Who Is This For?

My purpose with this course is to compile the greatest source of information about the cloud that will give anyone that goes through it the confidence to tackle any challenge at any scale. The following categories of people were in my mind when I worked on it:

• Software engineers looking to get started with the cloud, especially the ones that value time as a resource - both their time and the time of the people that depend on them - when the great idea comes, we don’t want to spend time trying to figure out what’s possible and how to do it, don’t we?

• Proficient cloud engineers and architects looking for a compendium of ideas, technologies, guidelines, and designs. Even the best of the best must practice the basics. This holds true in any area. Which basketball players do you think practiced throwing the most? Which salespeople made the most calls? Moreover, this course might contain that 10% of new information that you were looking for.

• Non-technical people such as team leaders, managers, salespeople, product managers looking to take their craft to the next level. As I got to work with more and more people on various projects, I noticed one recurring fact: the best product managers and the best salespeople were the ones that had a clear idea of how the product worked (usually these people used to be developers). Not only you will get considerably better at your job, but you will also get more ideas because you will know what’s possible (this is another limitation I noticed throughout the time: people dream small because they don’t know what we are capable of achieving).

Why Would You Care About the Cloud?

Nowadays it’s kinda challenging to think of an industry that doesn’t rely on technology either because the industry itself is built on it such as streaming services (e.g. Netflix, Amazon Prime, Spotify) or because it uses technology to greatly improve its processes (e.g. healthcare, agriculture, shipping).

Similarly, most of these technologies rely on cloud services on which they operate or will operate in the future. In other words, being proficient with cloud services will greatly help you irrespective of the industry you are working in. This also creates a high demand which, just like in any other market, drives the prices (salaries) up.

Why Would You Listen to Me?

In short, because I genuinely prefer watching, listening, and reading about the cloud (and other tech areas) to watching movies or shows (I still enjoy the latter, don’t get me wrong). I took this approach in 2015 after watching a bunch of CppCon videos.

Making this subtle change drove me to steer my career in a slightly different direction (I started as an SAP developer in the reinsurance business), pursue various certifications (AWS and Azure Solutions Architect at the of this writing), launch a tech start-up, and last but not least, organize a course about the cloud at Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca that made me really proud especially after meeting so many talented students.

What Is the Value of This Course?

First of all, everything included in this course can be found on the internet or through experience. The potential issue is that we have limited time and energy. How we choose to spend them is the basis of our future selves.

You can choose to enroll in this course and invest a few hours in completing it or you can give it a try on your own. It took me around 200 hours to put it together, but I already knew most of it. You aren’t getting only the result of these 200 hours, but the experience gathered in nearly 10000 hours (or 250 work weeks which translates to roughly 5 years).

You might also wonder why this course and not another one. Well, when I started working on the university course I thought I will find everything I need online in a course, maybe two. And I almost did. The only issue was that I couldn’t find everything neatly structured and in one place. (Useful) Information was everywhere and most of the time hidden under vendors promoting their services and redundant content - sometimes you have to go through the same thing multiple times from multiple sources just to get that 1% new piece of knowledge.

At the end of this course you will be able to:

• Understand what the cloud is, how it works, when and why to use it

• Understand less talked about subjects such as pricing models and compliance standards

• Design and build cloud-native applications and SaaS products with the confidence that you make the right choices

• Understand the advantages and disadvantages of popular technologies like Docker, Kubernetes, Serverless (Lambda, Functions), NoSQL Databases, and GraphQL

• Design secure distributed systems by leveraging cloud-native firewalls, networking features, and authentication services

• Apply the same knowledge to any cloud provider including AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud

• Get certified. Certifications such as AWS Solutions Architect and Azure Solutions Architect are in high demand and are getting more and more complex. You will be able to leverage everything you have learned in this course for all major certification paths and only learn service-specific details.

Cannot wait to build that awesome knowledge together!

Andrei