Is a MSc in Cloud computing worthwhile?

petes2008

Can anyone tell me if a Masters Degree in Cloud computing would be more worthwhile/beneficial than taking the IT certification route e.g. VMWare certifications etc? I already hold a BSc, MSCE, CCNA etc. so am not sure if i should continue with the certification route or take university track. Feedback from people already in the Cloud sector or recruitment would be ideal. I on the brink of enrolling in an 18 month course (costing 10K) so just want to be sure im not making a big mistake.
Cheers.

swampgas

Really good question that, was wondering the same myself. Unfortunately nobody will know until a few years have gone by and enough people have done it to be able to make an evaluation.

ED E

The title alone would put me off, "Cloud" is such an overused buzzword.

monthehoops

http://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2012/08/04/hype-cycle-for-cloud-computing-shows-enterprises-finding-value-in-big-data-virtualization/

Gartner are the the world's leading IT research and advisory company. You could listen to them, or maybe take ED's advice and steer clear. At this point who knows?

ethernet

You could also call this (much cheaper, subsidised) course a 'cloud' (also hate that damn buzzword) course: https://scss.tcd.ie/postgraduate/mscnds/ Might be worth a look.

harney

I've gone to a few of the free cloud talks here in London over the last few years and the only consensus that could be reached from a room full of "experts" (amazon, google, etc.) is that we still can't really define what the cloud is.

So, I'd probably avoid a uni course on the cloud for the moment. You'd probably be better off with an MSc in Security and some architecture industry certs.

platinums

Its maddening, Amazon EC2 is the one true Cloud, anything else is storage on a server.(perhaps with redundancy)

Sposs

platinums wrote: »

Its maddening, Amazon EC2 is the one true Cloud, anything else is storage on a server.(perhaps with redundancy)

Lol what a crazy statement to make - one true cloud - do you work for amazon?

platinums

Sposs wrote: »

Lol what a crazy statement to make - one true cloud - do you work for amazon?

My understanding of "Cloud" is a distributed computing platform, with redundancy and scalability being the Key proponent.

Amazon's service offers you to buy cpu computing time, this is undertaken by a network of computers working as one, for instance PlaaS,
"the underlying computer and storage resources scale automatically to match application demand such that cloud user does not have to allocate resources manually."

With normal hosted server models you would have to purchase another server to get more power yourself and this is not the correct use of cloud terminology.

The Cloud is a very overused term and as such is a buzz word for anything on the web these days; ie people selling website design, have Could as there main selling point because its trending.

Wiki for yourself. for a rundown of the different models.

Also, Sposs, do you usually drop into a thread and post insults with out backing them up with your own theories or is this your first time?

I dont work for Amazon, I just dislike the overuse of the word cloud.

Sposs

platinums wrote: »

My understanding of "Cloud" is a distributed computing platform, with redundancy and scalability being the Key proponent.

Exactly, the basic architecture of all true cloud platforms and hardly one confined to just Amazon.

laugh

A cloud service is available without data loss when one/more of it's data centres goes down. During the recent flooding in New York and subsequent intentional and unintentional power outages some services sold as "cloud" became unavailable. I call these: clown services.

Read more here: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1205042

Sposs

laugh wrote: »

A cloud service is available without data loss when one/more of it's data centres goes down. During the recent flooding in New York and subsequent intentional and unintentional power outages some services sold as "cloud" became unavailable. I call these: clown services.

Read more here: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1205042

Im afraid you do not understand what cloud is - cloud is simply a way of utilizing existing technologies in a more efficient way - you cannot simply deploy a server on a single cloud platform and expect it to run forever without issue.

All the fundamentals of IT, such as architecture, backups, DR, security, patching, failover still need to be done by your sys admin. People who saw outages in new york are because they do not have these things in place, nothing to do with cloud.

this thread has gone well off topic

laugh

Sposs wrote: »

Im afraid you do not understand what cloud is - cloud is simply a way of utilizing existing technologies in a more efficient way - you cannot simply deploy a server on a single cloud platform and expect it to run forever without issue.

All the fundamentals of IT, such as architecture, backups, DR, security, patching, failover still need to be done by your sys admin. People who saw outages in new york are because they do not have these things in place, nothing to do with cloud.

this thread has gone well off topic

I understand what a cloud service is, gmail is a cloud service.

Selling servers in a Data Center as a cloud service is a factual inaccuracy.

Sposs

Gmail is a SaaS service built on a cloud infrastructure.

southernstar

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micosoft

petes2008 wrote: »

Can anyone tell me if a Masters Degree in Cloud computing would be more worthwhile/beneficial than taking the IT certification route e.g. VMWare certifications etc? I already hold a BSc, MSCE, CCNA etc. so am not sure if i should continue with the certification route or take university track. Feedback from people already in the Cloud sector or recruitment would be ideal. I on the brink of enrolling in an 18 month course (costing 10K) so just want to be sure im not making a big mistake.
Cheers.

a. Look at the reputation of the college rather than the name of the course.

b. Look at the type of job titles of graduates and see if it matches what you want to do.

Personally whether someone had MSc. in Cloud Computing would make very little difference to me. I'd be more impressed if you have a live running example of a service running on Azure or EC2 and transferred a load from whereever (work/project etc) onto it. You don't need to spend any money on that - just time and effort.

BrianHal

Cloud Computing is still evolving so no concrete definition is available as yet. Other facets of computing/IT have been around for (up to) decades and are much easier to define. To get an idea of what is involved in Cloud as opposed to just speculating, search for Cloud Computing here: http://www.nist.gov/publication-portal.cfm Its not the only place to look but there is a reasonably broad scope of what is involved in comsuming or providing a cloud service.

Its very easy for any one person or organisation to take their particular view of cloud as its defacto meaning and either ignore or dismiss any of the other aspects involved.

micosoft

I think the problem here is that people are mixing up a (useful) term for business people (Cloud Computing) and the specific technical terms for delivering Infrastructure, Platforms and Applications (IAAS, PAAS, SAAS).

For business people, what they regard as Cloud is something that is available on demand, without Capex costs, and has a linear cost relationship with demand. If your company is large enough you can viably run a "private" cloud. All that matters is that the business gets the flexibility as opposed to the lead times, fixed costs, capacity cost steps, and underutilisation of traditional hosted applications.

BrianHal

Not exactly free but good recognition either way.

Article:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2014/01/30/roundup-of-free-cloud-computing-online-courses/

Links to:
http://lcolumbus.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/roundup-of-cloud-computing-courses.pdf

pulover

petes2008, did you go for the course ultimately? If yes, can you please provide a brief feedback about your experience with the course as I am also considering the same course, thanks.

BrianHal

pulover wrote: »

petes2008, did you go for the course ultimately? If yes, can you please provide a brief feedback about your experience with the course as I am also considering the same course, thanks.

pulover, I did the course. I found it covered many areas and aspects of cloud computing and was fairly comprehensive.

Others I know who have done other MSc courses commented at the time I was doing this about the very large workload that this course has. For the 15ish months that it runs, you can pretty much say goodbye to a social/family life (particularly when the assignments start coming). But after that, the upside is you have detailed knowledge on a wide range of cloud topics.

Overall I'd recommend it once you are aware of the commitment involved.

pulover

BrianHal, thanks for the feedback! it's great to hear that the course is fairly comprehensive.

Can you please advise whether a previous degree in a similar discipline or related work experience is a prerequisite before starting this course?

Currently the duration of the course is 18 months (3 Semesters) and the programme is delivered using online learning technologies, were the conditions the same when you were doing the course?

BrianHal

pulover wrote: »

BrianHal, thanks for the feedback! it's great to hear that the course is fairly comprehensive.

Can you please advise whether a previous degree in a similar discipline or related work experience is a prerequisite before starting this course?

Currently the duration of the course is 18 months (3 Semesters) and the programme is delivered using online learning technologies, were the conditions the same when you were doing the course?

The course has always been three semesters. The 18mths really turns out to be 15-16mths in practice.

The online experience was great, they use Adobe Connect and they also use blackboard.com for submitting assignments and hosting documents. If you're doing lectures from home, having a reasonable broadband connection is advisable as you don't want buffering during a live stream.

Experience in a related discipline and/or an honours degree in an IT area is strongly advised. I'm not sure if the college enforces it but you really should have it. Have a look at CIT's level 8 degree courses in computing to get an idea of what you should probably have before undertaking it.