(Part I) DO NOT Follow This Outdated Roadmap Into IT "A , Network , CCNA, MCSA" - Do This Instead

Are you considering a career shift? Or maybe you are a beginner and you would like to get into IT and the 10 15 years old advice. You need to start at networking.

You need to get A+ and then server plus and then network plus and then CCNA and then you start applying for jobs. If that is what you have been told and this is what you are considering, please stop. This advice might have been true 1015 years ago and the potential was good back then but today the real money real demand and the real future and the futurep proof career is not in networking or anything that has to do with networking the future proof career is in cloud devops AI machine learning and data science and for these you don't need CCNA you don't need network plus you don't need A+ you don't need server plus in this video, I'm going to explain to you how that legacy or old IT path is going to hold you back.

It's going to minimize your ROI, is going to have you compete with millions of people who are ready and available as a supply for a decreasing demand that will decrease by the day because cloud is on the rise, remote infrastructures are on the rise, services on demand are on the the rise and the as a service model is on the rise. And these are all pay as you go services so companies don't have to invest in huge data centers and their networking and so on. Stay with me.

Please consider subscribing to the channel, activate the notification and give us a like and share so the video can benefit the masses. I'll see you [Music] shortly. Before I start, what entitles me to talk about this?

First of all, I have been into networking for long long years. And if you look at this, this is the plaque that I have received in 2015 for becoming an emmeritus or a 10 years certified CCIE from Cisco. And if you look at the number, it's 15465 and that was achieved in November 2005.

So I have been into Cisco and networking for years and years and I have worked in the Middle East. I've worked in Dubai, in Canada and in the US with IBM as a network engineer, as a systems engineer, as a solutions architect and as a network consultant. All of it.

What I have seen with IBM is since about 10 years ago, they have been going to companies and talking about digital transformation. You have three or four data centers. I'm talking about the US corporates.

And they're costing you, let's say, $40 million a year. Why don't we consolidate your four data centers into one or maybe half a data center? So you save money on real estate, you save money on a lot of people that are not going to be needed anymore for cabling and for networking and for security and for physical security and so on by minimizing into one or half a data center.

And even for the half data center, we are going to give you some data center space in our facility. So you don't have to have real state or hardware at all or even that little hardware that is left bring it into the facility that we are going to provide you they call it collocation and after that everything else move it to the cloud what do you need you need virtualization we have it you need kubernetes we have it you need docker we have it you need to have microservices serverless you need security you need uh databases we have everything and it's going to be a monthly bill you don't need to pay anything up front. That's the model.

That's what's happening. That's what the cloud is driving. And this this is what companies are liking.

And that's why the growth of the cloud is going to be exponential between now and 2030 and beyond. Let me show you something. IDC, a very respected analysis firm, in July 2024, few months ago, they estimated that the cloud, the public cloud spending in 2024 is going to reach 800 billion.

So, a little short of a trillion dollars and it will double in size by 2028. So, by 2028, we are going to reach $1. 6 billion of cloud revenue.

This is more than 30 times the size of a company like Cisco in terms of revenue. So this is for the cloud. Why is it growing?

What is driving that growth? It is very simple. Data, artificial intelligence, machine learning and edge computing.

This is these are what are driving the innovation in the world. And cloud is the cheapest and the fastest method of supplying all the advanced hardware that has the intelligent GPUs and all that required for AI and machine learning and that's available in the cloud. You don't have to spend to bring that into your company.

Just pay us the monthly bill when you use it. That's it. So that's cloud devops.

Look at the growth. So cloud in four years 20% growth per year is going to be almost exponential going into 2028. DevOps is following the same path the same trend.

Growth is about 20% 19. 1% and this will continue through 203 33. So about 80 years from now digital transformation is going to have companies invest in the cloud and migrate to the cloud.

So you have less data centers, less requirement for network certified or network qualified engineers. Jobs are going to be less and competition is going to be higher. Let me show you one other thing.

This is from Cisco. Cisco certification website. Today Cisco issued more than 4 million certification and in the next 30 years they are aiming to train over 10 million people.

So right now there are 4 million certification issued by Cisco. Mostly they are going to be in the beginner and the intermediate. These are not CCIs.

These are not the expert level certificates. So now the 4 million certificates are going to be competing with you. So if you invest in A+ network plus CCNA path to start your career, you're going to be competing with maybe 1 million 2 million other certified people.

So there is plenty of them in your country already and ask about 10 years ago. What were the networking salaries and what are they today and contrast that compare that to cloud and devops in your country or in the country you are planning to work in and you will find the difference. So these are going down while these are going up because the demand here is much more than the supply while in networking the demand is way way less than the supply.

One last thing we can do to clarify that point as well is we are going to use our friend Chad GPT and I have used three questions to ask Chad GPT. The first one, can you confirm or compare the networking field growth compared to something like cloud and devops in the next 5 to seven years? And you'll find here that the networking growth is moderate to steady growth.

Why? Because traditional networking is evolving but not growing as fast as cloud and devops. Cloud and devops are much faster.

Challenges for the networking. Shifting to cloud reduces some on-prem network complexities. We don't need the advanced people and the advanced knowledge in networking and also automation in networking will lessen the requirement for networking people.

While in cloud computing it's explosive growth. The job market is high demand and the focus areas are multicloud and hybrid cloud migrating and connecting data centers to the cloud AI and machine learning serverless computing and cloud security and compliance. job market high demand for cloud architects, engineers and cloud security experts and it's rapidly expanding tools, the AWS provider, the Azure provider and the Google provider.

Cloud is the hottest and most in demand field with strong long-term growth. So you should invest in what is going up. You should not invest in what's going down.

DevOps strong and accelerating. Why? Because of CI and and so on.

focus areas automation, observability and monitoring and infrastructure and platform engineering. DevOps is often blended with cloud roles and DevOps engineers are in much higher demand than cloud engineers. And these are the skills.

This is what you need to invest in and learn for the future. Not CCNA, not A+, not network plus. And now the second question I asked does an absolute beginner in IT.

So you are an absolute beginner, fresh graduate moving into IT from another field. You have no background in IT. You have no preference and you don't want to go into networking.

But people told you that you need to get into networking. Take A+, network plus, server plus and then take the CCNA. Do they have to achieve or study network plus CCNA before venturing into cloud devops, AI and machine learning and MLOps?

So now you are heading into the hot fields with no background but people told you you have to start with networking. You have to be CCNA. You have to be network plus certified A+ certified and then you can go into the hot fields.

The short answer is no. You don't need to study network plus or CCNA before diving into cloud devops machine learning. But but a basic understanding the fundamentals of networking are very helpful and sometimes essential mostly in cloud and a little bit in DevOps but a little or no relevance in the other fields.

So long answer for cloud yes you need basic knowledge. Why? Because you are going to deal with VPCs, firewalls, load balancers and IP ranges and routing.

Do you need CCNA or network plus? not required. DevOps, you will need networking for Kubernetes networking, Docker networking, CI/CD, pipeline access, what is a DNS, what is TLS, that's what you need to understand.

And that's it. Nothing about Cisco switches, nothing about Cisco routers, nothing about the hardware and types and models and interfaces and how to automate configurations on them. All that you don't need it.

It's not going to pay you the right return on investment that you are looking for. And the growth is steady to moderate and it's not exponential and it's not in high demand and the supply is way more than the demand that is decreasing by the day. AI and machine learning minimal to none MLOps moderate especially when deploying models in production.

So recommended approach for an absolute beginner start with basic IT fundamentals. So what's an IP address? What's a subnet?

How does DNS and HTTP work? Okay, here they are saying maybe IT fundamental from CompTIA or just or just self-study on operating system file systems and CLI and part of the cloud and devops is to learn Linux and to be very good at Linux which is operating system and command line interface. So you don't need even compia it fundamentals.

You can learn without getting network plus or CCNA because this is less than 5% maybe of the content of CCNA and and network plus. Then to choose a path do you want to go into cloud devops or AI machine learning. The final conclusion here is certifications like network plus and CCNA are useful if you are going into networking.

you want to become a network engineer. You want to become a network security engineer then fine go into Cisco and do whatever you want but keep in mind that this is not the high return on investment careers. So we have already looked at the first question that networking is not the right one for a beginner because the the need and the demand is not going to be steady across the years and the pay is already lower than the cloud and devops and AI and machine learning.

The third one is can you suggest a short beginner-friendly networking learning plan just for cloud and devops learners because these are the two fields that they would need networking more than AI and machine learning and the others and the goal is to skip the deep Cisco style networking and focus only on what matters. That's what you need to do. Do not listen to who's telling you network plus A+ CCNA and CCNP with Cisco.

Forget about that. learn enough networking that you need for cloud and devops. That's it.

And if you decided that you are going to go straight into machine learning and AI, you don't need networking at all. If you decided to go into development, then you will need a little bit of the cloud because you want to deploy in the cloud and that's why you will need networking basics as well. So what you will learn four to six hours per week less than one hour per day and you will learn what is an IP address subnetting private I versus public IP TCP versus UTP and DNS and HTTP basics.

Week two VPCs. So now we are getting into the cloud internet gateways and net gateways root tables security and so on. And then week three you will learn about DNS load balancers and firewalls.

And what's a DNS? What's a load balancer? what's SSL, firewall rules and so on.

Week four, learn about Docker and exporting ports with Docker and Kubernetes. This is part of the DevOps that you will learn anyways. So the point is if it is four to six hours per week in four weeks that means if you set one week dedicated five six hours per day you can finish all the basics in one week maximum 10 days.

So the message is and the conclusion do not waste your time and do not listen to those who are advising you about traditional IT. It's long gone. The value of it is long gone and the future is not as promising as the new fields.

If you're getting into cloud and devops, you need to learn the basics and it will take you one week to learn what is needed. And a lot of the courses are going to explain DNS's and load balancers and security groups and virtual firewalls and subnets and public IP address and private IP address in their courses in the fundamental courses. So you don't need to waste time 3 months, four months on CCNA and C and A plus and CCNP and all that because you will start as a beginner in a field that is not promising as opposed to spending the same time and money and effort into a field that is promising.

All right, I think it is clear now and do not invest in Cisco and networking careers anymore. That's my advice. I have done it already seven years ago and I'm advising you to follow on my footsteps especially if you are a beginner.

If you are into networking or network security, get into the cloud, get into DevOps, get into AI, get into machine learning. This is the future. I think that's enough.

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