Cloud Services
Are you cloud-ready?
Information technology is on the move—to the cloud. Over 20 million businesses have adopted Microsoft cloud services, and the pace is accelerating. Stay ahead of the pack: make sure you have the skills you need to continue to be the IT professional your employer wants to keep and everyone else wants to hire.
You’ve already put time and effort into your career as an IT professional. Now it’s time to become a skilled cloud professional. Develop your expertise in one of these new job roles, with training and certification direct from the source.
Office 365 Administrator
As an IT administrator, you’ve probably specialized in a particular technology, such as Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint, or Microsoft Lync. As a Microsoft Office 365 administrator, you’ll build on this expertise as you move from an on-premise deployment model to a public cloud model. You’ll need to develop your planning, design, and infrastructure skills to migrate, deploy, and administer a hosted Office 365 solution.
Cloud Developer
As a cloud developer, you’ll need to understand how applications are designed, developed, and deployed for platform as a service (PaaS). You’ll focus on innovation and integration, and you’ll work more closely with business units to help them increase productivity. Consider expanding your skills to include identity and access control, through Windows Communication Foundation, and HTML5, to provide richer websites without the need for third-party plug-ins.
Windows Azure is Microsoft's cloud platform used to build, host, and scale web applications through Microsoft data centers.
MCPD: Windows Azure Developer (3 exams)
Show employers and clients that you are ready to support the move to cloud services by earning the MCPD: Windows Azure Developer certification. This certification helps validate your ability to design, build, and deploy cloud-based applications that will be hosted on the Windows Azure platform.
- MCTS: Windows Communication Foundation Development with Microsoft .NET Framework 4 (Exam 70-513)
Course 10263A: Developing Windows Communication Foundation Solutions with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 (3 Days)
- MCTS: Accessing Data with Microsoft .NET Framework 4 (Exam 70-516)
Course 10265A: Developing Data Access Solutions with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 (5 Days)
- PRO: Designing and Developing Windows Azure Applications (Exam 70-583)
Course 50466B: Windows Azure Solutions with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 (3 Days)
Data Center Operations Manager
As an administrator, you’re in charge of design, configuration, and maintenance. As a Windows Server administrator, you’ll need to reposition your skills for the hosted data center so that you can work in standardized environments, with standardized applications. You’ll be monitoring, provisioning, and managing the data center with Microsoft System Center.
Data Steward
As you move from your role as database administrator to data steward in a cloud environment, you’ll need to be able to design and manage databases anywhere. Being able to architect a cloud strategy and identify data to move to cloud storage will be important skills as you work with SQL Azure cloud-based relational database services built on Microsoft SQL Server technologies.
Cloud Computing: What IT Professionals Need to Know
Explore the advantages of moving to the cloud, and learn more about the delta skill sets that IT pros will want to acquire.
- Download the Cloud Computing white paper (Microsoft Word file, 101 KB)
