Cloud Computing

Program

Cloud Computing

Deploy, scale, and secure infrastructure in the cloud

Learn cloud fundamentals, core services, and how to deploy and scale applications on AWS, Azure, or GCP.

8

Weeks

40

Chapters

4

Practice formats

1

Portfolio artifact

8 weeks — one module per week (8 modules, 40 chapters), each week ending with a live class every Saturday, plus a module exam before the next module opens.

Curriculum

40 chapters across 8 modules — each with guided notes, a live example, a quiz, an exercise, a challenge, and class practice.

Module 1 · CLOUD FOUNDATIONS

  1. 1Introduction to Cloud ComputingWhat the cloud is, its essential characteristics, service and deployment models, the shared responsibility model, and why organizations move to it.Learn →
  2. 2Cloud Providers & Global InfrastructureAWS, Azure, and Google Cloud compared, regions, availability zones, edge locations, and choosing where to run workloads.Learn →
  3. 3Cloud NetworkingIP addresses and CIDR, VPCs and subnets, route tables, internet and NAT gateways, security groups and network ACLs, and DNS.Learn →
  4. 4Identity & Access ManagementUsers, groups, roles, and policies; how permissions are evaluated; least privilege, MFA, and protecting the root account.Learn →
  5. 5Cloud Economics & Total Cost of OwnershipCapEx vs. OpEx, the full cost of on-premises infrastructure, cloud pricing models, reserved and savings plans, and building a fair 3-year TCO comparison.Learn →

Module 2 · CORE CLOUD SERVICES

  1. 6Compute: Virtual Machines & PricingVirtual machines, instance families and sizes, images, pricing models (on-demand, reserved, savings plans, spot), and choosing the right option.Learn →
  2. 7Cloud StorageBlock, file, and object storage, S3 buckets and storage classes, durability, versioning, lifecycle rules, and backups.Learn →
  3. 8Cloud DatabasesManaged relational databases, high availability and read replicas, NoSQL options, caching, and choosing a database.Learn →
  4. 9Load Balancing & Auto ScalingLoad balancer types, health checks, horizontal vs vertical scaling, auto scaling policies, and designing for high availability.Learn →
  5. 10Messaging, Queues & Event-Driven ServicesQueues, pub/sub topics and event buses, decoupling services, backlogs and consumer scaling, dead-letter queues, and idempotent processing.Learn →

Module 3 · CONTAINERS, SERVERLESS & INFRASTRUCTURE AS CODE

  1. 11Containers & DockerContainers vs virtual machines, images and Dockerfiles, registries, running containers, and cloud container services.Learn →
  2. 12KubernetesClusters, nodes, and pods; deployments, services, and ingress; declarative desired state; scaling; and managed Kubernetes.Learn →
  3. 13Serverless ComputingFunctions as a service, event-driven design, API gateways, cold starts, limits, and serverless pricing.Learn →
  4. 14Infrastructure as Code with TerraformWhy infrastructure as code, Terraform providers, resources, variables and outputs, state, the plan/apply workflow, and modules.Learn →
  5. 15Deployment Strategies & GitOpsRolling, blue/green and canary deployments, feature flags, rollback, GitOps with declarative configuration, and choosing a strategy for risk and cost.Learn →

Module 4 · OPERATE, SECURE & DEPLOY

  1. 16Monitoring, Logging & CI/CDMetrics, logs, traces, and alarms; observability; CI/CD pipelines; and safe deployment strategies such as blue/green and canary.Learn →
  2. 17Cloud Security & Cost OptimizationEncryption and key management, secrets, network and threat protection, the Well-Architected Framework, and controlling cloud costs.Learn →
  3. 18SLOs, SLAs & Error BudgetsAvailability targets and the downtime they allow, SLIs and SLOs, error budgets and release decisions, and choosing realistic targets.Learn →
  4. 19Incident Management & On-CallSeverity levels, incident roles, the response lifecycle, communication during incidents, on-call practices, and blameless post-incident reviews.Learn →
  5. 20Secrets Management & EncryptionSecrets managers and key vaults, avoiding hard-coded credentials, encryption at rest and in transit, KMS and envelope encryption, signing with HMAC, and key rotation.Learn →

Module 5 · ON THE JOB: MIGRATING TO THE CLOUD

  1. 21On the Job: Planning a Cloud MigrationA company's data-centre lease ends in 14 months. Discover and assess 120 applications, choose a strategy per app with the 7 Rs, group them into migration waves, and build the business case.Learn →
  2. 22On the Job: Building the Landing ZoneBefore migrating anything, build a secure foundation — account/subscription structure, identity, network topology, guardrail policies, logging, and infrastructure as code.Learn →
  3. 23On the Job: Migrating an Application & the Cutover WeekendMove the claims web app and its database with minimal downtime — replication, testing in the cloud, the cutover runbook, go/no-go decisions, rollback, and hypercare.Learn →
  4. 24On the Job: Migrating DatabasesOffline vs. online migration, replication and change data capture, homogeneous vs. heterogeneous moves, validation, cutover planning and rollback.Learn →
  5. 25On the Job: Migration Wave PlanningGrouping applications into waves by complexity and dependencies, estimating effort, pilot waves, scheduling and capacity, and tracking wave progress.Learn →

Module 6 · ON THE JOB: RELIABILITY & DISASTER RECOVERY

  1. 26On the Job: Designing for High AvailabilityThe business wants the booking platform to be "always on". Translate that into availability targets, calculate composite SLAs, remove single points of failure with zones and redundancy, and test it.Learn →
  2. 27On the Job: Backup & Disaster Recovery StrategiesDefine RPO and RTO per system, choose between backup-and-restore, pilot light, warm standby and active-active, protect backups from ransomware, and test recovery regularly.Learn →
  3. 28On the Job: Game Days, Chaos Engineering & CapacityProve the system survives failures before customers find out — hypotheses, controlled fault injection, game days with the on-call team, capacity planning and quota management.Learn →
  4. 29On the Job: Composite Availability & RedundancySerial and parallel availability, why dependencies multiply risk, redundancy across zones and regions, and calculating the effect of architecture choices.Learn →
  5. 30On the Job: Load Testing & Capacity PlanningLoad, stress and soak tests, Little's law for concurrency, sizing instances with headroom, reading latency percentiles, and finding the breaking point.Learn →

Module 7 · ON THE JOB: CLOUD OPERATIONS, GOVERNANCE & FINOPS

  1. 31On the Job: FinOps — The Monthly Cloud Cost ReviewThe cloud bill doubled in six months. Allocate costs with tags, find waste, rightsize, buy commitments wisely, set budgets and unit costs, and build a FinOps routine with engineering and finance.Learn →
  2. 32On the Job: Governance, Tagging & Policy as CodeWith 60 teams deploying to the cloud, keep control without slowing them down — governance models, tagging standards, policy as code in CI and in the platform, exceptions, and compliance reporting.Learn →
  3. 33On the Job: Operating Cloud Workloads — Patching, Automation & RunbooksDay-2 operations: keep hundreds of VMs and containers patched and configured, automate routine tasks, write runbooks, manage changes, and move toward immutable infrastructure.Learn →
  4. 34On the Job: Cloud Security Posture ManagementMisconfiguration risks, CSPM tools and benchmarks, prioritising findings by severity and exposure, compliance scores, and remediation workflows.Learn →
  5. 35On the Job: Observability — Logs, Metrics & TracesThe three pillars of observability, structured logs, golden signals, percentiles from raw data, distributed tracing, and building useful dashboards and alerts.Learn →

Module 8 · CAPSTONE & CAREER LAUNCH

  1. 36Capstone: A Load-Balanced Cloud ArchitectureDesign, provision as code, deploy, secure, monitor, and explain a highly available web application end to end.Learn →
  2. 37Certifications, Portfolio & Interviews for Cloud RolesGet hired in cloud — choose a provider path and certifications, build hands-on projects with IaC, prepare for architecture and troubleshooting interviews.Learn →
  3. 38Job Search Strategy for Cloud RolesCloud job families, entry routes from support and sysadmin roles, home-lab projects that impress, certifications in context, and tailoring applications by provider.Learn →
  4. 39Technical Interviews for Cloud RolesCommon cloud interview formats, networking and IAM questions, architecture whiteboarding, troubleshooting scenarios, and explaining trade-offs clearly.Learn →
  5. 40Your First 90 Days as a Cloud EngineerStart well on a cloud team — learn the landing zone and pipelines, get safe access, ship IaC changes through review, join on-call, and find an automation win.Learn →
Start learning →

Delivery

Blended — self-paced lessons plus live labs

Portfolio outcome

A deployed, load-balanced cloud architecture you provisioned and can explain end to end.

Certificate

Certificate of completion, verifiable online with its credential code.

By the end of this program, you'll be job-ready to…

  • Design a resilient, scalable cloud architecture
  • Provision infrastructure as code instead of by hand
  • Apply least-privilege access and basic cost controls

Salary expectations

Estimated U.S. national average annual salary by experience level.

$80,000

Entry-level

$115,000

Mid-level

$160,000

Senior-level

Estimated figures for planning purposes — actual pay varies by location, employer, and experience.

Tools you'll master

AWS / Azure / GCP fundamentalsIAMDocker & KubernetesTerraform (IaC)

Practical training, every chapter

  • A live "try it yourself" example in every chapter you can run immediately
  • A hands-on exercise per chapter, with hints and a reveal-able answer
  • An open-ended challenge per chapter, graded against real success criteria
  • Class practice prompts for pairs or cohorts, not just solo homework

Why take this program

Interview- and job-ready

Built to the same bar Aicloud actually hires against — not a generic syllabus.

Tier 1 company partners

Program partnerships with leading employers are in progress — see Affiliation for status.

Job connection access

Graduates get access to Aicloud's own hiring pipeline and employer referral network.

Professional networking

Cohort discussion boards and live sessions connect you with peers and mentors, not just content.

A real portfolio

You leave with a concrete, explainable artifact — proof of knowledge, not just a certificate.