The Biggest Disruption in the IT Sector
Now unless you’ve been a hermit or a monk living in total isolation, you will have heard of Amazon Web Services and AWS Big Data. It’s a sign of an emerging global market and the entire world becoming smaller and smaller every day. Why? The current estimate for the cloud computing market in 2020, according to Forbes (a new prediction, highly reliable), is a staggering 411 Billion USD$! Visit the following link to read more and see the statistics for yourself:
To know more, refer to Wikipedia for the following terms by clicking on them, which mark, in order the evolution of cloud computing (I will also provide the basic information to keep this article as self-contained as possible):
1. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
This was the beginning of the revolution called cloud computing. Companies and industries across verticals understood that they could let experts manage their software development, deployment, and management for them, leaving them free to focus on their key principle – adding value to their business sector. This was mostly confined to the application level. Follow the heading link for more information, if required.
2. Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)
PaaS began when companies started to understand that they could outsource both software management and operating systems and maintenance of these platforms to other companies that specialized in taking care of them. Basically, this was SaaS taken to the next level of virtualization, on the Internet. Amazon was the pioneer, offering SaaS and PaaS services worldwide from the year 2006. Again the heading link gives information in depth.
3. Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
After a few years in 2011, the big giants like Microsoft, Google, and a variety of other big names began to realize that this was an industry starting to boom beyond all expectations, as more and more industries spread to the Internet for worldwide visibility. However, Amazon was the market leader by a big margin, since it had a five-year head start on the other tech giants. This led to unprecedented disruption across verticals, as more and more companies transferred their IT requirements to IaaS providers like Amazon, leading to (in some cases) savings of well over 25% and per-employee cost coming down by 30%.
After all, why should companies set up their own servers, data warehouse centres, development centres, maintenance divisions, security divisions, and software and hardware monitoring systems if there are companies that have the world’s best experts in every one of these sectors and fields that will do the job for you at less than 1% of the cost the company would incur if they had to hire staff, train them, monitor them, buy their own hardware, hire staff for that as well – the list goes on-and-on. If you are already a tech giant like, say Oracle, you have everything set up for you already. But suppose you are a startup trying to save every penny – and there and tens of thousands of such startups right now – why do that when you have professionals to do it for you?
There is a story behind how AWS got started in 2006 – I’m giving you a link, so as to not make this article too long:
https://medium.com/@furrier/original-content-the-story-of-aws-and-andy-jassys-trillion-dollar-baby
For even more information on AWS and how Big Data comes into the picture, I recommend the following blog:
AWS Big Data Speciality
OK. So now you may be thinking, so this is cloud computing and AWS – but what does it have to do with Big Data Speciality, especially for startups? Let’s answer that question right now.
A startup today has a herculean task ahead of them.
Not only do they have to get noticed in the big booming startup industry, they also have to scale well if their product goes viral and receives a million hits in a day and provide security for their data in case a competitor hires hackers from the Dark Web to take down their site, and also follow up everything they do on social media with a division in their company managing only social media, and maintain all their hardware and software in case of outages. If you are a startup counting every penny you make, how much easier is it for you to outsource all your computing needs (except social media) to an IaaS firm like AWS.
You will be ready for anything that can happen, and nothing will take down your website or service other than your own self. Oh, not to mention saving around 1 million USD$ in cost over the year! If you count nothing but your own social media statistics, every company that goes viral has to manage Big Data! And if your startup disrupts an industry, again, you will be flooded with GET requests, site accesses, purchases, CRM, scaling problems, avoiding downtime, and practically everything a major tech company has to deal with!
Bro, save your grey hairs, and outsource all your IT needs (except social media – that you personally need to do) to Amazon with AWS!
And the Big Data Speciality?
Having laid the groundwork, let’s get to the meat of our article. The AWS certified Big Data Speciality website mentions the following details:
From https://aws.amazon.com/certification/certified-big-data-specialty/
The AWS Certified Big Data – Specialty exam validates technical skills and experience in designing and implementing AWS services to derive value from data. The examination is for individuals who perform complex Big Data analyses and validates an individual’s ability to:
-
Implement core AWS Big Data services according to basic architecture best practices
-
Design and maintain Big Data
-
Leverage tools to automate data analysis
So, what is an AWS Big Data Speciality certified expert? Nothing more than an internationally recognized certification that says that you, as a data scientist can work professionally in AWS and Big Data’s requirements in Data Science.
Please note: the eligibility criteria for an AWS Big Data Speciality Certification is:
From https://aws.amazon.com/certification/certified-big-data-specialty/
-
AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner or a current Associate-level certification: AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate, AWS Certified Developer – Associate or AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate recommended
-
Minimum five years hands-on experience in a data analytics field
-
Background in defining and architecting AWS Big Data services with the ability to explain how they fit in the data life cycle of collection, ingestion, storage, processing, and visualization
-
Experience in designing a scalable and cost-effective architecture to process data
To put it in layman’s terms, if you, the data scientist, were Priyanka Chopra, getting the AWS Big Data Speciality certification passed successfully is the equivalent of going to Hollywood and working in the USA starring in Quantico!
Suddenly, a whole new world is open at your feet!
But don’t get too excited: unless you already have five years experience with Big Data, there’s a long way to go. But work hard, take one step at a time, don’t look at the goal far ahead but focus on every single day, one day, one task at a time, and in the end you will reach your destination. Persistence, discipline and determination matters. As simple as that.
From whizlabs.org
Five Advantages of an AWS Big Data Speciality
1. Massive Increase in Income as a Certified AWS Big Data Speciality Professional (a long term 5 years plus goal)
Everyone who’s anyone in data science knows that a data scientist in the US earns an average of 100,000 USD$ every year. But what is the average salary of an AWS Big Data Speciality Certified professional? Hold on to your hat’s folks; it’s 160,000 $USD starting salary. And with just two years of additional experience, that salary can cross 250,000 USD$ every year if you are a superstar at your work. Depending upon your performance on the job! Do you still need a push to get into AWS? The following table shows the average starting salaries for specialists in the following Amazon products: (from www.dezyre.com)
Top Paying AWS Skills According to Indeed.com
| AWS Skill | Salary |
| DynamoDB | $141,813 |
| Elastic MapReduce (EMR) | $136,250 |
| CloudFormation | $132,308 |
| Elastic Cache | $125,625 |
| CloudWatch | $121,980 |
| Lambda | $121,481 |
| Kinesis | $121,429 |
| Key Management Service | $117,297 |
| Elastic Beanstalk | $114,219 |
| Redshift | $113,950 |
2. Wide Ecosystem of Tools, Libraries, and Amazon Products
From slideshare.net
Amazon Web Services, compared to other Cloud IaaS services, has by far the widest ecosystem of products and tools. As a Big Data specialist, you are free to choose your career path. Do you want to get into AI? Do you have an interest in ES3 (storage system) or HIgh-Performance Serverless computing (AWS Lambda). You get to choose, along with the company you work for. I don’t know about you, but I’m just writing this article and I’m seriously excited!
3. Maximum Demand Among All Cloud Computing jobs
If you manage to clear the certification in AWS, then guess what – AWS certified professionals have by far the maximum market demand! Simply because more than half of all Cloud Computing IaaS companies use AWS. The demand for AWS certifications is the maximum right now. To mention some figures: in 2019, 350,000 professionals will be required for AWS jobs. 60% of cloud computing jobs ask for AWS skills (naturally, considering that it has half the market share).
4. Worldwide Demand In Every Country that Has IT
It’s not just in the US that demand is peaking. There are jobs available in England, France, Australia, Canada, India, China, EU – practically every nation that wants to get into IT will welcome you with open arms if you are an AWS certified professional. And look no further than this site. AWS training will be offered soon, here: on Dimensionless.in. Within the next six months at the latest!
5. Affordable Pricing and Free One Year Tier to Learn AWS
Amazon has always been able to command the lowest prices because of its dominance in the market share. AWS offers you a free 1 year of paid services on its cloud IaaS platform. Completely free for one year. AWS training materials are also less expensive compared to other offerings. The following features are offered free for one single year under Amazon’s AWS free tier system:
The following is a web-scrape of their free-tier offering:
AWS Free Tier One Year Resources Available
There were initially seven pages in the Word document that I scraped from www.aws.com/free. To really have a look, go to the website on the previous link and see for yourself on the following link (much more details in much higher resolution). Please visit this last mentioned link. That alone will show you why AWS is sitting pretty on top of the cloud – literally.
Final Words
Right now, AWS rules the roost in cloud computing. But there is competition from Microsoft, Google, and IBM. Microsoft Azure has a lot of glitches which costs a lot to fix. Google Cloud Platform is cheaper but has very high technical support charges. A dark horse here: IBM Cloud. Their product has a lot of offerings and a lot of potential. Third only to Google and AWS. If you are working and want to go abroad or have a thirst for achievement, go for AWS. Totally. Finally, good news, all Dimensionless current students and alumni, the languages that AWS is built on has 100% support for Python! (It also supports, Go, Ruby, Java, Node.js, and many more – but Python has 100% support).
Keep coming to this website – expect to see AWS courses here in the near future!
AWS in the Cloud
Trackbacks/Pingbacks