Getting started with cloud technologies can be daunting with the number of cloud providers in the market and also hundreds of services, in the form of building blocks, offered by each cloud provider. But it is important to understand these services or building blocks which are used to create and deploy any type of application in the cloud. Also, cloud providers offer on-demand computing resources and services in the cloud, with pay-as-you-go pricing which saves cost. So, every organization is migrating to the cloud in order to save money.

This course is an introductory level course for understanding the cloud technology concepts and gives a detailed introduction to the three largest cloud providers: Amazon Web Service (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

Summary of the course:

• The course is divided into 5 main sections.

• In the first section, we will look at basic cloud concepts and compare cloud with the alternative self-hosted IT infrastructure. We will understand the difference between Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS).

• In the following three sections, we will introduce each of the three public cloud providers in detail: Amazon Web Service (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

• In each of these section, we will take a look at the brief history of the cloud provider and its reach with its global infrastructure. As this is a beginner level course, we will go through step-by-step instructions on creating a new account on the cloud providers' web portal. After that we will take a quick tour of the portal.

• We will go through all the categories of services provided by the cloud provider and core services in each category. We will design a simple architecture using the core services we learned to understand how cloud can be used in real world scenarios.

• For experimenting with services, each cloud provider offers 'Free Tier' either limited by time or amount of usage after creating a new account. It is important to understand the free tier limits to minimize the cost and optimize the usage.

• We will look at ways of interacting with the cloud provider services and their infrastructure like API, CLI and SDK.

• For those who are interested in learning more about the cloud provider or cloud technology in general, I’ll list some podcast, blog and events that I recommend.

• For those interested in certifications, we will look at the official certification offered by each cloud provider and figure out which certification path you should choose.

• And in the final section of the course, we will compare the three cloud providers and discuss which one to use in a particular use case.

This course is approximately 5 hours long in total, and the approximate time division is as follows:

1. Overview of cloud - 30 min

2. AWS Introduction - 1hr 30 min

3. Azure Introduction - 1hr 25 min

4. GCP Introduction - 1hr 14 min

5. Comparing AWS, Azure and GCP - 15 min