What’s so great about AWS?
Let’s see.
- Amazon Web Services, a subsidiary of the e-commerce giant Amazon, accounts for 13.5%of Amazon’s total revenue.
- In 2020, AWS marked a record-high revenue of USD 10 billion.
- AWS spans around 245 countries overall.
- At a CAGR of 22 percent, the AWS market is expected to reach USD 236 billion by 2021. As of January 2021, it holds 31% of the overall cloud market.
- AWS is consistently ranked top cloud service provider year over year.
- Across the globe, there are 380,000 cloud computing jobs available, and the demand is increasing every year.
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect is ranked #1 certification.
- The average annual salary of an AWS Solutions Architect is USD 129,000, according to Indeed.com.
AWS Certifications are considered the most sought-after certifications when you wish to make a career in cloud computing. With such high perks, you realize how rewarding a career can be if you go with one or more of these certifications. Let us now explore what AWS is and a brief note on the certifications offered by AWS.
What is AWS?
As defined on the official home page of AWS, Amazon Web Services” is the most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform, that offers over 200 fully-featured services from data centers globally.”
There are millions of customers that include leading government agencies, the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, are leveraging services from AWS to incur benefits like minimizing costs, implementing innovative ideas, and becoming more agile.
AWS Certifications
An AWS certification is an industry-recognized credential that validates your expertise in the cloud that helps you highlight the skills required. Also, it helps organizations in building effective and innovative teams for taking cloud initiatives deploying AWS.
It is important to go with AWS certification as AWS continues to lead in the public cloud adoption market in 2020, according to Gartner.
Currently, AWS offers 12 certifications that cover both the fundamentals and specialty.
Let us have a glance at them.
Foundational Certification
AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
The latest or newest certification introduced by AWS is Cloud Practitioner. This is an entry-level certification that is designed for demonstrating your general understanding of the AWS cloud.
You can take this certification exam if you have six months of experience in any of the roles, such as technical, managerial, or sales. It covers key AWS services and their common use cases, basic security and compliance, core deployment and operating principles, and the value proposition of AWS cloud.
Associate Level Certifications
AWS Certified Solutions Architect- Associate (SAA-CO2)
It is impossible to discuss AWS certifications without this certification. This certification is one of the most in-demand credentials across the globe.
This certification is designed for professionals who have experience in designing distributed applications. You are required to demonstrate your ability to design, maintain, and implement applications using tools and techniques on the AWS platform.
The topics include network technologies and their functionality, working on AWS-based applications, developing secure and reliable applications using AWS, deploying hybrid systems with AWS components, and on-premises data centers.
AWS Certified Developer- Associate
This certification is designed for developers who are interested in building and monitoring AWS-based applications. You are required to understand how to write actual code that uses AWS software and access AWS applications.
The topics covered in this credential are the basic architecture of AWS and core AWS services, hands-on experience in designing, creating, deploying, and maintaining applications, and functional knowledge of AWS databases, notifications, workflow services, and change management services.
AWS Certified SysOps Administrator- Associate
This is the only certification that is fully oriented towards system administrators. You need technical expertise as well as conceptual knowledge of the operational aspects of the AWS platform to pass this certification exam. It will serve as icing on the cake if you have a sound knowledge of Linux or Windows.
This credential covers the topics such as sending and receiving data between data centers and AWS, choosing the appropriate AWS services according to the requirement of the organization, deploying applications on the AWS platform. It also includes provisioning, monitoring, and securing systems in an AWS environment.
Professional Level Certifications
AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional
To earn this certification, you first need to achieve AWS Certified Solutions Architect- Associate level certificate. By gaining this certification, you become capable of evaluating an organization’s requirements and also making architectural recommendations to implement and deploy applications on AWS.
AWS Certified Solutions Architect-professional level requires to have an intense experience and technical skills in designing AWS-based applications.
The topics covered under this credential are knowledge of cost optimization, migration of complex application systems to AWS, best practices architecting, and designing applications on the AWS platform.
AWS Certified DevOps Engineer- Professional
This certification includes provisioning, operating, and maintaining applications over the AWS platform. This exam covers the two fundamental concepts of the DevOps movement, which are Continuous Delivery(CD) and automation of the processes.
This credential covers the topics such as implementing CD systems, the fundamentals of modern CD methodologies, implementing highly available and scalable systems. Also, this certification includes set up, monitoring, and logging systems on AWS, design and management tools that are intended to automate production operations.
Specialty Certifications
AWS Certified Data Analytics – Specialty
This certification is designed for professionals who are experts in data analytics and in using AWS services for designing and building Big Data solutions. This credential validates your experience in extricating meaningful insights from data deploying AWS services.
This credential covers the topics such as designing and monitoring big data, deploying AWS tools for automating data analysis, security best practices for providing big data solutions. This also includes AWS services such as Athena, Quicksight, Rekognition, and Kinesis.
AWS Certified Advanced Networking – Specialty
This certification demonstrates your skills and experience regarding your performance in complex networking tasks on AWS and also hybrid IT networking tasks. To attain this certification you are required to have a background in designing and building network solutions and advanced knowledge of networking on AWS.
This credential covers the topics such as designing, building, and deploying cloud solutions with AWS, implementing core services as per architectural best practices, design and implementation of security compliance, automation of AWS tasks for network deployments.
AWS Certified Security – Specialty
As the name itself suggests, you need to master security fundamentals for achieving this certification. Along with mastering security concepts, you need to follow best practices and incur a sound understanding of key services that are unique to the AWS platform.
It demonstrates your skills in security aspects such as data encryption and protection, incident response, infrastructure security, identity and access management, monitoring, and logging.
This credential involves the following topics: utilizing different AWS services as per the security required based on the sensitivity of your data; going with the most feasible data protection technique; implementing monitoring and logging solutions to identify and analyze security vulnerabilities within your infrastructure.
AWS Certified Alexa Skill Builder – Specialty
This certification demonstrates your skills in building, testing, and deploying Amazon Alexa skills. This exam is designed for anyone who can do Alexa skill-building. You should have at least six months of experience developing Alexa skills using the Alexa Skills kit and should master a programming language.
This credential covers the topics such as user experience design, learning the value of voice, building, testing, and validating the skill, following AWS and Alexa best practices for security compliance, working with Alexa Developer Console.
AWS Certified Machine Learning – Specialty
This certification demonstrates your skills in developing, implementing, and monitoring machine learning solutions for a variety of business problems. This exam is designed for any pro who can perform the role of a data scientist. You should have one or more years of experience using Machine Learning or Deep Learning on the AWS cloud.
This credential includes areas such as selecting and deploying the best machine learning approach for a given business issue, finding relevant AWS solutions so as to design and deploy your ML solution; designing and implementing scalable, cost-optimized, reliable, and secure ML solutions.
AWS Certified Database – Specialty
This certification demonstrates your overall comprehension of all the AWS database services. In addition, it also makes you learn how to improve your business through optimized database integration as well as architecture. Anyone who works with databases and implements database solutions can take this exam. You are required to have two or more years of experience in working with on-premises relational and No-SQL databases.
This credential covers the topics such as database design, its deployment and migration, management and operations, maintaining and troubleshooting, and security issues.
How much do these certifications exams cost?
The prices vary with the different levels of certifications. The costs are:
- Practitioner – USD 100
- Associate – USD 150
- Professional – USD 300
- Specialty – USD 300
The Bottom Line( How do I get Certified?)
Since you have had an overview of all the AWS certs, you can choose one according to the level of your knowledge and experience and also your interest.
One of the best ways to get certified is to take up an online training course from a reputed training institute. If you want to learn in a trouble-free manner, get yourself enrolled now.
The only testing center that is proctoring online is Pearson VUE. The training institutes take care of all the steps required to get certified and train you well until you are prepared completely.
Get yourself enrolled now!
