Amazon Web Services (AWS) Inc. launched Thursday the new “AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional” certification.
According to Jeff Barr, AWS evangelist, the certification is meant to validate an IT pro’s “technical knowledge in provisioning and operating, as well as managing distributed application systems on AWS platform.” It is designed to identify individuals who can implement and manage systems that are highly available, scalable and self-healing on AWS.
The concept of “DevOps”, which is designed to improve collaboration between software development and IT operations in an organization, results in faster testing, deployments, release, and update cycles. This can be used to eliminate inefficiencies within an organization and improve customer satisfaction by releasing more timely.
Barr pointed out the need for IT professionals with DevOps skills as more companies move towards the cloud. This notion is also echoed in a Rackspace report (PDF), which examined DevOps adoption by organizations in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia.
Rackspace claims that the internet, cloud computing, and open source software have increased customer expectations, given more technology choices, and democratized access to large computing resources. There is an increased demand for software and services that can deliver business value faster than ever before. This is a perfect storm of disruption and DevOps has been increasingly viewed as the type of step change that the industry needs in order to deal with it.
Rackspace surveyed 700 companies and found that 55 percent had adopted DevOps already, and 31 percent anticipate doing so by 2017.
The beta version of the exam for the AWS DevOps certification is now available. It will be available from next week, to coincide with the AWS reInvent conference in Las Vegas, and will remain open until mid-December.
Only IT professionals who have either the “AWS Certified Developer-Associate” or “AWS Certified SysOps Administrator-Associate” certifications are eligible to take the new DevOps certification exam. IT pros must have at least two years experience managing AWS environments. They also need to be proficient in coding in at least one high-level language. They also need to have an understanding of agile development and automation.
You can find more information about the exam requirements and sample questions here.
