• Video Streaming
• Application Integration
• Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality
• Voice ( Alexa )
• Compute and Servers
• Database
• Developer Tools
• IoT Services
• Machine Learning Services
• Management Tools
• Media
• Mobile
• Containers and Serverless Computing
• Networking and Cloud- Front Content Delivery Network ( CDN )
• Security , Identity and Compliance
• Storage
• Monitoring and Logging
• Virtual Desktop
• Enterprise Management
Figure 2 : Some of the 1,000 + New Services or New Service Features Introduced by AWS in 2017
Decide which services you are going to learn that will bring the highest benefit to the company , while not losing track of the real world around you .
Learn to Code Services
The first thing you must embrace is code . If you are not familiar with languages like Python , JSON , Terraform , Ansible and PowerShell ( just to name a few ), then it is time you made " The Big Leap " and learned the basics of these languages and why they matter to your career success . At the very heart of the cloud movement is code and the ability to program services in the cloud to deploy and manage your applications safely .
Coding infrastructure isn ’ t anything new . Software-defined cloud platforms have been around for a number of years . AWS , Azure , Google and OpenStack platforms expose their APIs to users like yourself who can create , deploy and manage applications from programs you write and manage . And because you are a “ Systems Engineer ,” you have the distinct advantage of understanding how an application should run in the data center . Your knowledge of networking , server builds , storage arrays , patching , backups , redundancy , identity and security give you a leg up over your Development counterparts .
But here ’ s the problem — THERE ARE ALWAYS CODERS ! If a developer learns what you know about systems engineering , YOU ’ RE OUT OF A JOB ! Therefore , you must run — no , race — to gain the knowledge of the public cloud platforms , and become the trusted advisor for your developer communities . Your opportunity to gain this knowledge , and leverage it to your advantage is shorter than you think . Developers are smart , and they will learn what it takes to deploy services safely and effectively .
So , you need to be a coder .
68 | THE DOPPLER | WINTER 2018