Cloud Native Skills Roadmap: What Should You Learn and in What Order?
This roadmap elaborates on how you can develop your cloud native skills, which will become handy for thriving in the current digital-first economy.
Today’s businesses have an increasing interest in cloud native technologies. Many people want to get the most out of their current cloud technology investments while taking advantage of all the agility, cost savings, and security the cloud has to offer.
Many businesses are still in the early stages of using cloud native technology, and they don’t have a lot of technical expertise on staff. They can be very dependent on business software tied to a certain cloud.
This is where the need for cloud native specialists is required. People with the right technical skills are in high demand.
To stay ahead of the curve, businesses must adopt multiple disciplines. Any organisation needs to know what skills are needed for a particular project, but it can be overwhelming to try to learn all the skills at once.
Due to the increasing number of software-related fields of study, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the Internet of Things (IoT), the number of frameworks and languages used for developing applications has become more diverse. This has led to the development of more customised cloud native applications. No matter how applications are built, the cloud native platform should have the right mix of frameworks, languages, and architectures to support the development needs.
Let’s look at a roadmap for cloud native skills that you can invest in to thrive in the current digital economy and help you identify the right tool for the right task.
The roadmap shows a clear, effective way to move forward and test your technical skills. It lets you focus on learning one skill at a time.
Learning the fundamentals of cloud engineering, such as Linux, DevOps, and Observability, covers the entire spectrum of cloud engineering technologies. It involves designing and building cloud frameworks and applications using cloud native best practices. You will also be able to look at the technology and development processes that your teams use and make recommendations on how to improve tech solutions over time, both now and in the future.
| Linux | An open-source operating system that provides the best option to grow your business. Linux is used to power the servers and routers that run the internet. Learning Linux will improve your understanding of how the software that powers your system works. Given that so many servers use Linux, you can also learn more about networking and security. The tools required to build programmes, like editors, compilers, debuggers, IDEs, and interpreters, come with Linux. So, practising and understanding Linux is essential to gain experience managing servers and networks. A few of the Linux distributions are Ubuntu, RedHat, Debian, etc. |
| Networking | Computer networks enable communication for all business, entertainment, and research purposes. Computers and routers are some of the devices that make up networks. These devices are connected. Understanding how networks are put together to build a wireless network in a community or business is important. Learning networking will help you understand servers, IP addresses, network hubs, switches, cables, routers, firewalls, and so on. To help your business increase traffic and keep users happy, it’s critical that you also understand how computer networks work, how they’re put together, and how to keep them secure. |
| Cloud Services | Gaining experience with cloud infrastructures like Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, and Oracle will help you improve your cloud skills. Understanding these cloud services can also help you with cloud architecture, applications, hosting, migration, etc. in any project or business you start. Learning how to use the cloud effectively can set you apart as an IT professional. |
| Security | Using cloud platforms, you can test your knowledge and skills on the best security technologies and practices while keeping the integrity of your cloud environment. Even though security plays a pivotal role, managing information security, assurance, and risk-based processes are essential to keep up with the latest threats in business. Learning the fundamentals will position you one step ahead of any potential security threats or governance services that are needed to keep the IT infrastructure safe. It is therefore crucial to learn the skills to know how to secure, prevent, and find weaknesses, threats, and risks in cloud governance and compliance. |
| Containers | You can get hands-on experience with Kubernetes, Docker, and containerisation techniques on cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud if you learn about containers. This will help you set up a uniform environment for developing, testing, and deploying apps. As a result, cloud scaling and app migration from on-premises to the cloud will be easy. It gives you an edge as many organisations nowadays integrate containers into their infrastructure. |
| Infrastructure as Code (IaC) | By learning to use tools like Ansible and Terraform, you can get the skills you need to manage and set up infrastructure with code instead of through manual processes. With IaC, you have the ability to configure files containing your infrastructure specifications when they are created, making it easier to edit and distribute configurations. |
| CI/CD | Understanding DevOps and the ideas of Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery/Deployment, DevOps, and Pipelines is important if you want to know how CI/CD elements can help your business increase revenue and get to market faster. Learning how to use tools such as GitHub, Bitbucket, Flux, and Jenkins can help you modernise your software development lifecycle. It also helps you to find errors earlier and improves the overall quality of your applications. Because of this, both startups and major corporations can benefit from skilled resources to make their applications at a lower cost. |
| Observability | Software today is built on distributed systems. Microservices, load-balancers, serverless computing, flexible architecture, and containers make it hard to track system behaviour and problems. So, it’s essential to empower yourself with observability to tackle any challenges that may arise beforehand. Learning the use of tools such as elastic stack, Grafana, Splunk, and Prometheus can help you address any early issues, safely experiment and implement optimisations, and manage business risks to improve your system/application observability. |
Therefore, proper planning and training are essential to get the exposure you need to instil the culture, processes, and technology of a cloud native journey. We must focus, learn, and educate ourselves as the world continues to evolve rapidly through cloud native technologies.
Whatever your plan, having the right skills, technology, DevOps processes, and culture will help you build and deliver apps to the market more quickly. Codification has the right tools and resources to help you, depending on where you are in your cloud native journey and what your goals are. By embarking on this learning journey, you’re empowering yourself with knowledge and skills that will help you grow professionally.
