Azure — From Zero to Hero

Cloud computing has been around for more than 10 years and its presence continue to grow. Companies across the world are starting to see the benefits of getting a quick start on IT projects. The cloud provides multiple advantages compared to in house hosting and a large of amount of projects today consists of moving in house projects to the cloud. This has made cloud computing a valuable skill in today’s business environment as it enables you to work on the front line of such projects. I have recently begun my journey in cloud computing and I have documented some of my important sources for learning the specifics. In my case, I have worked with the Microsoft Azure cloud, which has experienced a tremendous growth in the past couple of years. This emphasizes its place as a valuable skill to become familiar with in 2017. This article is meant to provide you with a set of resources to become proficient in working with the Azure cloud.

Starting your journey with Azure

Having a cloud is only valuable if people know how to use it. Microsoft has done a great job in terms of creating a user friendly browser based cloud that enables people across the world to quickly get familiar with their services. Because of this, you will likely get up and running quickly. However, the cloud itself is not your end product. It is where you can run your applications.

The best way to actually learn how to use Azure is by creating products that live in the cloud. Microsoft provides excellent opportunities for getting started with Azure and if you already have an MSDN subscription, you are given a monthly credit to use on the portal. If you don’t have a subscription, you can always try their free trial, which provides you with credit and 90 days to play around with it.

The Resources

It always helps to reflect upon learning and the materials used for learning. In my case, I needed a better overview of the resources available. This has resulted in a repository on Github with all the resources I saw relevant in the Azure learning phase. You can find the repository here or click the image below.

The GitHub Repository (click on the image)

Where do you go from here?

There is never a perfect approach to learning. It all depends on what works for you and how you work with the resources available to you. Azure is different from learning a programming language or something similar. It’s a cloud platform and it will therefore be extremely valuable to know the extent of the services available and perhaps not the details of all the services. Having the broad overview could make a huge difference in terms of acting fast with a new service at your company.

My goal with this repository has been to provide easy access to relevant resources for people learning Azure. I will never have time to keep up with resources as they pop up everywhere. If you find a valuable source of information, feel free to create a pull request. Having more people contribute will make it even better than it is today.

Happy learning!