services were sold 41% more in just a single year, in 2021, states another Gartner insight.
- Another Gartner forecast says that the global IT spending will increase 4% in 2022.
The sky-rocketing demand of cloud computing professionals presents a challenge of talent shortages in the IT areas, implying that companies in cloud computing and other technology areas (DevOps) seek expertise from across the globe on the remote work model.
The Skills of a Cloud Engineer and how to learn for free?
- Linux: Nine out of top ten public clouds are built on Linux. These include AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud that have some form of Linux in their cloud platforms. For example, 40% of Azure VMs are built on Linux.
Learn Linux for free at Linux Foundation: the founding body of Linux.
- Database Expertise: Cloud services are based on storage and access of data on the cloud database. A cloud engineer deals with database management using SQL and noSQL languages. Popular skills in this area that are sought by cloud companies are MySQL and Hadoop.
Learn Relational Database management and SQL for free in a certified course by Cognitive AI.
Read Insights: SQL and Database Management: What you need to know
Read Insights: SQL Survives and Thrives in the Post-NoSQL Era
- Programming Languages:
Knowledge of programming languages is a must for cloud engineers because these languages are used in SaaS application development using which clients interact with the cloud.
SQL: The 40 year-old is most popular and well-established language of relational databases.
Python: Used for web development, the language is easy to use, efficient and used for diverse platforms. It’s preferable for cloud since it comes with prewritten libraries saving developers from complex coding on the server side.
Java: Also used for application development, Java is a cross platform language who’s applications can be used on any platform. This makes it a preferred option in cloud computing.
AWS, Oracle and Google App Engine provide Java related tools and resources among other cloud providers.
Ruby: Another popular language in the world of cloud computing is Ruby with Stack Overflow terming it as one of the hottest languages in 2022. It’s an application development language just like Python with easy to learn syntax and is preferred for commercial application development such as in cloud.
PHP: The 3-tier architecture of PHP makes it run on browsers, servers and databases.
.NET: .NET also offers fast and scalable application development on cloud. Azure specifically targets .NET developers for its cloud development, deployment and monitoring.
Developers all around the world learn these programming skills for free at Codecademy’s interactive and easy to understand programming learning platform.
- Network Management: Part of cloud services is the cloud networking service. It’s a virtual network managed on the cloud instead of on-premise legacy networks. A cloud engineer therefore requires knowledge and ability in network planning, deployment and management.
Cisco has a free learning database for anyone to start a career in networking. Start developing your networking skills from Cisco’s free networking essential course.
- DevOps: Designing, building, deploying and managing software applications in optimal way, DevOps skills are handy in cloud computing. Cloud platforms such as AWS have designed DevOps tools learning which adds in on your skills as a cloud engineer.
Learn DevOps for free with Udemy’s short and insightful courses.
Read Insights: What are the most common skills of a DevOps professional in this comprehensive career guide?
- Containerization: Isolating an application from the whole system through abstraction of the operating system, cloud engineers must know how to use containerization tools such as Docker, Kubernetes and AWS Lambda.
Learn the basics of containerization, AWS Elastic Container Service (ECS) and Lambda at Free AWS Skills Builder.
- Virtualization: Virtualization provides cloud engineers with the ability to use a single hardware to run multiple operating systems. This includes learning to set up virtual machines.
- Web services and APIs: Web services are an integral part of cloud application development. Cloud engineers must ensure to include XML (aka service description) within the web applications to allow a standard communication between clients and server (cloud). In a similar flow, cloud developers must have knowledge of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) which is a set of definitions a software service (in this case cloud application) uses to access with other software services over the internet.
- Cloud Security: Protecting data over the cloud is the most significant factor end-users put trust on the promising technology. A cloud engineer must have the security knowledge and hands-on skills in protecting cloud services to the best.
AWS offers a 2-hours free digital course on Security on the Cloud.
Knowledge of Cloud Providers: Technical practices and cloud services vary across the landscape of cloud service providers. The final step in becoming a cloud professional is acquiring hands-ons skills on all the major cloud platforms.
Become a Cloud Engineer in 5 Quick and Easy Steps: Cloud Computing Career Path
Starting with the first and easiest step, make gradual progress to the next step by acquiring skills online for free. In the final step of the cloud computing career roadmap you are required to learn popular cloud computing platforms. It’s your chance to leverage the hottest opportunities in the market.
Getting expertise in AWS, as a start, is a plus for individuals given its huge demand in the global cloud computing market. In 2022, AWS successfully sustained the top position in the market share for cloud services with 34% total share before Azure (22%) and Google Cloud (9.5%).
Taking a certified online course on Cloud Computing with AWS at Dice Analytics offers a quick and easy way to learn the most in-demand cloud skills.
Centered around affordability, our live interactive training takes over 2 months and covers the core concepts of AWS including: design and development of AWS cloud infrastructure, event based scaling, disaster recovery, virtual networks, database management, cloud monitoring & audit, and security and encryption.
Individuals from all over Pakistan can take the interactive virtual training on cloud computing with AWS at Dice Analytics’ digital platform. Apart from the seamless live stream, our learning management system (LMS) also offers an opportunity of self-paced learning through recorded lectures. Moreover, our students can avail limitless re-enrollments for the certification exam, for free.
Visit our course details at our website.
