As a DevOps Engineer or Cloud Native Engineer, I think it’s important to specialize in one cloud provider in the beginning of your career. Specializing allows you to gain deep knowledge and expertise in the specific tools and services related to that cloud provider, making you a valuable asset to any company using that provider. Although cloud computing is similar in essence no matter which provider you choose, each cloud provider has its own vocabulary and way of structuring things.
After my first year as a DevOps Engineer I was still trying to figure out which one to choose and which one would suit me best. With the rapid pace of innovation in the cloud computing industry, it can be challenging to stay up-to-date with the latest developments and features for multiple providers. I tried to keep up with the developments for each provider and tried to be a broad professional who could work with all of them. However, I think it is best to specialize early in your career, and then you can learn a different one after you have gained some significant experience with your first one.
After several insightful conversations with my colleagues, and after working with Azure for a year as a consultant, I decided to go all-in on Azure, and it has been a liberating experience so far. By focusing solely on Azure, I am able to fully immerse myself in their ecosystem and gain a deep understanding of their tools and services. I feel I have a sense of direction now, and I can limit the content I consume and the news I read to this one particular ecosystem only. And that feels like a relief to me.
This is of course very personal for everybody, but I’m someone who loves to learn and who tends to be a bit of a “jack of all trades” who knows a little bit of everything but who doesn’t have very deep knowledge of a particular subject in particular. By choosing a cloud and going all-in on it, I can become a specialist and go deep in Azure.
Why I chose Azure
I chose Azure because Microsoft is already very established in the Dutch market. Governments and large corporations typically have their entire user base stored in Active Directory and they use Microsoft Office licenses already. When they decide to move to the cloud, Microsoft offers them very good terms if they choose Microsoft instead of AWS, for example.
Azure’s strong presence in the Dutch market and their ability to offer attractive terms to existing Microsoft customers make them a popular choice for companies looking to move to the cloud. With 73 percent, Microsoft Azure took most of the market share for cloud computing in the Netherlands in 2020. Azure had within the healthcare sector the highest share with 90 percent. Microsoft has some very substantial clients within government, health care, and the corporate world.
These previous reasons are all related with job security and the assurance that there will be a long career in Azure ahead of me. But it’s not only because of these reasons why I chose Azure. After gaining experience with Azure as a consultant, I’ve discovered that the cloud ecosystem Microsoft has created suits me very well. I’m very impressed with the different solutions that Azure is able to provide to solve business needs. Not every business is interested or capable of running everything on virtual machines, and Azure’s PAAS and SAAS offerings provide level of of abstraction which can be tailored to any business out there.
Moreover, I really like the tooling. Although I really wanted to gain more experience with Terraform when I started my current contract, I’ve fallen a little bit in love with Bicep after I started to work with it every day. I love the fact that Bicep uses Azure itself as a state file, rather than having to manage a state file which can be a pain when using it from pipelines or with multiple people. The Bicep language server (which can be used in Neovim as well) is a very pleasant editing experience. Azure DevOps really nailed it with being a “one stop shop” for everything from project management and tickets to CI/CD with Azure Pipelines. Although it has its quirks, Azure DevOps is a real pleasure to work with. And I also think that the Azure CLI is a very well-designed interface to the cloud platform.
Beyond Blue
After I made my choice, I decided to join Beyond Blue. I was already working for Fullstaq, and Beyond Blue is a sister company of Fullstaq. Beyond Blue is a team of Azure Experts who love to go deep and who have a huge amount of experience and knowledge on Microsoft Azure. We help start-ups, scale-ups, and enterprises in both the public and private sector create scalable, flexible, and secure cloud-native solutions build on Microsoft Azure.
We have Microsoft Valued Professionals (MVP), Microsoft Certified Trainers (MCT), Azure Kubernetes Service and containerization experts on board who are ready to tackle each and every challenge for our clients.
Summing up
To sum up, I think specializing early has the following benefits:
- Limits the amount of news and new developments you have to follow
- Allows learning terminology quicker becuase you stay within one ecosystem
- Certifications tend to build upon each other within a single provider
- Gives a sense of direction in learning and development
- Improves familiarity with the documentation and tooling
You can always broaden your horizon after you have gained a few years with the first provider you chose, if you’d like to.
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