Cloud computing practitioners course

Introduction

Bring your ideas to life and innovate in every industry by applying next-gen PaaS microservices that can easily integrate into real-world solutions.

IBM SkillsBuild for Academia
Self-paced course

Cloud Computing Overview

Explore the topics, technology and skills required to gain proficiency in the successful implementation of cloud-based solutions.

Cloud platforms span public, private and hybrid environments. They offer managed services which allow for rapid design, prototype, and build of application solutions with a robust suite of advanced data and artificial intelligence (AI) tools, and draw on deep industry expertise to help innovative companies looking for digital transformation in their journey to the cloud.

Cloud and artificial intelligence

The cloud phenomena refers to the global adoption of cloud services embedded into the fabric of companies and industries around the world. As more and more applications are based on cloud technologies, the volume of data is expanding at an exponential rate. Artificial intelligence enables intelligent systems that can “learn” from their environments to help businesses and individuals make sense of app data such as images, video, and text in context.

Infuse

Operationalize cloud with transparency

Organize

Create a trusted, business ready analytics foundation

Modernize

Prepare your data estate for AI and multicloud

Analyze

Scale insights with AI everwhere

Collect

Make your data simple and accessible

Objectives

Cloud computing practitioners

Create disruptive cloud-based solutions that offer unique customer experiences using user-centric design practices, agile methodologies, and the integration of cloud-based security, data, and AI capabilities.

Scope

  • Elevate application innovation
  • Move applications to the cloud
  • Modernize core enterprise-ready applications for cloud
  • Build new cloud-native solutions

Learning objectives for this course:

  • Understand the evolution and impact of cloud computing.
  • Explore cloud by industry domains: retail, media and communication, telecom, entertainment, and financial services.
  • Explore end-to-end case studies for every key cloud industry and identify common patterns: public cloud, private cloud, hybrid cloud.
  • Understand the technical aspects of cloud solutions: software as a service, platform as a service, infrastructure as a service.
  • Build cognitive solutions, leveraging AI and data science in cloud solutions.
  • Understand industry practices to design and build agile cloud solutions, using the Cloud Garage methodology.
  • Work in teams jointly exploring real-world cloud scenarios.
  • Prototype bespoke cloud solutions leveraging industry-proven concepts, technologies and methodologies.
Cloud Computing Overview Objective Article image

IBM Cloud launches American Airlines’ cloud transformation story

Customer experience is a key competitive differentiator for airlines, and increasingly depends on digital channels. How could American meet its customers’ appetite for instant information and services?

Accelerated development: the move to microservices

During the negotiations for a big-picture transformation contract, American Airlines asked IBM for help with an urgent requirement – which would also act as a proof-point for IBM’s proposed way of working. The airline wanted to give customers better self-service capabilities in the event of a forced rebooking due to a major weather event disrupting operations.

While American’s algorithms typically rebook passengers on the next best flight, customers had to call the reservation desk or visit an airport agent if they wanted to discuss other options. American wanted customers to be able to see other possibilities and update their flight selection via the website, mobile app or at a self-service kiosk.

With the busy summer season approaching, the company president challenged American to deliver a new customer-facing Dynamic Rebooking app within just a few months – a challenge that could not be achieved with the legacy approach and would have taken at least twice that amount of time.

American approached IBM for help, and keen to prove its credentials, IBM stepped up to the challenge. The centerpiece of the IBM transformation is the IBM Garage Method, a holistic methodology covering technology, people, processes, and organization. As the first step in the Dynamic Rebooking project, IBM and American Airlines’ developers met and rapidly built more than 200 user stories to guide the development of the new app.

Next, the teams identified their first MVP (minimum viable product – the simplest possible application that meets the business requirements) and started to code. The use of microservices, paired programming, and test-driven development enabled a highly parallelized approach that accelerated the creation of the new cloud-native code.

Microservices allowed each business function to be broken down into simple, reusable functions that can be composed and called as many times as required by any connected platforms.

After just four and a half months, the Dynamic Rebooking app was released to production in eight airports, and steadily rolled out to more airports while testing, development, and updates continued in the background.

Hyperscaling – a cloud advantage

Hosting on the IBM Cloud Foundry platform paid further dividends when Hurricane Irma struck. The business decided overnight to deploy the app globally to all of America’s airports.

Patrick Morin, Managing Director of Customer Technology, American Airlines, comments: “One of our expectations with the IBM Cloud was that the hyper-scale should relieve concerns around infrastructure when rolling out an application globally. When the hurricanes hit, we put that to the test and our confidence turned out to be well-founded: the application worked flawlessly, and we’ve since rolled it out to all 300-plus airports without any issues.”

Key to transformation

While there are some cloud solutions that will apply across industries, many cloud applications will be specific to a particular industry. The development of successful cloud applications needs to be guided by experts that understand the strategic goals of the target organization, and the competitive context in which it is operating. True transformation occurs always when the understanding of an industry is combined with technical capability.

Tools

This course uses the following tools:

  • Android Studio
  • AUTHY
  • Delivery Pipeline
  • GitHub
  • IBM Cloud
  • IBM Digital App Builder
  • Mobile Foundation Service
  • New Relic
  • PagerDuty
  • Sauce Labs
  • Slack
  • Toolchains
  • Twilio
  • Visual Recognition Service
  • Watson Assistant
  • XCode

Prerequisites

Instructor workshop

The facilitator delivering this course has taken the course previously and successfully passed the exam.

  • Avid speaker with good presentation skills
  • Pedagogical group management skills
  • Encourage critical thinking and domain exploration
  • Experience handling data sets and IP copyrights

Classroom format

Individuals with an active interest in applying for entry-level jobs in implementing blockchain technology.

  • Basic IT Literacy skills*

*Basic IT Literacy – Refers to skills required to operate at the user level a graphical operating system environment such as Microsoft Windows® or Linux Ubuntu®, performing basic operating commands such as launching an application, copying and pasting information, using menus, windows and peripheral devices such as mouse and keyboard. Additionally, users should be familiar with internet browsers, search engines, page navigation, and forms.

Digital credential

Practitioner Certificate

IBM Cloud Computing Practitioner Certificate Badge

IBM Cloud Computing Practitioner Certificate

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About this certificate

Through validated cloud computing instructor-led training, this badge earner has demonstrated the ability to have acquired the skills and understanding of cloud concepts and technologies.

The badge earner has demonstrated proficiency and understanding of cloud technical topics and design thinking.

The earner has gained the ability to apply the concepts and technology of cloud computing with the applicable open-source tools that are relevant to real-world cloud scenarios, and suitable for educational purposes.

Skills

Cloud, Cloud computing, IBM Cloud, IBM Watson, Watson Assistant, Visual recognition, Cloud security, API economy, Data, Multi-channel, Cloud security, Garage Method, Agile, Cloud culture, DevOps, Microservices, Cloudant, Twillio, Two-factor authentication, Digital app builder, Mobile app development, GitHub, Chatbot, Industry expertise, Design Thinking, Use cases, Communication, Collaboration, Teamwork, Problem Solving, Empathy, Personas, Experience design, Ideation, UX, User experience, User research, User-centered design, User-centric, Storyboarding.

Criteria

  • Must attend a training session at a higher education institute implementing the IBM Skills Academy program
  • Must have completed the instructor-led cloud computing practitioners training.
  • Must have earned the Enterprise Design Thinking Practitioner Badge.
  • Must pass the cloud computing practitioners exam and satisfactorily complete the group exercise.

Instructor Certificate

IBM Cloud Computing Practitioner Certificate Instructor Badge

IBM Cloud Computing Practitioner Certificate: Instructor

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About this certificate

Through an IBM instructor-led workshop, this badge earner has acquired skills on cloud computing concepts, technology, and use cases.

The badge earner has demonstrated proficiency on the following topics: cloud computing landscape, cloud industry adoption, API platforms, data in the cloud, cloud and AI, cloud for multi-channel, cloud security, Garage Methodology, agile cloud culture, DevOps framework, and cloud industry use cases.

The earner has demonstrated the capacity to deliver the cloud computing course as an instructor applying pedagogical skills to drive the group work using challenged-based scenarios.

Skills

Cloud, Cloud computing, IBM Cloud, IBM Watson, Watson Assistant, Visual recognition, Cloud security, API economy, Data, Multi-channel, Cloud security, Garage method, Agile, Cloud culture, DevOps, Microservices, Cloudant, Twillio, Two-factor authentication, Digital app builder, Mobile app development, GitHub, Chatbot, industry expertise, Design Thinking, Use cases, Trainer, Lecturer, Advisor, Communication, Collaboration, Teamwork, Problem-solving, Empathy, personas, Experience design, Ideation, UX, User experience, User research, User-centered design, User-centric storyboarding.

Criteria

  • Must be a faculty member of a higher education institute which has or is implementing the IBM Skills Academy program.
  • Must have completed the IBM cloud computing workshop Practitioners – Instructors workshop.
  • Must have earned the Enterprise Design Thinking Practitioner Badge.
  • Must fulfill the requirements of IBM’s Skills Academy teaching validation process.