ACE Program Testimonial | Mark Noorman

Speaker: Mark Noorman, Principal Consultant, CloudNation

Mark Noorman: It's an excellent program, especially if you're a traditional or on-prem network engineer. You want to really dive into cloud networking. The ACE Program is excellent because you you don't just dive into one CSP and its native services. You get to know all the big CSPs and the limitations, things they have in common, but also the differences between those services.

Mark Noorman: My biggest takeaway from the ACE training is that it's so practical. It really dives deep into hands-on use cases. You perform Terraform configuration deployments. You learn actual use cases that you encounter in day-to-day life with, with helping customers and especially the ACE Design Expert track, it's a design defense in front of a panel. So that's also a situation you can and will encounter in your normal day, day-to-day work, meeting customers, explaining designs, collecting requirements and discussing several issues or challenges you may have.

Mark Noorman: You learn hands-on skills. You have really interesting discussions with, with other people following the ACE Program, following the training that really help you gain new insights and help you with your day-to-day challenges. Just again, the practicality if you're not using Aviatrix yourself, you still learn a lot about OCI, AWS, and Azure.

Mark Noorman: The advice I have for other professionals who want to get skilled in cloud networking is step one, follow the ACE Program at least ACE Associate. It's a really good introduction. It's only a couple of hours. It doesn't take that much of your time. And it's a really good introduction to the Aviatrix platform and also the cloud native services from AWS and Azure, for example, to really get a high level understanding of cloud connectivity situations, you might encounter hybrid connectivity, but also connectivity on a global scale, interconnecting regions, and stuff like that. And the next step is of course to get hands-on experience. If you cannot do it at your own employer, the current company you're working for, the current customer you're working for, go find something else. If this really is what you want to do, then find it and look for the environment where you can develop these skills. Cloud connectivity is a fundamental part of every cloud migration or transformation. Even on a basic level, there always has to be some form of connectivity, even if it's only a native firewall or of course, the VPC, subnets, security groups, stuff like that. There's always the basic connectivity and of course, there are or soon enough, you will run into limitations of those services, and you will be able to use the knowledge of the Aviatrix platform that you gained at an earlier stage. But, really get your hands dirty, start with coding and deploying Terraform services on those public cloud platforms, help customers and go interact with those customers with your new work environment and make sure you understand their requirements, their challenges. And also, don't try to figure out everything by yourself, especially when you're just starting in this field of expertise, use knowledge of other people that are in communities around, AWS community, Aviatrix community, where you can really find a lot of help and interaction.