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It's abundantly clear there is no going back to how things were pre-pandemic! Everything that we see has undergone a digital makeover and it's critical graduates and young professionals learn how to navigate the changed dynamics of the business world.

A key requirement for the future workforce will be the job roles in domains that are going to be integral to the future functioning of our businesses and economy. This is necessary not just for the sustenance of businesses, but also for bringing down the unemployment rate that is currently accelerating in our country.

Cloud Computing is one such critical domain. From facilitating online learning to supporting remote work, Cloud has emerged as a saviour in the pandemic/post-pandemic for business continuity. Seeing the surge of demand for Cloud services, it is safe to say that graduates and young professionals should understand and pursue careers in this domain.

This is a high-in-demand role in the domain. These professionals are responsible for programming solutions for the Cloud, including automation, orchestration, and integration.

These are professionals who implement the overall cloud strategy of their company. They analyse the requirements of the business and define relevant solutions using appropriate Cloud services.

These professionals are in charge of the security of the Cloud systems in their organisations, including identifying potential threats and recommend best-fit technologies to boost the security of the Cloud.

These are professionals tasked with managing Cloud-based data services, as well as hybrid data sources. They are responsible for identifying and introducing new data management and security technologies to their organisations.

They design, plan and implement Cloud networking solutions specific to the requirements of the organisation or its clients. They usually work with on-premises and cloud-based hardware and software to allow authorized users access to resources.

Regardless of educational background and work experience, you can get started with the Cloud if you have the passion and determination to succeed. Here is the step-by-step guide:

This is the first step for getting into the domain. Get an in-depth understanding of what Cloud is and what problems it solves. Get familiar with the three big players in the domain: Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the services they offer.

Equip yourself with a solid understanding of key topics in the domain such as Cloud Service Models, Cloud Formation & Architecture, Virtualization, and others. All three big players in the market offer both free and paid training courses for building fundamentals on Cloud computing.

Certifications will help you demonstrate your expertise and stay relevant in the ever-changing industry. Zero in on your area of interest in the domain and explore entry-level certifications offered by AWS, GCP, or Azure. Enroll in a career-based certification path and if possible, specialize by getting a role-based certification as well - especially popular are AWS, Azure, and GCP Cloud Developer, Architect, and Security certifications.

This is a good way of standing out and differentiating yourself from other cloud aspirants and getting noticed by recruiters and organizations. Moreover, most certification courses have hands-on training in labs, which will go a long way in preparing you for entry-level jobs.

Cloud computing is a vast field, and there is no end to the learning process. To excel you need to go beyond the immediate concepts, and learn other related skills, including programming languages, Cloud-focused architecture, platforms and applications - API & Web services, containerisation (Docker, Kubernetes), etc.

It's always a good idea to delve deeper into any domain if you want to sustain it in the long run. Improve your knowledge in Cloud Cryptography, Edge Computing, and other related topics. There are numerous resources available like online journals, research papers, credible blogs or you can opt for formal training.

Take up assignmentsminor projects to get experience in the technology and become familiar with Cloud. Some of the topics that you can excel with hands-on expertise are Cloud Migration for Infrastructure and Applications, Server management, and Cloud Monitoring.

Reach out to companies, ideally through your connections or networking sites like LinkedIn. Showcase your credentials and impress them with your hands-on expertise.

The Cloud computing domain is booming as we speak. The pandemic has validated how valuable Cloud is and there is no going back.

Businesses, small and large, all across are modernising their IT infrastructure by migrating to Cloud and are willing to compensate highly for the right talent in the domain. 'Right' being the keyword here! Become the talent that they are looking for by constantly upskilling and reskilling yourself.

By Peeush Bajpai, CEO, Springpeople.

Read: Explained: Why soft skills are important to excel in your career?

Read: Tips for undergraduate and postgraduate students looking to advance their career: All you need to know

Read: 9 in-demand IT careers in 2021-22

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Career in Cloud Computing: Top job roles and how to get started - India Today

Keeping cloud costs in check is a struggle. Companies either lose control of their budgets and spend even 23% more than planned or end up overprovisioning their workloads.

Optimising cloud costs is about striking a healthy balance between price and performance. You want your applications to have enough resources, but at the same time avoid cloud waste.

Here are five tips to get you started on your AWS cost optimisation journey.

Several teams or departments might be contributing to your AWS cloud bill, so you need a way to make this visible (and predictable).

AWS offers two handy tools for categorising expenses by accounts, organisations, or projects:

AWS offers 150+ EC2 instance types with entirely different combinations of CPU, memory, storage, and networking capacity. Each comes in one or more sizes, so you can scale easily.

You might be tempted by an affordable instance but what happens when you start running a CPU-intensive application on it and experience performance issues? This might affect your reputation.

Tip: Take advantage of spot instances for 90% savings: In spot instances, you bid on resources AWS isnt using now and save up to 90% off the on-demand pricing.

Many companies miss out on spot instances because theyre not sure how to handle interruptions.

Thats why your first step is to check if your workload is spot-ready:

To increase your chances, set up groups of spot instances (AWS Spot Fleets) and request multiple instance types simultaneously.

When selecting a spot instance, pick one thats slightly less popular its less likely to get interrupted. You can check its frequency of interruption in the AWS Spot Instance Advisor.

Workloads tend to vary a lot, and sudden surges of traffic might affect their performance if youre not prepared to handle a bigger load automatically.

If your application receives unexpected traffic, you might deliver a poor experience if you rely on manual scaling. And when adding resources, you risk overspending when the traffic goes down.

Scaling your cloud resources manually doesnt make sense.

Use tools like Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling and AWS Auto Scaling to monitor your applications and automatically adjust capacity for a steady and predictable performance at the lowest possible cost.

In Reserved instances, you buy capacity upfront in a specific Availability Zone for a much lower price when compared to on-demand. You commit to a particular instance or family you cant change this later on. And what if your requirements change in the meantime?

AWS also offers Savings Plans where you commit to using a specific amount of compute power over some time.

In both cases, you risk locking yourself in with the cloud vendor and committing to pay for resources that might not make any sense for you in 1 or 3 years.

These options remove any flexibility of scaling or ability to configure multi-region/zone distribution easily. As a result, youll be missing out on more cost-effective options.

To reduce your AWS bill, you need a platform that automatically chooses the right instance size, uses spot instances, takes care of autoscaling, and helps you to manage infrastructure dependencies.

CAST AI does just that for Kubernetes workloads. So if you use EKS, you can analyse your clusters for free, identify money leaks in minutes, set cost policies, and let AI keep optimising your cloud bill.

Editors note: This article is in association with CAST AI.

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Five key best practices for AWS cost optimisation - analysed - Cloud Tech

The chief information security officer (CISO) role has gained new importance, due to increased cyber threats. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on security-related IT investment in Europe, which will continue to grow rapidly in 2021.

During the pandemic, organisations have been re-architecting their IT security perimeters to protect operations and critical data. The pandemic, and measures to curb it with remote working, have pushed the enterprise network outwards and heightened the risk for CISOs.

According to the latest worldwide market study by International Data Corporation (IDC), overall investment in IT security within Europe is projected to exceed $35.6 billion during 2021 with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.8 percent between 2020 and 2024 now forecast to reach $46.4 billion in 2024.

The banking sector traditionally has the highest spending on IT security due to the particularly sensitive customer data that is integral to the industry. Besides, financial service organisations are eager to optimise their IT infrastructure via digital transformation.

The COVID-19 pandemic also increased focus on remote servicing of clientele, making data protection and identity and digital trust solutions even more invaluable. Additionally, the European banking sector is leading in terms of spending on services for integration, consulting, support services, and more.

Spending on IT services in the sector is projected at 7.3 percent year-on-year growth in 2021 to reach $4.8 billion. The second-place vertical market is discrete manufacturing with 7 percent projected to reach $3.8 billion, followed by process manufacturing with $3.1 billion in spending based on 7.6 percent growth.

IT Security spending also varies according to regions. In Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), for example, the second-largest vertical is federal or central government, with discrete manufacturing in third place.

The adoption of hybrid workforce models will motivate all CIOs to reassess their organisations secure network access requirements. Home-based workers will likely need to reach software applications within a managed data centre, plus a variety of public cloud-based SaaS apps

In Western Europe, conversely, banking is still the largest industry by IT security spending, followed by discrete manufacturing in second place and process manufacturing in third.

Broken down by services category, security services are projected to comprise the greatest share of IT security investment in 2021, with spending expected to accelerate further as organisations in Europe accelerate their digital transformation and migrate systems and workloads to the cloud. However, security software and hardware investments are expected to grow at a slightly lower rate.

After the initial response to the pandemic, organisations in Europe began to plan more strategically for an increasingly digital future, where interactions between businesses, their employees, partners, and customers (or citizens) are predominantly digital rather than physical, says Mark Child, research manager at IDC.

According to the IDC assessment, this transition will require secure infrastructure and processes, and not every organisation has the resources and expertise in-house. This is also driving strong growth in security services particularly public cloud services, managed security services, and IT security consulting.

CEE governments invested heavily in IT security during 2020 and are expected to continue doing so through 2024, owing to the need to provide digitalised services to citizens and businesses, and to enable remote working, distance learning, or other operations in which a physical presence is not possible.

IDC analysts believe that Central and Eastern Europe are catching up to Western Europe when it comes to the maturity of IT security spending in the government sector, and the current spending levels of verticals illustrate these trends.

That said, I anticipate that the adoption of hybrid workforce models will motivate all CIOs to reassess their organisations secure network access requirements. Home-based workers will likely need to reach software applications within a managed data centre, plus a variety of public cloud-based SaaS apps.

Photo byFranois GenononUnsplash

Want to find out more about topics like this from industry thought leaders? TheCloud Transformation Congress, taking place on 13 July 2021, is a virtual event and conference focusing on how to enable digital transformation with the power of cloud.

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How European CISOs are driving increased IT security investment - Cloud Tech

A new report has warned of a dubious gap for permissions across enterprise hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

The study from CloudKnox Security, which is described as an industry first, polled more than 150 global organisations on their usage of Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and VMware vSphere.

Overall, the standout finding saw more than 90% of organisations were using fewer than 5% of permissions granted. Each specific provider told a grim story. For AWS, more than 95% of identities were using fewer than 2% of permissions granted; Azure saw 90% for less than 2% respectively; while Google was 90% for less than 5%.

This is defined by CloudKnox as the cloud permissions gap. This publication has explored various gaps, both skills- and security-based, which companies have been keen to fill. In many cases, this is down to misunderstandings over shared responsibility, and how cloud providers only have responsibility of the cloud, and its associated infrastructure. Other gaps have appeared as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Ivanti found last month that almost a third of remote workers polled did not have to use a secure access tool to log into corporate databases and systems.

CloudKnox argues that it is almost impossible for identity and access management (IAM) or cloud infrastructure teams to manually manage who is accessing cloud infrastructure and using particular permissions. Legacy tactics, such as role-based access control (RBAC), do not work at cloud scale, and organisations need to properly implement the principle of least privilege to ensure the best defence.

The companys recommendations for operationalising permissions management (above) revolve around iterative and automated processes. Companies should leverage activity-based authorisation to right-size permissions of identities; identify, improve and monitor IAM hygiene continuously, and implement automated, continuous compliance and reporting.

The focus on digital transformation over the last few years and accelerated throughout 2020 has led to a significant delta between permissions granted and permissions used in the cloud,2 said Raj Mallempati, COO of CloudKnox. This cloud permissions gap is a massive contributing factor to the rise of both accidental and malicious threats for organisations of all sizes.

Permissions misuse or abuse can allow both human and machine identities to create and destroy portions of the cloud infrastructure; and without right-sizing these permissions, enforcing least privilege and Zero Trust access, these identities have the potential to become CISOs worst nightmares, Mallempati added.

You can read the full report here (pdf, email required).

Photo by Suad Kamardeen on Unsplash

Want to find out more about topics like this from industry thought leaders? TheCloud Transformation Congress, taking place on 13 July 2021, is a virtual event and conference focusing on how to enable digital transformation with the power of cloud.

Originally posted here:
Report warns of 'dubious' permissions gap for enterprise hybrid and multi-cloud - Cloud Tech

James is editor in chief of TechForge Media, with a passion for how technologies influence business and several Mobile World Congress events under his belt. James has interviewed a variety of leading figures in his career, from former Mafia boss Michael Franzese, to Steve Wozniak, and Jean Michel Jarre. James can be found tweeting at @James_T_Bourne.

Google Clouds cloud data centre region in Warsaw, Poland is now open for business 18 months after it was first announced.

The opening marks Google Clouds 25th location worldwide, and the first cloud region in central and eastern Europe.

Partnership details were first unveiled in September 2019 as Google aligned with Polands national cloud operator, Chmura Krajowa. The announcement today (April 14), made at a virtual press conference in keeping with the times, confirmed most of what had already been announced.

There were a handful of interesting customers named this time around, however. These included the largest businesses in two of Google Clouds key vertical areas; PKO Bank Polski, Polands largest commercial bank, and retailer LPP. UPC Polska, a telecoms operator, cited the importance of application platform Anthos to its business.

Google Cloud is here to support Polish businesses, helping them get smarter with data, deploy faster, connect more easily with people and customers throughout the globe, and protect everything that matters to their businesses, wrote Magdalena Dziewgu, Google Cloud Poland coutnry manager in a blog. The cloud region in Warsaw offers new technology and tools that can be a catalyst for this change.

The opening means Google is the first of the three biggest hyperscalers to launch in Poland. Microsofts Poland Central region, again to be located in Warsaw, has a status of coming soon on the Azure map. Microsoft first announced its plans for the country in May last year. Googles European expansion includes regions to open in Madrid, Milan, and Paris.

Photo by Nemesia Production on Unsplash

Want to find out more about topics like this from industry thought leaders? TheCloud Transformation Congress, taking place on 13 July 2021, is a virtual event and conference focusing on how to enable digital transformation with the power of cloud.

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Google Cloud opens Warsaw region in first step to central and eastern Europe expansion - Cloud Tech