I have worked in software since graduating college, mostly as a consultant. Most of my career has been spent in a professional services role for a company that builds software for the property and casualty insurance industry. The company now hosts its solutions in the cloud. Their strategy to cloud migration involved transitioning many current customers using their applications on-premises to their cloud platform.

A few years ago, I started in a role that involved facilitating customers into my company’s cloud platform. This role involved reviewing customer implementations both manually and with automated tooling to ensure that our customers adhered to the best practices and standards required to deploy into the company’s cloud platform. It also involved a degree of gatekeeping and telling customers that they must do things a certain way if they want to utilize the platform.

Over time I decided that I wanted to be more involved in providing meaningful guidance into helping customers transition to the cloud and less in telling customers what they can or cannot do if they want to utilize cloud capabilities. I took it upon myself to begin studying the cloud: the underlying architecture, how applications run on cloud infrastructure, the various services and capabilities available. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a leading global cloud platform and service provider and I wanted to explore what they offer. My previous role gave me some superficial exposure to AWS but I wanted to see more. I wanted to become more than merely competent enough to navigate the AWS landscape but become a true expert in what individuals and organizations can do in the cloud and specifically AWS. This was an opportunity to obtain substantial expertise in one of the leading providers of web applications and global IT infrastructure.

I stepped away from my role with the company to begin expanding my knowledge of AWS. Take a look at this link to see the resources and techniques I used to build upon my knowledge of solutions architecture with AWS and eventually obtain the AWS Certified SolutionsArchitect – Professional certification.

You can also take a look here to view my “Curriculum Vitae”() – my employment and project history as well as what I am planning to work on next.