Mentor's Corner-What's after graduating the IT Professional Program?

KevinCSmallwood

After you put in all the hard work to complete courses and pass exams, you may ask yourself, "What's next?" This is a very good question. There is so much more you can do to remain involved with cloud technology, and just like most technology, it will continue to change as time goes on. To stay up to date and well informed, I suggest you become involved in some of the organizations working with cloud technologies. This certainly involves reading, but you may also want to attend in-person or online conferences in order to meet people who are working in the areas that interest you most.

Another option is to become involved with open-source projects. You don't have to be a programmer to contribute to open source! Projects always need people to write documentation. Documents need to be proofread and the instructions followed to ensure they are accurate. Testing or quality assurance (QA) is very welcomed by open source projects. I encourage all of you to participate in the open source community if you can.

What resources for cloud engineering are out there? In your online course materials, you may have already encountered some. My list is not a complete list, but a good start for you.

• You'll find a wealth of information and ways to continue your involvement with cloud technologies at the Linux Foundation (http://www.linuxfoundation.org/).

• Cloud Native Computing Foundation (http://www.cncf.io/) hosts critical components of the global technology infrastructure and is part of The Linux Foundation.

• The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) (http://www.nist.gov/itl/cloud) is a U.S. government agency that focuses on emerging standards. This organization has done a considerable amount of work defining and providing good information on cloud computing. You may have similar agencies in your own country.

• OASIS (http://www.oasis-open.org/), the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, is a global consortium focused on the creation and adoption of standards for electronic business.

• The Cloud Standards Customer Council (CSCC) (http://www.cloud-council.org./) is a combination of vendor and large corporate customers. It was established to focus on cloud best practices. It is operated by the Object Management Group (OMG).

• The Open Group (https://www.opengroup.org/) is a global consortium that enables the achievement of business objectives through IT standards. The group has a cloud working group and has lots of good source material available.

• The Open Cloud Computing Interface (OCCI) (http://occi-wg.org/), is made up of a set of open community-led specifications delivered through the Open Grid Forum.

• OpenStack (http://openstack.org/) is an open-source platform originated by Rackspace and NASA for building both public and private clouds.

• The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) (http://cloudsecurityalliance.org/) was established to promote the use of best practices for providing and ensuring security within cloud computing and to educate people about the uses of cloud computing to help secure all other forms of computing.

• The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) (http://www.snia.org/) is a trade organization focused on the networked storage industry. The cloud storage initiative focuses on the need for cloud storage standards.

• If you are interested in DevOps, IT Revolution (http://itrevolution.com/) is a good resource for articles and conferences.

Do you have other resources that you use to further your cloud engineering education and continue to be involved in the cloud community? I would love to hear of resources from you, especially if you have organizations local to your country or continent.

Remember, just because you get through several courses and pass exams does not mean that your journey is over. Things continue to change and evolve, and you will want to remain a part of it, so leverage these and other resources in your career. Remember, never stop learning!

Kevin C Smallwood--IT Professional Program Mentor