BRIAN RICE: Hi, everybody.
I hope you're enjoying Google Cloud Next so far.
In this session, we're going to talk to you
about the value of getting a Google Cloud
certification to help you in your career
and to help advance the projects that you're
involved in in the world of cloud computing.
My name is Brian Rice, and I work on Google's Cloud's
Learning Portfolio Team.
And I'm joined today by my colleague, Osaze.
OSAZE IMASUEN: Hello, everyone.
My name is Osaze Imasuen.
And I'm a technical program manager
in Google Global Networking.
Really excited to be here and looking forward to this talk.
BRIAN RICE: Thank you so much.
Here's the way we're going to structure our session today.
I'm going to kick it off by talking about the roles
that are out there in the world of cloud
computing and their demand and how that's shaping and changing
as we move further and further into the cloud era.
I'm going to talk about the learning resources
that Google Cloud makes available to help
people achieve a wide range of Google Cloud certifications.
Then I'm going to bring on Osaze.
And he's going to tell us about how certifications helped
him propel his career path.
Finally, we'll wrap it up by talking
about the benefits of Google Cloud certifications,
both to the people who achieve them
and to the teams that they're a part of.
Let's start off by talking about the demand for cloud computing
roles.
We recently did a survey where leaders
were asked about the barriers that they had to cloud success.
And over 80% of them identified a skills gap on their team
as a top barrier.
And this is a really significant problem
if you think about the fact that more than 90% of those leaders
expect to have increased use of cloud over the next three
years.
This tells us that skills are a critical factor in companies'
move to the cloud.
And we know it's of growing importance to the cloud
community, because job postings that were specifically
calling for cloud skills grew by more than 40%
over the two years that ended in the first quarter of 2021.
And of course, there was a lot of change
and a lot of upheaval over that period.
This significant growth tells us about the fact
that skills are fuel for companies moving into the cloud
and revolutionizing the way they work.
We at Google Cloud are especially proud of the fact
that, in a survey conducted by Global Knowledge,
the top two paying IT certifications in the year 2021
in the US were both Google Cloud certifications.
We take this both as testimonial to the value of Google Cloud
itself and also to the programs that we
offer for recognizing people's skills
and helping people train themselves up so that they
can achieve those credentials.
Now, cloud computing always requires an approach
to learning and credentialing that is focused on job roles.
After all, the roles that people play
is how people get value out of cloud computing.
Google Cloud technology training is aimed at cloud solutions
rather than following particular products boundaries.
And it's key to the solutions that customers tried to pursue,
which was their reason for getting
into the cloud in the first place.
Now I'd like to talk with you about the resources that we
make available to help people skill up
and the certifications that we make available to recognize
people's skill levels.
Now, when you're leading a team of professionals,
you have to keep in mind that people are all
starting in different places.
Everybody on a team starts with a wide variety
of existing skill levels.
Also, people have different preferred learning styles.
The same kind of learning experience
doesn't work for everybody.
So that's why we offer a wide variety of choices for people
consuming our offerings.
Some people prefer to consume training
in a traditional classroom-style format,
either with a live instructor or with virtual instructor-led
training.
We have a worldwide network of authorized training partners
that does just that.
Other learners want the increased convenience
and flexibility of consuming online training
with virtual lectures and online assessments.
In order to help these people, we make our training
available in online channels as well,
with online training partners.
Both of those two modes contain the same hands-on labs,
in which people can gain real world skills using real Google
Cloud, not a simulation, that gives them the confidence
to do new things on the job.
Finally, some learners want a maximum amount of flexibility.
They want a la carte learning, snackable learning.
That's why we also make available a wide portfolio
of hands-on lab exercises that can be consumed individually
in a safe sandbox environment.
Now, all of these lead up to achieving
professional and associate-level certifications.
These are benchmarks that a team can adopt to bring everybody up
to a baseline of skill.
That's how they know they have the right foundation
for innovating and for scaling up.
Now, the benchmark concept is very, very important
in the way we build our certifications.
Their content is defined by subject matter experts.
And they're key to real-world job
roles and the uses to which people put Google Cloud
technology.
That's why Google Cloud certifications
have significant benefit not just to individuals,
but to companies as well.
They're a well defined set of skills that fuels growth.
There's a wide variety of certifications,
because we know that people start at different points
and because we know that people have
a wide variety of interests.
The certifications range from being targeted
at people with no prior cloud skills
or experience all the way up to people who have three years
or more of industry experience and in a wide variety
of subject matter areas.
Our certifications are organized into three main categories.
Two of these categories contain certifications that are aimed
at hands-on technical professionals--
the associate-level and the professional-level
certifications.
Here's the difference.
Associate-level certifications, such as Associate Cloud
Engineer, challenge the candidate for the cert to map
from technical requirements to the way a customer would
implement a solution.
The professional level of certifications
introduces one more layer, challenging the candidate
to map from business requirements,
through technical requirements, to the details of the way
the customer implementation would work.
Finally, our credential that is aimed
at anyone involved in or impacted by the move
to the cloud, Cloud Digital Leader,
contains three main bodies of knowledge that it covers--
general cloud knowledge, knowledge
of Google Cloud in particular, and awareness
of the business value and role of a variety
of important Google Cloud Services.
Let me give you more information about the exams
that we make available.
They're a two-hour experience.
And they're offered in a multiple choice
and multiple select format.
The exams don't have prerequisites
in that you are not required to complete any specific training
or any specific prior certifications
in order to attempt them.
We do recommend that people have hands-on experience
for our certifications that call for that in their descriptions.
And we also encourage people to structure their preparation
and make sure they come in with the knowledge
that each credential calls for.
But no prerequisites in the realm
of training or other certifications are enforced.
The exams are delivered at your choice
of either a remote location, in which case
the proctoring for the exams is done online,
or you can go to a physical testing center
and take an exam in an on-site proctored system.
Finally, we make available official study guides,
in addition to all of the other resources
that we make available.
These books are available from major resellers of books.
At this point, I'd like to bring Osaze on.
Osaze, we wanted to ask you to join us
today to tell us about your career journey
through the lens of certification.
Could I ask you to start off by telling us about your career
path before the cloud?
OSAZE IMASUEN: Sure, Brian.
So my career has spanned approximately two decades.
And I've had a variety of roles, from hands-on
to technical leadership, to just pure leadership roles.
And I would say that certifications
and learning and relearning has been a key component.
It enabled me to progress through
from being an engineer up into leadership positions.
Why do I say this?
Early on in my career, I started out
trying to build infrastructures for companies
and deliver their IT solutions internally.
But I found that the moment I added certifications
and that learning experience to my journey,
it accelerated, one, my knowledge, my learning,
and then also my scope of responsibility.
So it's something that has worked very well for me
in my career.
And it's something that I continue
to use and reuse over and over.
BRIAN RICE: Super.
And tell us more about what happened when you
started moving into the cloud.
OSAZE IMASUEN: Sure.
So before the journey to the cloud,
my organization would procure, build, and operate
our own internal resources.
So think of private cloud.
And at some point, we realized that the cost and also the time
to delivery made us not meet certain business requirements.
And we had to start looking at the option of moving
some of those workloads to the cloud.
Now, we didn't migrate everything over all in one day.
We started out in a step by step process
by doing the trial for setting non-critical workloads first
to get a feel for how things will operate in the cloud
and also what the security framework would be,
because that is a huge consideration
for anyone trying to make that journey into the cloud.
Over time, as a team, we got more
confident in using resources and understanding
the products in the cloud.
We were able to move even critical workloads
into the cloud.
And one of the benefits, which I think
is perhaps well-known in the industry,
is, when you run your own resources internally,
you most often plan for peak demand.
And that means that, a lot of times,
you have resources idling, not being used,
whereas in the cloud, in the more pay-per-use model,
you're able to more effectively use resources and also reduce
your spend if you plan your resources properly.
BRIAN RICE: Indeed.
Well, to sum up, can you tell us now
about how certifications played a role in your own transition
to the cloud?
OSAZE IMASUEN: Sure.
So I've always enjoyed learning and relearning.
So for me, certifications help me
focus my attention over a period of time
to learn that new technology or learn
whatever is new in that space.
So an example with Google Cloud is--
over a couple of years, I was aware of using
Google Cloud platform and also some other providers.
But when I made that conscious effort to say,
I'm going to get certified, it helped focus and narrow
my learning to make sure that I mastered the content
and understood the products and offerings
and how they related to my business.
The end result is I've been able to achieve certifications
in some of the professional-level engineer
programs like the Professional Cloud Architect, Data
Professional, and some of the other professional-level
certifications.
Why I find these helpful is it helps
cover a range of topics that are relevant to the business of IT
and computing today.
And the certification itself provides knowledge.
That is for sure.
It gives you the confidence to be
able to interact with either external or internal peers
or customers.
It also gives you that confidence.
And, as well, there's also the Google swag
in terms of the goodies, the bags, and all
the other nice things that Google gives you
when you're certified.
BRIAN RICE: So true.
OSAZE IMASUEN: Thank you so much, Osaze,
for telling us your story.
Now, the last section of our presentation
is focused on the benefits of Google Cloud certifications,
both to individuals and to companies and the ecosystem.
We did a survey in the beginning of 2020
of people who had achieved Google Cloud certifications
using an independent third-party organization.
Of the people that we surveyed, 78%
said that they had gotten additional confidence
in their professional future because they
got this certification.
82% felt like they now had a special way
to prove their cloud skill competency
to potential recruiters.
83% felt that their resume or CV was now
more attractive to prospective employers.
And finally, 85% said that they themselves felt more confident
in their cloud skills.
IT leaders have also been surveyed about the impact
of certification.
Out of those who authorized training for their teams
within the last 12 months in a different survey,
2/3 did so specifically with the aim
of preparing their team members for certification
or re-certification.
93% of those leaders agreed that certified employees add value
to their organizations well beyond the sheer cost
of the certification itself.
How much was that?
Well, 63% of them were comfortable estimating
that the economic benefit of those certified employees
was more than $10,000 USD a year,
which is a significant increment for what
is comparatively a small investment in skills
and knowledge.
As Osaze mentioned, there's a wide variety of benefits
for getting certification.
And some of them are swag.
Folks who achieve our professional-level
certifications do get excellent merchandise
that allows them to show off their credentials in public.
Everybody gets a digital badge that they
can put on their profiles on social media
and display in other ways.
Professional-level certified people
also get access to special events at Google Cloud
Next and other venues.
They get access to the Google Cloud certified community
so that they can exchange ideas and knowledge
with other certified people and seek out networking
opportunities as well.
Now, this talk wouldn't be complete
if we didn't have something new to present.
In order to help the broad ecosystem get
more cloud and Google Cloud skills,
today we are announcing Google Cloud skills boost.
It's a brand new way to consume Google Cloud learning.
It makes more than 700 labs, courses, and tools
for preparing for our certifications available.
And for the next month, we're making
it available to all of our customers and partners
at no cost.
The URL is g.co/cloud/freetraining.
And we hope that everybody listening
will take advantage of this offer
and see what we are making available to help
people take their careers to the next level.
At this point, I want to thank Osaze
for joining us today and telling us his story.
And I'd like to thank everyone in the audience for joining us.
And we wish you all the best with your cloud careers.