Cloud Computing Fundamentals for IT Professionals Training Course

Course overview

IT professionals are increasingly asked to assess cloud proposals, support migrations, operate hybrid environments, and explain cost or risk implications to stakeholders. Without a clear grounding in shared responsibility, cloud service models, identity controls, network design, and consumption pricing, teams can provision resources inconsistently, expose data, or commit to avoidable spend. This course gives participants a practical framework for making sound cloud decisions across AWS and Microsoft Azure.

Participants examine IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, public, private, hybrid, and multi-cloud models, then connect these concepts to real IT operating requirements. They learn to map workloads to cloud services; design basic virtual network, storage, compute, and identity configurations; interpret availability and disaster-recovery options; apply security baselines; and estimate cloud costs using tagging, budgets, and rightsizing principles. The course also introduces infrastructure as code, governance guardrails, migration approaches, and the operational implications of monitoring cloud workloads.

Delivered over five instructor-led days in the classroom or live online, the programme combines guided demonstrations, scenario-based labs, architecture reviews, and team decision workshops. Participants work through a realistic application migration scenario and produce a cloud foundation plan containing a workload assessment, target architecture diagram, responsibility matrix, security controls, cost estimate, and phased migration recommendation. They receive a certificate on completion and leave with artefacts they can adapt for internal cloud projects.

The course is designed for IT professionals who already understand core infrastructure concepts and now need a structured, vendor-aware foundation for contributing to cloud adoption, migration, governance, or operations.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Differentiate IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, public, private, hybrid, and multi-cloud deployment models against workload requirements
• Map an application workload to appropriate compute, storage, database, networking, and managed cloud services
• Create a basic cloud architecture diagram using availability, scalability, and fault-tolerance design principles
• Apply the shared responsibility model to define customer and provider security accountabilities
• Configure a least-privilege identity and access management approach using roles, groups, and multi-factor authentication
• Estimate cloud operating costs using resource tagging, budgets, consumption drivers, and rightsizing methods
• Evaluate rehost, replatform, refactor, retire, and retain migration options for a legacy workload
• Produce a phased cloud foundation and migration recommendation for a business application

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Systems Administrators — who need to support cloud-hosted infrastructure and hybrid services
• Infrastructure Engineers — who design compute, storage, network, and identity platforms
• IT Support Managers — who must prepare service teams for cloud operating models and escalation paths
• Network Engineers — who need to connect on-premises environments securely to cloud virtual networks
• Security Analysts — who assess identity, data protection, logging, and shared-responsibility controls
• Technical Project Managers — who coordinate cloud migration decisions, dependencies, and delivery plans

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should understand basic IT infrastructure concepts, including servers, virtual machines, operating systems, IP networking, DNS, firewalls, storage, backups, and user access management. Familiarity with Windows or Linux administration and reading a simple network diagram is helpful. Participants should also be comfortable discussing application dependencies and service availability with technical colleagues. Prior AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Terraform, scripting, programming, or cloud certification experience is not required. This is a fundamentals course for IT practitioners, not a course that assumes prior hands-on cloud administration.

Training methodology

The instructor uses short technical briefings followed by guided work in AWS Management Console and Microsoft Azure Portal. Participants analyse workload profiles, configure representative cloud resources, interpret architecture diagrams, and make trade-off decisions using availability, security, and cost criteria. Small groups review a migration case, challenge each other's proposed designs, and document assumptions in a shared template. Each day closes with an applied exercise, building toward an end-of-course cloud foundation and migration plan for a realistic business application.

Course outline

Day 1: Cloud concepts, operating models, and workload fit

• Cloud computing characteristics and consumption-based service delivery
• IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, and serverless service-model comparison
• Public, private, hybrid, and multi-cloud deployment patterns
• AWS and Azure global infrastructure regions, zones, and edge services
• Shared responsibility model for infrastructure, platform, and software services
• Workload profiling using business criticality, data, dependency, and performance criteria
• Cloud adoption drivers, constraints, and common anti-patterns

Workshop: Participants assess three application profiles and produce a workload-fit matrix recommending an initial cloud deployment model for each.

Day 2: Core cloud infrastructure and architecture

• Virtual machines, containers, functions, and managed compute selection
• Object, block, file, archive, and backup storage service patterns
• Virtual networks, subnets, route tables, security groups, and network security rules
• Load balancing, DNS, content delivery, and application traffic flows
• High availability, fault domains, availability zones, and regional resilience
• Managed databases and database service selection criteria
• Cloud architecture diagrams using logical, physical, and data-flow views

Workshop: Participants create a target architecture diagram for a three-tier application, showing network segmentation, compute, storage, and resilience controls.

Day 3: Cloud security, governance, and operations

• Identity and access management users, groups, roles, and service principals
• Least-privilege access design and multi-factor authentication controls
• Encryption at rest, encryption in transit, keys, secrets, and certificate management
• Logging, monitoring, alerting, and audit-trail requirements
• Cloud governance policies, resource locks, naming conventions, and tagging standards
• Configuration management and infrastructure as code with Terraform
• Incident response, backup, recovery point objectives, and recovery time objectives

Workshop: Participants develop a cloud security baseline with an access model, mandatory tags, logging requirements, and recovery objectives for a regulated workload.

Day 4: Cost, migration, and cloud adoption decisions

• Cloud pricing dimensions for compute, storage, data transfer, and managed services
• Budgets, cost allocation tags, showback, chargeback, and anomaly detection
• Rightsizing, autoscaling, reserved capacity, savings plans, and commitment decisions
• Application dependency discovery and migration readiness assessment
• The seven migration strategies: retire, retain, rehost, relocate, repurchase, replatform, and refactor
• Migration wave planning, cutover options, testing, and rollback planning
• Cloud Adoption Framework operating-model domains and landing-zone concepts

Workshop: Participants build a migration business case for a legacy application, including a migration strategy, cost assumptions, risk register, and phased migration wave.

Day 5: Integrated cloud foundation planning

• Landing-zone components for identity, networking, subscriptions, accounts, and resource organisation
• AWS Well-Architected Framework and Azure Well-Architected Framework design lenses
• Hybrid connectivity options using VPN, dedicated links, and private endpoints
• Operational handover requirements for support, monitoring, patching, and escalation
• Cloud service-level objectives, availability calculations, and resilience testing
• Architecture review techniques for security, performance, reliability, cost, and operations
• Cloud roadmap development with priorities, dependencies, owners, and success measures

Workshop: Participants present a complete cloud foundation and migration plan, receiving instructor feedback on their architecture, controls, costs, operating model, and delivery roadmap.

Tools & standards covered

AWS Management Console, Microsoft Azure Portal, Terraform, AWS Well-Architected Framework

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions