The serverless paradigm, once a promising glimpse into the future of cloud computing, has now comfortably taken its seat at the tech table. Datadog’s ‘State of Serverless 2023‘ report affirms this by highlighting the impressive growth in serverless ecosystems, especially with the advent of container-based applications.

What is Serverless?

When we say “serverless,” it doesn’t mean there are no servers. Yes, that’s counterintuitive. What we mean is there are no servers for the customer to manage. The management of the server hardware, scaling, and operating system are all managed by the cloud provider. The customer only needs to manage the code. Besides not managing the underlying infrastructure, customers only pay for what they use. For example, in AWS Lambda, you only pay when a function is invoked. Likewise, with AWS Aurora Serverless, charges occur when the database is called.

Who are the Players?

Cloud giants like AWS and Google Cloud are leading the revolution to outsource server management, with a vast majority of Datadog clients embracing this technology. Not to be forgotten, Azure trails close behind. But it’s AWS, with its diverse offerings, that’s particularly eye-catching. Take AWS Lambda, for instance, a pioneering serverless computing service that automatically runs your code without needing to provision or manage servers. Couple that with AWS’s other marvels like App Runner for containerized apps, Fargate for serverless compute for containers, and CloudFront Functions for edge computing. It’s clear AWS isn’t just riding the wave – it’s shaping it.

Sample Architecture

In the sample serverless architecture below, the client browser requests a static webpage hosted in Amazon S3, which is storage with web hosting capabilities. Using this webpage, the client browser communicates with API Gateway using a REST API. API Gateway authenticates and authorizes (using Cognito) the request and invokes a Lambda function communicating with DynamoDB.

Frontend development has also joined the serverless fiesta. Platforms such as Vercel, Netlify, Cloudflare, and Fastly are expanding their horizons by providing capabilities tailored for front-end needs. This evolution reveals a fascinating shift in web development priorities, emphasizing scalability, performance, and deployment ease.

Regarding deployment tools, Terraform has emerged as a top choice, especially for AWS Lambda deployments among larger organizations. This underscores Terraform’s adaptability for complex workloads. And when it comes to the developer’s choice of language for AWS Lambda? Node.js and Python remain firm favorites, but Java is making waves, a testament to enterprises warming up to serverless wonders.

Serverless, the bottom line

Though the findings are based on Datadog’s cloud-savvy clientele, the message is clear: serverless is not just a fleeting trend. It’s the present and future of efficient and innovative cloud computing. And with AWS at the helm, the serverless sky seems limitlessly bright!

Tech Reformers can help you explore serverless options for your workloads.

As an AWS partner, Tech Reformers, strives to help organizations to innovate with the cloud. The goal is innovation while improving information technology (IT) in six areas: operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, cost optimization, and sustainability, The 6 Pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework. The Cloud Enablement Engine (CEE) is a guiding process bringing together the business and technology teams and, in education, the instructional team. The goal is a digital transformation moving from an on-premises operating model to a Cloud Operating Model (COM) to achieve district goals.

Once dubbed a “Cloud Center of Excellence,” Philip Potloff, the Head of Enterprise Strategy at AWS, describes it in Challenging Conventional Wisdom About How to Build a Cloud Center of Excellence as

“a multi-disciplinary team that is assembled to implement the governance, best practices, training, and architecture needed for cloud adoption in a manner that provides repeatable patterns for the larger enterprise to follow.”

He cites research and experience that shows the best team is not a well-honed IT team, a successful project team, or an egalitarian mix of staff. Transformation enterprisewide is more likely when there is a mix of “A-team” players with success in IT and project management working with “new blood” that brings in a supply of new ideas relevant to the district.

The team must have top-down support from an influential executive sponsor. In school districts, this would be the superintendent or other cabinet leader. A key pattern for success is to have not just an executive sponsor but an Executive Cloud Steering Committee that includes senior executives that are not on the CEE. They serve as the North Star and ensure the CEE is in support of district strategy and goals.

The CEE is ready to go upon completion of the 5 kick-off activities:

• Build the team
• Train and coach
• Pilot projects
• Architect for the cloud
• Operate in the cloud.

Build the Team

The initial team member may be the CIO, CTO, or director in IT with hands-on experience who knows the capabilities of AWS but also has the political capital to bring in business leaders aboard with the CEE. With other leaders on board, the goal is to build a ‘two-pizza” team, small enough to share a couple of pizzas. To start, less is more. Technology is the team focus initially. Some successful organizations have also had a larger cross-functional Cloud Steering Committee that ensures progress, removes roadblocks, and helps with decision-making that affects the organization.

Train and Coach

Initial members beyond the leader may include infrastructure, networking, and operations which will be cloud leaders. Core member training is the next step. Creating learning paths and training in cooperation with Human Resources creates a process for extending cloud adoption. The CCE team leverages the AWS Well-Architected framework and will become familiar with AWS reference architectures, AWS Quick Starts, and AWS Solutions. Successful CEE implementations include AWS training for the entire organization. At AWS, for example, every employee becomes a Certified Cloud Practioner. Districts could have a Cloud 101 that covers the core of transforming with the Cloud.

IT probably has an existing Project Management Office (PMO) or project management team. This team is critical to the success of the CEE. They are closely aligned with the business verticles and should be armed with agile project management skills. Now a Cloud PMO, the team can create a manifesto to guide decision-making for project onboarding, process changes, role definitions, organizational changes, cloud architecture, and cultural change. Communication skills are the key to bringing the organization along the cloud journey.

Pilot Projects

The CEE then develops pilot projects in a lab environment. It’s important to keep the sponsor and senior leadership engaged in the progress and aware of the pilot projects. What pilot may have an impact beyond the IT team? Identify pilots that could improve the business, have the potential to save money, would increase reliability, or can deliver on a business need.

Architect for the Cloud

Before going live with AWS, it’s important to architect the AWS environment for the enterprise. AWS must be integrated into the fabric of the technology environment. Plan on using Organizations or Control Tower. Build a multi-account architecture with unified security controls, centralized billing, and governance. Integrate with an existing Identity Provider like Active Directory to provide familiar login credentials and account management.

Operate in the Cloud

The Well-Architected pillar, Operational Excellence, focuses on people, not technology. The CEE should develop a Cloud Operating Model (COM). The COM may include infrastructure as code, code repositories and version control, monitoring, alerting, notifications and reporting, escalation policies, financial tracking and auditing, service deployment policies, and examination of opportunities for agile practices. This is important even if your district has few or no custom applications. The “Super Power” of the cloud is automation. So, even compute, storage, databases, and Commercial Off-The-Shelf Software (COTS Software) can all be deployed by code using, for example, Cloud Formation Templates and user data scripts.

With the 5 kick-off activities complete, the CEE moves into production and continuous improvement.

Kickoff and Continuous Improvement

With guidance from the executive sponsor, steering committee, and stakeholders, the CEE delivers early value. Like the pilots, identify projects to improve the business to save money, to increase reliability, or to deliver on a business need. An IT focus with financial and reliability benefits might be to move from tape or local disk backup to backup to Amazon S3. A project for educators may be to deploy Amazon AppStream 2.0 to enable Career and Technical Education (CTE) students to use high-end applications on any device. Or is there an application from the AWS Marketplace that could fit the need for, say, HR?

Striving for continuous improvement builds on early successes. Perform AWS Well-Architected Reviews on the new workloads and on potential legacy data center workloads. This builds the capacity of the team while driving the CEE forward. Organization-wide improvement can be achieved by leveraging early adopters to help others. A Community of Practice identifies and shares best practices not just to IT but to business units and other stakeholders.

Cloud Adoption is a journey, and the Cloud Enablement Engine: A Practical Guide provides prescriptive guidance. Following the CEE will enable a district to transform and innovate with the cloud. Additionally, information technology (IT) will improve in six areas: operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, cost optimization, and sustainability.

There has been a lot of talk about Zero Trust, so let me try to give an overview. I’ll finish up with an example from iboss and a deep dive from AWS. First, think of it more as a methodology and not a new product category. It is a cybersecurity approach that has gained attention for its ability to prevent data breaches. It is not just for enterprise or commercial use. Educational institutions, both in K-12 and higher education, and the public sector find value in implementation as well. It’s built on the principle of “never trust, always verify” (NOT: trust, but verify). Zero Trust aims to protect digital environments by leveraging the cloud. It rethinks how we implement identity and access management and network security. Capabilities include inspection, network segmentation, preventing lateral movement, providing threat prevention, and simplifying granular user-access control.

Beginnings

It was also born out of the need to think beyond just protecting the perimeter with a firewall because trusting everyone inside the firewall was not working. Also, more resources are outside the firewall (i.e. in the cloud) and more users aren’t behind the firewall (i.e. at home or Starbucks). The approach uses information derived from Identity, Credential, and Access Management (ICAM) systems. ICAM consistently verifies all users, devices, applications, and data based on context and user activity. Have you had a website that you use a lot reverify you because you’re not in your usual place? That’s Zero Trust at work.

“Zero trust is a way of thinking, not a specific technology or architecture,” says Gartner Distinguished VP Analyst Neil MacDonald. “It’s really about zero implicit trust, as that’s what we want to get rid of.”

Gartner

ZTNA

Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) extends this strategy. ZTNA provides remote access to applications and services based on defined access control policies. Policies combine role-based, granular, encrypted access controls with post-connect threat monitoring. It involves micro-segmentation of the network (micro perimeters).

Existing infrastructure and technology work for Zero Trust. There are no specific products! Rather it’s an integral part of a complete modern cybersecurity architecture. The approach enables complete end-to-end visibility and rich policy-based controls to mitigate even the most sophisticated threats.

Don’t Do It Yourself

Leading solution providers now incorporate the tenets of ZTNA. Comprehensive, end-to-end platform architectures to address even more use cases come from a single vendor or a mix of “best of breed” suppliers. This approach offers educational institutions and the public sector several advantages. Context-based access encompasses all users, all devices, all applications, and all workloads. Zero Trust provides uncompromising security by continuously examining all content to prevent both known and unknown malicious activity in real-time.

Furthermore, it enables global and consistent access security everywhere, regardless of the location of a user, device, or application. This is best achieved through physical, virtual, and cloud-native firewalls that leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning to enable context-based access on-premises, in the cloud, in remote work environments, or across campuses. Simply put, all traffic, whether to or from campus, the office, home, or, say, a cafe, goes through a cloud firewall and a series of checks.

Example: iboss Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)

The iboss Zero Trust SASE allows all protected resources within an organization to be labeled and categorized, including Security Objectives and Impact Levels. This provides organizations with a clear understanding of where sensitive applications and data reside while providing insight into what users and assets are interacting with those protected resources. The iboss Service follows the NIST Risk Management Framework (RMF) and implements tenets from the NIST 800-207 Zero Trust Architecture Special Publication.

Components

Overall, Zero Trust represents a convergence of secure network transport with a cloud-native security stack that includes components such as ZTNA, Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB), Secure Web Gateway, Firewall-as-a-Service), Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN), and micro-segmentation. But don’t think of it as a “rip and replace“, but an additive approach to what you’re already doing.

Deep Dive: What is Zero Trust on AWS

AWS describes Zero Trust as a security model that emphasizes strong identity verification and authorization rules before granting access to data, applications, and systems.

Zero Trust is not solely based on network location and operates within highly flexible identity-aware networks, which reduce surface area and eliminate unneeded pathways to data. AWS provides several identity and networking services that can be used as building blocks for implementing Zero Trust. To move towards Zero Trust, AWS says, evaluate the workload portfolio and apply Zero Trust concepts, such as rethinking identity, authentication, and context indicators.

AWS, itself, implements Zero Trust in interesting ways. When using the console every API (application programming interface) call is authenticated. Also, when using services in an account, the services do not automatically have access to other services. You must set up a role that is authenticated when that service is instantiated and every call it maqkes. Security Groups and Network Access Control Lists are another way AWS implements Zero Trust. They can limit traffic north-south and east-west. Remember, Zero Trust is a process and architecture, not a product.

To dive deeply read Zero Trust architectures: An AWS perspective and watch the re:Invent session Zero Trust: Enough talk, let’s build better security.

By adopting a Zero Trust approach, educational institutions and the public sector can strengthen their cybersecurity posture and better protect themselves against the ever-evolving threat landscape. Tech Reformers is a consultancy focused on education and the public sector that can help assess your needs.

Download the full NIST publication on Zero Trust

Organizations want to spend money wisely, whether private sector, non-profit, government, or a school district. Superintendents and CFO’s strive for effective use of capital and operational cost savings. Operations leaders want the agility to meet the immediate needs of the district. CTO’s want a secure and resilient infrastructure that allows for innovation. And all school district leaders pursue equity to meet the needs of each student. What makes this all possible today? The cloud or “cloud computing.” The public cloud powers digital transformation that is impossible or impractical in traditional data center infrastructure that, today, still many districts operate.

EdTech companies have leveraged the public cloud for years. But, districts themselves have lagged. We’ll look at what the cloud is and how districts can leverage the advantages of the public cloud.

Google Apps

The cloud in K-12 began with Software as a Service (or SaaS). Third parties started to offer software on their cloud. In 2006, Google began to provide Google Apps and, from the beginning, it was free to schools. I had recently started at Envision Schools, a public charter school in the Bay Area. Google Apps appeared to be great for our students and staff. Our Microsoft Exchange server was a lot of overhead for our small organization. Consequently, I rolled it out Google Apps that summer for the start of the next school year. Most school districts have adopted Google (See below). So, today, couldn’t it be similarly said that much of the legacy data center infrastructure is overhead?

Google’s then vice president and general manager for enterprise, ironically a former colleague, outlined the benefits for customers.

“Organizations can let Google be the experts in delivering high-quality email, messaging, and other web-based services while they focus on the needs of their users and their day-to-day business.”

(2006 Google Press Release)

As they say, the rest is history. Today, Google Workspace, née Google Apps, controls over 80% of the EdTech Apps in the Education market and has 8 of the top 10 apps as measured by Learn Platform.

Chromebooks

Google was able to start a revolution in K-12 by offering its services on the cloud. The cloud provided simplicity, scalability, cost savings, agility, redundancy, and security that both Google and school districts needed. When Google added the Chromebook several years later, again, it leveraged the cloud. Management and storage leveraged the cloud while eliminating software on the device, so the browser did all the work. In 2013-2014, when I was Oakland Unified School District, we rolled out Google Chromebooks. Students and staff embraced Personalized Learning and equitable access (and a platform for online testing, not so much). At the time, Miquel Helft outlined the “The Dawn of the Chrome Age” in Fortune Magazine on April 10, 2014.

Today, almost every EdTech app runs in the cloud, also called Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Most are on Amazon Web Services (AWS). As Bill Maher says, “I don’t know for sure, but I know it’s true.” EdTech companies choose the public cloud, AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform (GCP) because of the growing capabilities the cloud brings. Let’s look at some of the attractive features of the public cloud. And why IaaS is becoming the infrastructure of choice for most use cases universally.

Use of Capital

One of the first considerations is the use of capital. In the old days, organizations invested in expensive hardware just to get started. This would include servers, network hardware, cabling, data centers, cooling, electrical upgrades, real estate, and a long-term internet contract. Organizations also had to guess their need and often over-provisioned to not be caught under-resourced. All of this was a considerable capital expense that only well-funded or highly taxed organizations could afford. School districts were faced with large bond measures or capital levies just to leverage the internet. These cost then repeat themselves.

Today, with the cloud, organizations need less capital investment. Expenses move from capital to operating expenses. Organizations can start up in the cloud at no cost. AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) offer a free tier! You can then scale as applications and users come on board. Entrepreneurs with a good idea can start by simply building out what is needed with some or all services free. Any school district can cut down on upfront purchases. There is no need with the public cloud for large capital purchases of hardware. So the first advantage of the cloud is moving significant capital expenses to more nominal operating costs. If a district wants to use its capital funds, spend less upfront!

Agility and Scalability

The second advantage, related to the first, is agility and scalability. As I said, the cloud enables districts to start small, yet it allows them to be agile. IT can scale up (bigger, more powerful servers) or scale-out (more servers) as needed and when needed. The actual need determines whether to go quickly or slowly. In the cloud, servers can even be set to auto-scale. Hence, resources automatically expand when needed and, notably, scale down to save costs when the resources are no longer required.

Cost Savings

This leads to the third advantage, related to the first two, bottom-line cost savings. Traditionally organizations have had to over-provision for their busiest time. Imagine the early days of Amazon where they needed enough capacity for the Holiday shopping season. But servers sat idle the rest of the year. (That extra capacity is what gave them the idea to rent out their excess capacity and why we have AWS.). Now there is no need with the cloud to buy extra capacity for busy times or “just in case.”

Similarly, the cloud enables users to turn off and not pay for resources that are not needed. For example, organizations turn off servers at night when they are only used during business hours. Or IT can only start development (Dev) or testing (Test) servers when required. In the old days, organizations would purchase complete environments for Dev and Test and run 24×7 with requisite space, electricity, and cooling. The public cloud does not charge for servers that are not running. The cloud enables considerable cost savings when school districts manage their workloads and only pay when used.

Facility Costs and “Going Green”

Another area for cost savings that school districts often overlook is the facility costs. Often these costs are incurred not by IT, but a separate Facilities or “Buildings and Grounds” department. These costs include real estate, building space, electricity, fire suppression, cooling, and generators. These are all costs built into cloud services and are areas for savings for school districts. Cloud providers are experts in these areas, have huge economies of scale, and build the best, most cost-efficient infrastructure. AWS, for instance, describes its green initiative.

“AWS has a long-term commitment to use 100% renewable energy. When companies move to the AWS Cloud from on-premises infrastructure, they typically reduce carbon emissions by 88% because our data centers can offer environmental economies of scale. Organizations generally use 77% fewer servers, 84% less power, and tap into a 28% cleaner mix of solar and wind power in the AWS Cloud versus their own data centers.“

GREENER IN THE AWS CLOUD

Why should districts try to build data centers and pursue green initiatives when the cloud can efficiently and environmentally be the data center? Then push the local utilities to offer green power for the rest. Some are close like Seattle with 97% renewable energy.

Resiliency and Security

While districts eliminate significant capital investments, save money, and improve agility, they also strengthen resiliency and security, our fourth advantage. The public IaaS providers, AWS, Azure, and GCP, protect the security of the cloud. They provide physical security and resiliency/redundancy of the data centers. Availability zones (AZ’s or groups of data centers) and regions (geographically isolated areas with AZ’s) compound resiliency and redundancy.

I have some district data center memories. I remember when I was at Fremont Unified, and a water pipe broke. So we had water flowing under our district office data center! At Oakland Unified, the data center overheated, setting off alarms late at night. When I went in, scaffolding fell and barricaded me in the 110-degree room. At Seattle Public Schools, the Facilities department turned off electricity to the data center over a weekend, and the generator failed to kick in. Infrastructure as a Service, the cloud, will let districts avoid these war stories.

The public cloud also excels at backup and disaster recovery. Besides the ability to replicate over AZ’s and regions, the cloud has built-in backup, replication, serverless architecture, and security services that further improve resiliency and security. Many of these are at no additional cost.

Simply by using public cloud resources, districts get world-class security and resiliency unfeasible for most to build and staff on their own. Reducing risk is a significant advantage for K-12 leaders.

Be Wary of Misconfiguration Anywhere there is Data

Yet, despite cloud advantages, organizations must still provide security in the cloud. District IT engineers and administrators must configure and administer applications correctly. IT must secure access and networks. Like traditional data centers, stakeholders must govern access.

Misconfiguration is, by far, the biggest reason for public cloud data breaches per the Cloud Security Alliance. But, districts can improve their security and resiliency with diligent engineering and administration. The public cloud also offers excellent tools for security, access, and logging. Districts now can free up IT staff from running physical servers and data centers allowing them to concentrate on security and resiliency “in the cloud” along with innovation to pursue district goals.

These first four advantages of cloud computing, the wise use of capital, agility, cost savings, and improved security and resiliency, are enough for many to move to the cloud. But the first four are merely operational and tangible improvements that don’t capture some of the long-term value of cloud transformation. We will wrap up with advantages that produce better outcomes for district leaders, teachers, and students.

Innovation

The fifth advantage is innovation. The cloud offers many avenues for districts to improve efficiency, one area for innovation. Many districts see the efficiency advantages in their SaaS applications. Email has become more reliable. Saving documents on the cloud enables files to be available across devices. New applications are easy to find, adopt, and use, thanks to SaaS cloud applications. But Infrastructure as a Service, IaaS, has its own advantages. Districts can adopt cloud-enabled business process automation and “going paperless” in ways more potent than district data centers offer. The cloud can tap into Artificial Intelligence (AI), unavailable in data centers. Machine Learning (ML) takes process automation and digitization to new levels. Now districts can do not only complex text and image recognition but also video and language processing.

Similarly, AI and ML can help with student data. Seattle Public Schools envisioned a system on the AWS Cloud as part of the City on a Cloud Innovation Challenge. Advanced data services, such as predictive analytics was not possible with their on-premises infrastructure.

Equity

What the big companies might not think about when it comes to the cloud is equity. But the cloud can enable just that. As explained above, advanced data analytics, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning can bring new insights to data. Heretofore, educators think of metrics then plot data against a known metric. But what if AI could surface causality from disparate data points unimagined by educators or traditional data systems? New insights enabled by the cloud could bring avenues to closing opportunity gaps. Cloud data capabilities can help ensure educators meet the needs of each individual student.

Remember the Chromebook, part of the cloud revolution in education? Chromebooks had 60% of the Education marketing in 2018. But, the demand exploded with the pandemic, and 30 million Chromebooks shipped in 2020. While we wait for the actual estimate of the percentage of Chromebooks in schools in 2021-2022, we need to address an equity gap. “What?” you say, “Haven’t Chromebooks improved equity by providing equitable access to devices?” True. Low-cost, web-only computers expand the breadth of distribution, closing the so-called homework gap. However, there’s now a gap between those with powerful full-featured multimedia workstations at home and those with just a district-issued Chromebook.

Cloud Brings Equity

While some students go home with just a Chromebook, others eschew the simple laptop and log into their desktop. A powerful processor and graphics card enables them to go deeper into programs introduced at school in CTE, graphics, multimedia, computer science, and other classes. Programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere, Autodesk, Blender, and Visual Studio need a standard Windows or Mac computer. Or these privileged students may do competitive gaming, now an avenue to a college scholarship. Students with just Chromebooks are missing out again on opportunities.

But wait. With the cloud, Infrastructure as a Service – IaaS, that opportunity gap disappears. A Chromebook or any home computer with an internet connection can tap into all the powerful applications streaming from powerful computers in the cloud. Fife School District deployed AWS Workspaces and AppStream 2.0 to “make students innovators 24-hours a day,” and it “fills a void in equity in education.” Tech Reformers offers a streaming service for apps on a per-student subscription basis.

Districts Should Pursue Cloud Further

Like Google Apps and the Chromebook, the cloud is offering new opportunities for districts. CFO’s should be looking for wise use of capital and money savings. CTO’s should be gaining agility and scalability to efficiently meet district goals while improving security and resistance to lower district risk. All district leaders should recognize opportunities for innovation and equity with new data capabilities and resources only available in the cloud. It’s time to get on board with the cloud revolution.

Earlier this month, there was an interesting news story on LinkedIn for career changers titled Making a pivot? Leverage these skills.

The subject was primarily focused on transferable skills. As new opportunities and individuals go through different stages in life, it is not uncommon for career changes to take place. Pivot points can occur for many reasons. These include: transitioning to empty nesters with fewer familial responsibilities, relocation, and other situations.

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Soft skills, also known as “Power skills”, are essential for career changes. These skills, such as communication, problem-solving, and organization, can be used in many industries. 

In the LinkedIn conversation, Manual Kirchman, IT Manager at Canon Business Panamá, stated that The technology industry always evolving, and employees must be able to adapt to new technologies and ways of working. While technical skills are crucial, having great soft skills can help employees be more successful, work better in groups, and develop stronger relationships with clients and coworkers.

In my AWS classes, it is not uncommon to have learners from unconventional backgrounds enrolled to learn cloud skills. Most of my learners are working to pivot their careers. Their backgrounds range from manual labor, and nursing, to practicing law.

Despite a seeming lack of technical backgrounds, these learners are often some of the strongest and most engaged learners in the classroom. They brought their power skills to the table as they start on a new career path. Learning, problem-solving, and listening are essential for success in any field. These skills will help them wherever they decide to venture. 

Non-Tech Soft Skills Needed in a Tech World

Soft skills are essential for career success. They are behavioral and personal attributes. A Forbes article titled 7 Soft Skills You Should Master To Advance Your Career explains this in detail.

The technology industry always evolving, and employees must be able to adapt to new technologies and ways of working. While technical skills are crucial, having great soft skills can help employees be more successful, work better in groups, and develop stronger relationships with clients and coworkers.

Manual Kirchman, IT Manager at Canon Business Panamá

I discussed the importance of soft skills with my class. Jokingly, I described soft skills as their ability to “play well with others”. It is well known that people in technical fields are usually more introverted than extroverted. I have had students in my class who had great technical skills but had difficulty working with others or communicating.

According to Forbes, the 7 Soft Skills needed are 

1. Self-awareness
2. Feedback
3. Emotional Intelligence
4. Listening 
5. Inclusive Leadership
6. Coaching 
7. Virtual Presence

Hard skills can be learned with a dedication to studies and practice. My AWS classes focus on building hard skills related to AWS services. We use the given curriculum and other resources, like AWS documentation, AWS Educate, AWS Skillbuilder, Figma, and more. Soft skills can, somewhat ironically, be more difficult to learn.

As William Arruda from CareerBlast.TV describes soft skills as something that is hard-won. It takes effort and leaving your comfort zone to develop these skills – especially interpersonal skills.

AI and ML are making advances to reduce monotony in our lives. However, the ability to think creatively, innovate, influence, and inspire is what gives people the skills to succeed. This applies to any industry.

Considering a career change? Unsure how your non-tech background can help you in the tech field? I highly encourage you to look into AWS and cloud computing. Tech Reformers offers virtual classes from experienced AWS Accredited Instructors. This could be a great way to propel your career and put your soft skills to use in ways you never thought of for an exciting new adventure.

When I was studying for my Bachelor’s Degree in Information Technology at the University of Rio Grande I had in-person classes and I recall us visiting server rooms in the college to see in person what we were learning about in class. Seeing something tangible in person can help improve engagement and understanding of the topics. This can help with cloud architecture as well.

When teaching (and learning) about concepts related to cloud computing, an area of struggle is not having that tangibility factor when we are learning about concepts such as Regions, Availability Zones, Subnets, and IP addresses as fundamentals. Learning about cloud computing concepts requires a lot of analytical processes. In my classes, we use multiple resources such as documentation, labs, blogs, podcasts, etc. I believe that even in highly analytical areas, there’s a place for creative learners who learn best via visual representation and creation.

Options for the Visual Learners

AWS documentation and labs provide schematics to give a visual aid of how VPCs provide AWS customers a segmented portion of the AWS cloud services to build in. To develop a good understanding (and not just regurgitation) of the relationship between these foundational topics I have my learners draw out the schematics using pen and paper. We go through the process of drawing out and labeling (labeling is important) the structure in the schematic. 

A great example of this can be found in AWS Educate.  The short video below describes how I have my learners spend time developing an understanding of the infrastructure they will be building in a lab assignment. If you don’t have an AWS Educate yet and aren’t sure how to start, check out our article Create an AWS Educate account in 10 Minutes.

Reviewing Schematics to Improve Understanding – Watch Video

Drawing out the infrastructure by hand is great for building cognitive skills and understanding of concepts. Using digital drawing tools can take the visual learning experience to a new level.

How to Create a Digital Drawing of Cloud Architecture

After practicing manually drawing out the schematics, I encourage my learners to check out digital platforms such as Figma to draw out the schematics using AWS icons to build cloud architectures. There are a variety of other platforms that learners can select from at AWS Architecture Icons. 

The advantages of utilizing these digital platforms go beyond understanding the virtual infrastructure. In addition to developing and improving cognitive, using these platforms can provide the following benefits:

1. Familiarity with the icons when they are not labeled. Larger infrastructure maps may not label all services.
2. Creating layouts that can be used in presentations when communicating with others.
3. A creative outlet to build use cases of services on services (sample shown below)

If you are new to cloud architecture, I recommend spending a little time before the lab reviewing the schematic (if provided). Review it, draw it out, label it, and build connections and relationships in the services. Pen and paper are great to start with, then challenge yourself by creating a use-case scenario and using Figma (or a similar service) to create a diagram using appropriate services.

Cloud computing is quickly becoming one of the most in-demand skills in today’s workplace. While this may not be a surprise, you may be surprised to learn that one of the reasons for the demand is the versatility of the skills related to cloud computing and all the facets it touches. 

Four in-demand roles that can utilize cloud computing experience are project managers, financial managers, legal assistants, and top executives like chief information officers. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, these careers are growing on their own merit. Adding AWS skills and certifications can add versatility and additional opportunities for these career paths.

1. Project Managers

Cloud Project Managers are responsible for identifying the goals and ensuring the scope is defined and controlled based on the client’s needs. Even if the PM is not directly involved with the development, understanding the different resources and use cases can help manage the assignment of activities, data collection, and what resources and dependencies are needed. Being knowledgeable about cloud computing fundamentals can help create a plan to develop specific availability and disaster recovery plans.

In addition to understanding the resources to deliver high availability and disaster recovery solutions, AWS’s Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) can help project managers have more effective conversations with individual stakeholders in the project. 

Project Management Specialist Median Pay	$94,500 annually
Job outlook for Project Management Specialist	7% (as faster as average)

2. Financial Manager

Cloud Financial Managers need to understand the financial impact decisions related to decisions on what services to use, how to maintain a high availability, and appropriate disaster recovery plans. Financial managers need to understand that despite offloading the management of the infrastructure and some services to AWS, there are costs associated with maintaining and training personnel. 

Financial managers will spend a large amount of their time viewing the budget tools and cost exploration tools to identify any resources that are created but not effectively managed or left running accidentally.

Cloud financial management is part of the Governance perspective in AWS’s Cloud Adoption Framework. The focus is planning, measuring, and optimizing cloud spending and taking advantage of the agility and ability to dispose of services based on needs. Understanding cloud fundamentals can also help lead conversations with stakeholders including the Chief Financial Officer. 

Understanding services like AWS Organizations and CloudCheckr can help financial managers make recommendations to take advantage of volume discounts while maintaining the separation of accounts.

Financial Manager Median Pay	$131,710 annually
Job Outlook for Financial Managers	17% (much faster than average)

3. Legal Assistants

Legal assistants and paralegals can help organizations understand the requirements for managing and organizing documents and data needed for an organization. Cloud computing can be used to store documents, while data solutions and analytic tools can be used for case management. In addition to being able to use cloud technologies, legal assistants can provide some insights on laws and governance that need to be maintained based on regional laws and industry compliance. Understanding these laws can help with maintaining the appropriate data lifecycle policy and data destruction processes.

Paralegals and Legal Assistants Median pay	$56,230 annually
Job Outlook for Paralegals and Legals Assistants	14% (much faster than average)

4. Chief Information Officers

Chief Information Officers (CIO’s) can help an organization meet its goals based on technology choices. While CIO’s are considered top executives and may not have as much of a hands-on role as other tech managers, having an understanding of services used, cost-optimization strategies, and identifying how microservice models can help improve organizational processes. Providing organizational agility and flexibility and developing a strategy to perform a root cause analysis can help with aligning with the CAF’s Operations Perspective. 

Computer and Information Systems Manager Median Pay	$159,010 annually
Job Outlook for Computer and Information Systems Manager	16% (much faster than average)

Tech Reformers provides training to help individuals with different backgrounds and career paths to learn how to effectively use AWS cloud technology. Program graduates can take the skills learned from the program to provide better value to their clients and meet professional goals.

Learn more about the different training opportunities at our AWS Training Overview, which includes options for instructor-led training or digital self-paced training.

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When wrapping up a course on cloud computing we spend some time discussing how to prepare for the interview. I think we can all agree that interviews can be stressful experiences. We freeze up on questions or are so concerned about having an answer that we do not hear the question entirely. A big part of an interview is preparation. This goes beyond researching the company and role but also utilizing the STAR technique. 

STAR is an acronym for Situation, Task, Action, and Result and can provide guidance on how to rehearse a response so that you are able to answer questions clearly and confidently. Utilizing this technique can help the interviewer better identify what experiences you bring with you. 

With the STAR technique, you will create a story that shows a clear conflict and resolution that focuses specifically on your contribution.

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The breakdown of STAR technique is as follows:

Situation

Describe the story or situation. Be careful to not tell a novel. Share two to three important details relevant. This situation can be from a previous employer, volunteer project, sports team, or a project when you were in school. 

Task

Describe what your responsibility and role were during this situation. Teamwork is important and this can be mentioned as part of the Situation, but you want to highlight your specific role. Select one or two points to share that are relevant to the action and result.

Action

Explain what you did. Many times, using pronouns such as “we”, “us”, and “our” can be beneficial to emphasize teamwork but this is not one of those times. The interviewer wants to hear about what your responsibilities were and the actions you took. Be careful to avoid blame on team members if an outcome is unfavorable. You can address any complications and how you handled them. Spend some more time on this section describing what you did.

Result

What was the outcome? This is something you want to explain whether it was positive or negative. Select two to three points to share regarding the result and, most importantly, what you learned from them. Whether the end result is positive or negative, there is almost always a learning opportunity that can be associated with it. This can be a process improvement, identifying problem indicators early on, or maybe an improvement of a hard skill such as using Amazon S3 or AWS Lambda. 

Spend some time coming up with two to three scenarios based on your past experiences that are relevant to the role you are applying for. For each scenario, create a storyline using the STAR method with most of the details and time spent on the Action and Result steps. The Situation and Task steps should build up to those final two steps. 

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Google’s Interview Warmup

Google released this AI-enabled tool in June 2022 to help professionals gain confidence and practice interview techniques. Google’s Interview Warmup tool will transcribe answers that you type or speak into. This tool was created to align with Google’s short-term certifications but it can be used by anyone. 

To get started with this tool.

1. Go to https://grow.google/certificates/interview-warmup/ 
2. Choose from one of the provided fields (Data Analytics, E-Commerce, IT Support, Project Management, UX Design, General)
3. Google Interview Warmup will present five questions based on the field you selected. The questions can be based on your background, situational experiences, or technical skills. Below you will see some of the questions for the IT Support field.

With Interview Warmup, your answers are transcribed in real-time so you can review what you said. You’ll also see insights as patterns detected by machine learning that can help you discover things about your answers, like the job-related terms you use and the words you say most often. It can even highlight the different talking points you cover in each answer, so you can see how much time you spend talking about areas like your experience, skills, and goals. Your responses aren’t graded or judged and you can answer questions as many times as you want. It’s your own private space to practice, prepare and get comfortable.

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Leadership Skills

In addition to spending time using the STAR method and interview skills, it can be beneficial to research various leadership principles. 

Amazon has 16 leadership principles. They are discussed in more detail on the Leadership Principles page but below is the list of the 16 principles.

1. Customer obsession
2. Ownership
3. Invent and simplify
4. Are right, a lot
5. Learn and be curious
6. Hire and develop the best
7. Invest in the highest standards
8. Think big
9. Bias for action
10. Frugality
11. Earn trust
12. Dive deep
13. Have backbone; disagree and commit
14. Deliver results
15. Strive to be the Earth’s best employer
16. Success and scale bring broad responsibility 

In class, we spend time covering these leadership principles from Amazon. I open up the floor for the learners to share any organizations or individual leadership principles they admire and try to adopt as their own. For me, I add my own from Richard Branson, and Steve Jobs and end with a favorite quote of mine from Marissa Mayer I always did something I was a little not ready to do. I think that’s how you grow. When there’s that moment of “Wow, I’m not really sure I can do this, “ and you push through those moments, that’s when you have a breakthrough.

I have this quote in my office and whenever I face a new challenge I think of this quote and encourage my learners to do the same as they start their new careers in cloud computing because sometimes you just have to trust the process and experience those breakthroughs. Check out Tech Reformers openings.

We want to welcome and congratulate Tasha Penwell for recently earning her AWS Authorized Instructor (AAI) Certification. The AAI Program is a global program that supports instructors authorized to deliver the AWS curriculum. 

Who is Tasha Penwell?

Tasha Penwell is one of the newest Tech Reformers instructors and brings with her several years of experience as an educator. Tasha brings to Tech Reformers over 8 years of experience as a higher ed instructors teaching classes ranging from web development, data analytics, and cloud computing. She lives in Southeast Ohio with her husband and son. She loves to travel and hosts computer science workshops at her local high schools to introduce exciting new concepts such as augmented reality, AI/ML, and NLP (natural language processing). Her experience was made evident in her feedback from AWS after the three-day process which tested not only her knowledge of AWS services but also her skills as an educator. 

The feedback Tasha received showed her background as an educator and her use of tools such as Figma to help build visuals and to provide communication and explanation on specific AWS services such as the global infrastructure that supports AWS to specific services such as DynamoDB, API Gateway, and Lambda. 

Tasha was also recognized for her ability to go the extra mile to follow up with learners who had questions that were not answered or explained fully during her 20-minute presentations. She went above and beyond by providing not only supplemental links but using Loom to record her review of the links and resources she shared to ensure that the learners had the information they needed.

Additional Facts about Tasha Penwell

• Led the creation of one of the first AWS Academies in the state of Ohio
• Inaugural AWS Educate Cloud Ambassador
• She’s a frequent blogger for us sharing great resources and tips
• She is an Associate Solutions Architect
• Her areas of interest are cloud security, AI/ML, and augmented reality
• She is a Snapchat Lens developer and is presenting at Stir Trek in May

You can find one of Tasha’s recent articles about AWS Educate and other services below. If you haven’t checked out AWS Educate yet, we’d highly recommend checking those out. If you have questions about AWS Educate or her Computer Science Workshops, you can email her at [email protected].

Tasha will be teaching virtual classes in July 2023. Sign up here to receive an email and register for her next class!

ChatGPT and generative AI is having a significant impact on multiple industries and how people are learning. Generative AI is a subset of machine learning. Machine learning models power ChatGPT and include large learning models (LLMs) and multi-modal models that can include text, images, video, and audio.

To begin, note that Artificial intelligence (AI) is nothing new with Amazon Web Services. Examples of AI/ML models include Alexa, Amazon’s Just Walk Out, and Amazon Prime. Tech Reformers uses AI/ML in its document processing solution. OpenAI released ChatGPT to the public in November 2022. Within two months, it reached 100 million monthly active users. Researchers and those working on Neural Linguistic Programming (NLP) projects use ChatGPT. In sum, AI can be used for different tasks and is well-trained on data from textbooks, articles, and websites.

What is Amazon Bedrock

Natural-language processing has been around for a while at AWS. Years ago, AWS introduced Amazon Comprehend, an NLP service that uses machine learning to find insights and connections in text. Just recently, Amazon launched Amazon Bedrock in its AI/ML services. Amazon Bedrock is an easy way to build and scale generative Artificial Intelligence applications with foundation models (FMs). Foundation models are AI neural networks that are trained on raw data and can be adapted to accomplish a wide range of tasks. Bedrock provides the flexibility to choose from a wide range of foundational models built by AI startups and Amazon itself. Therefore, this allows Bedrock customers to select the best model for their needs and goals.

In true cloud computing fashion, Bedrock is a serverless service. Accordingly, it can allow customers to get started quickly. They can customize foundation models with their own data, and integrate them into applications. In short, all this can be done without having to manage any of the infrastructure.

The foundation models that Bedrock supports are Jurassic-2, Claude, Stable Diffusion, and Amazon Titan. Data scientists train Amazon Titan FMs on large datasets. Ultimately, this makes them powerful, general-purpose models that can be used as-is or by customers privately with their own data.

Use cases for Amazon Bedrock are:

• Text generation
• Chatbots
• Search
• Text Summarization
• Image generation
• Personalization

To sign up for this new service, complete this short form at https://pages.awscloud.com/generative-AI-interest-learn.html.