For many IT professionals, the thought of asking their boss to pay for training and certification is daunting. After all, you don't want to seem like you're not already competent in your role. But the truth is—IT training and cloud certification can deliver a positive return on investment (ROI) not only for you, but also for your company.

Many employers are willing to invest in their employees' professional development, but they may not know the benefits of IT training and certification. That's where you come in. By making a solid case for why IT training and certification are beneficial for both you and your employer, you're more likely to get your boss on board to cover the costs.

4 Steps to Build a Case for Employer-Sponsored Cloud Training

#1 Align Your Request With the Company's Goals

When asking your boss to invest in your professional development, it's essential to align your request with the company's goals. For example, if your company is looking to containerize more applications, you could request training and certification for Kubernetes and other container development and management training. By doing so, you're not only furthering your own professional development but also helping the company reach its goals.

Also, explain that technology is advancing so quickly that you need training to keep your skills fresh so you can do your best work. Often, employers are willing to invest in employees who they see as being future leaders within the organization.

It’s no secret the IT industry is facing a skills shortage—especially cloud skills. As companies scrambled to move to the cloud in the pandemic, many realized they didn’t have enough employees with the right skills to make the transition.

As a result, some organizations have resorted to increasing their spending on training and development programs, especially self-paced out of the box training. However, as the statistics below show, this approach, while practical, is not the best way to acquire and retain new skills.

The Most Effective Methods to Build Employees' Cloud Skills

To ensure that employees can retain and apply new cloud knowledge, leaders and managers must prioritize training methods that support deep learning and retention.

Discussions and hands-on practice allow employees to explore new concepts in depth and apply them in a real-world context. This type of learning is more effective than traditional lectures or reading material, and it is more likely to lead to long-term retention of new information.

By investing in learning methods that prioritize deep understanding, IT leaders can give their employees the tools they need to be successful as cloud evolves.

In the hierarchy of learning skills, lecturing is the least effective, and teaching skills to others is the best way to learn and retain new skills.

Between those two extremes are various learning methods that can help your team learn and retain IT cloud skills. The key is to find the learning methods that work best for your team, given each individual’s learning styles.

AWS announced an update to their most popular certification, the AWS Solutions Architect – Associate certification. Here's what you need to know about the new exam.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) have announced an update to what can be considered their most popular certification, the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate certification.

The current AWS SAA-C02 certification was released on March 23, 2020, so it’s been generally available for almost two years, so it’s not surprising that it is being updated. The rate of change and innovation with AWS in two years is huge. By updating their certification to include the latest services, features and best practices ensures that the certification continues to prove its worth to both businesses and individuals.

I imagine you may have a number of questions like the following:

• Can I still take the current SAA-C02 exam as I’m currently studying for it?
• I recently passed my SAA-C02, will it still be effective, or will I have to take the new exam?
• When does the new exam come into effect?
• What are the changes?
• Will there be any exam lab questions like there are in the AWS SysOps Administrator certification?
• Where can I learn the new materials for this exam?
• Where can I find more information on this exam?

To make things simpler and less stressful, let me answer each of these for you.

Can I still take the current SAA-C02 exam as I’m currently studying for it?

The answer is yes! In fact, I recommend that if you have already started studying for the AWS SAA-C02 exam then you continue to do so. You have plenty of time to finish your studies as the last date to take the SAA-C02 exam is August 29th, 2022. If you haven’t yet started studying and want to take this exam, you still have time to prepare and pass it by August 29th, 2022.

For those looking to study and prepare with course materials and hand-on-labs for the current AWS Solution Architect Associate exam (SAA-C02), you can explore our training bundle with hands-on Challenge Labs which will give you all the support you need.

I recently passed my SAA-C02, will it still be effective, or will I have to take the new exam?

This is always a concern when AWS announces an updated certification, and for good reason.

I have some good news for you: You DO NOT have to re-sit the updated certification to keep your credentials. Even if you took the AWS SAA-C02 exam on the last date available (29th August 2022), then your exam will still last for 3 years from that date. The certificate and digital badge you get for attaining the certification does not include the version of the exam.

When does the new exam come into effect?

The new exam, which will be labeled as AWS SAA-C03 will be available to take from the 30th, August 2022. However, the registration to be able to book for the AWS SAA-C03 exam opens on July 26th, 2022, so if you want to be one of the first then you can book it from this date.

What are the changes?

After reviewing the difference between the exam guides for the SAA-C02 and the SAA-C03 there are some changes, however there is a lot of overlap from the SAA-C02.

From a domain perspective, there are still 4 different assessment domains to focus on with minor changes as shown here with the 2 domain tables for each exam.

SAA-C02 DOMAINS % OF EXAM Domain 1: Design Resilient Architectures 30% Domain 2: Design High-Performing Architectures 28% Domain 3: Design Secure Applications and Architectures 24% Domain 4: Design Cost-Optimized Architectures 18% TOTAL 100% SAA-C03 DOMAINS % Of exam Domain 1: Design Secure Architectures 30% Domain 2: Design Resilient Architectures 26% Domain 3: Design High Performing Architectures 24% Domain 4: Design Cost-Optimized Architectures 20% TOTAL 100%

You will notice that 3 of the 4 domains are still named the same, however their percentages have changed in the new exam guide:

• Design Resilient Architectures – Percentage dropped from 30% to 26%
• Design High-performing architectures – Percentage dropped from 28% to 24%
• Design Cost-Optimized Architectures – Percentage increased from 18% to 20%

One domain has changed slightly in its name, in SAA-C02 it’s called Design Secure Applications and Architectures, in SAA-C03 it is labeled as Design Secure Architectures and the percentage has increased from 24% to 30%.

Based on these comparisons alone we can see that there is now more of an emphasis on cost management and security as the percentages in these areas has increased by 8% between the two.

The new exam guide for SAA-C03 contains a lot more information as to what is in scope and out of scope compared to that of the SAA-C02. It also has detailed information showing you what knowledge you should have for each domain, in addition to the skills necessary to meet the requirements of the domain.