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The Cloud Show with Magnus Mårtensson ft. Logan Song - Ep. 23
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May 1, 2024
Join this live session with Magnus Mårtensson ft. Logan Song on a new episode of The Cloud Show with Magnus Mårtensson on April 10, at 01:05 PM (EST). The show is about cloud leadership and all the important questions relating to cloud projects. Certainly, many matters when a company is going to and wants to be successful in the cloud, are about technology. However, there are many additional matters, adjacent to technology, that we also need to tend to regarding business strategy, human resources, organizational change, planning for a technical cloud approach, and many more questions. These conversations are critical for a healthy cloud and for a swift and accurate cloud approach. GUEST SPEAKER Logan Song is a Chief Architect and Director with 25+ years of experience, Logan is highly skilled in Enterprise IT architecture and cloud computing. Having led numerous cloud projects in various industries, Logan is a multi/hybrid cloud expert in AWS, GCP, Oracle, and Azure clouds, authoring two books in cloud computing. 📺 CSharp TV - Dev Streaming Destination http://csharp.tv 🌎 C# Corner - Community of Software and Data Developers https://www.c-sharpcorner.com #CSharpTV #csharpcorner #TheCloudShow #CSharp #Interview
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0:00
Hello, hello everyone. Welcome back again to the Cloud Show. We have a wonderful episode today because it's about skills. And you know how much I like to talk about cloud skills. So have you ever kind of wondered what does it actually take to become good at doing cloudy things? Like, I guess I don't know much yet about Cloud. I need to learn. I guess I need to unramp to the Cloud. How do I do that? Well, let's talk to Dr. Logan's on today who has not only done that
0:29
Matt built his own cloud career. He's also written the book about it
0:35
So welcome everyone to another episode of The Cloud Show. Well, hello there
0:55
I'm very good. I should be asking you. I'm happy to have you on the show here today, Logan
1:00
I love this topic. So I'm excited that you have written a book about this
1:07
Thank you. Thank you for having me here today. Yeah, no worries. Before we start talking about the book and the intent of the book and why you
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wrote that and literally start talking about building a cloud career, right
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Then let's just for the audience here, who are you? And I know that you have a
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an interesting story about coming to the US from China, right? Are you from Beijing
1:37
Yeah, right. So I came to the United States 1992. Yeah. So, you know, in the past 20, well, about 30, 33 years, really, time fries
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I have, you know, went to the school and get my PhD and then get into the IT
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domain and then gradually migrated, transformed it to cloud. So it's a great
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career-built story and I love it. Yeah, it's pretty much an epic journey, right? All the way
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from studies at university in Beijing and then moving to the US and then finding out about cloud and then
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onboarding to that. Yep. So in a nutshell, I think if I want to summarize my career path
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I started after I get my PhD in industrial engineering and computer science
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I actually moved to Wall Street to start my IT career. I started as a system administrator and then database administrator
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and networking administrator and then storage administrator. So that paved a great foundation for information technology
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You know? Yeah. You started in what's known like pre-cloud IT and you had experience skills in pre-cloud
3:05
and then all of a sudden this cloud thing started showing up right? Exactly
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So the milestone was actually studying from VMware, right? So VMware technology virtualized everything, right
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So that's adding to the foundation I had is virtualization because I was actually working at
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EMC and EMC bought VMware, right? So it was a great story. And then, you know, all this
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together and then cloud computing came. So transition to cloud computing is really apply all the
3:40
traditional on-prime information technology skills and knowledgees to the cloud. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely
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And then you have taken the time and the effort to put that into a book. So let's, let's
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name drop or drop the book name here, the self-taught cloud computing engineer, a comprehensive
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professional study guide to AWS, Azure, and GCP. That's pretty vicious. Yep. So thank you
4:10
Yeah, that's, so the book is its own story, right? So after, I actually, I went, so, okay, so
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let's get back a little bit step back. So, so after I, you know, gained all the, um
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information technology, traditional in the data center and all those things, right
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Cloud computing came in. I studied my cloud computing journey from Amazon, AWS, right
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So that was my start, you know, stepping towards the cloud. And the one thing I have to mention is Steve Jobs, you know, commencement speech at 2005
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in 2005 at Stanford University. That was really inspiring me to you know stay hungry and stay foolish right And that why I you know marched into the cloud And then after you know three years in AWS I went to another company
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continuing my cloud journey with Azure and GCP. And the same time, I started teaching as an agent professor at the University of Texas at Dallas
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So that's also building up, you know, all. the book, right? So from
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working in the cloud towards, you know, teaching, and then I had the
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thinking that, you know, we needed to expand our teaching in the classroom to
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everyone on earth, right? Something like self-taught in a cloud computing, so
5:45
that everyone can follow the book and practice using the, you know, a free
5:51
tier account, right? So that you know they can learn the cloud computing by themselves so that that's the intention and in the
6:00
idea of the book so i love that because so i work for example uh i as i'm as a consultant right and so
6:08
i have various customers for example i'm working with major uh public sector customers and there
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they would have you know plenty of seasoned IT veteran people who had been working in IT for you know 25
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years or more right like they know all the things about IT except about cloud because being in
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public sector they haven't been able to touch that for reasons right various reasons that has not
6:37
been on their on their agenda but now they are moving they are going there so i think that there is a
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potentially a huge market for people to upskill and learn let's say that they still have you know
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I'm doing probably work in IT for another 20 years. I need to learn about cloud computing now
6:57
I have IT skills, but I don't have cloud skills. So is that like the sweet spot here
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Exactly. You got it right on, right on. So, you know, it's transformation, right
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From traditional IT to cloud computing and machine learning even in the cloud, right
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So those things really, it's difficult because, you know, how do you boot start, right
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Because, you know, I mean, a lot of traditional IT per people, right
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They're well-paid, they're highly scaled in the traditional IT, but, right, how do you jump start to the cloud, right? Yeah
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So that was really my, you know, I had experienced in 2006, I mean, 2016, really
7:43
when I jumped it to AWS, yes. But there's a lot of, with this what you're describing now
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I understand that there's a lot of mindset stuff here because unfortunately I see quite often I see people who maybe aren't so motivated to making a change
8:06
Feel disillusioned, maybe feel excluded from this cloud thing. It seems like just young hot shots doing cloud stuff
8:15
What about me? I feel middle-aged over the hill or whatnot. and how can I change
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I'm not maybe so motivated. What do you, like how do you
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you were saying stay hungry, stay foolish. I love that. Maybe not everybody feels hungry and foolish
8:32
Like what do you do? Yes, yes. Actually, there is another thing is
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you know, your career path, right? Exactly, what's the motivation? What is it, right
8:43
So why we should stay in the cutting edge technology? That's exactly, you know
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I want to tell everyone, that it's rewarding it's a rewarding journey to transform to the cloud right so I had
8:56
stayed in the traditional IT industry for about 20 years right so from you know
9:02
Unix and administrator database administrator networking to a senior architect and advisory solution architect however was in eight years after I jump into
9:14
cloud from 2016 to know right I grew up as a technical account manager to a principal architect, director, chief architect
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So you see that the cutting edge technology domains, right? They're new and they don't have a lot of people there
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So opportunities are right there. You think about eight years. It's a jump
9:44
It's a booming career per se. Yes, it is. It very much is because I see this a lot that there are not enough highly skilled cloud people or people with experience of using cloud platforms not to meet the current demand
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And the result of that, the consequence of there not being enough people, is that you move anyway as a company
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You still move, but now you don't have the right manpower to do it
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You can't hire them because they're already engaged otherwise. and you don't, your own people, who are IT people, like they're technical people, right
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they should be able to do this, do not have the skills for this
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So I've always impressed how important it is to have a skills development part of the strategy
10:38
when a company moves to the cloud. Yeah. Would you agree? Yeah, exactly
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Everything is actually supply and demand. This is a marketing, right? Yeah, so the new technology, advanced technology areas, less supply them
10:55
Right. So that's why we should come back, like stay hungry, stay foolish, right
11:00
Keep ourselves, yeah, lifetime learning, right? Lifetime Thanksgiving. Yeah, absolutely. And so how do you, like, do you have any advice on how to approach this beast
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I mean, if you are not happy, if you don't have any cloud skills
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I'm sure it feels daunting. It's okay to answer by the book
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That's a valid answer. Yep. So, right, book is definitely a step-step guidance, you know. Sure
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But in a nutshell, I think, you know, two things. One is learning the knowledge
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And as IT, you have to do the hands-on, right? So, you know, that's why Amazon, Microsoft, and Google
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they provide free tier accounts or some kind of credits for everybody to practice
11:50
Yeah. And also, so speaking only for example, Azure in this case
11:57
when you buy licenses from Microsoft for developer essentials and various things
12:05
to be able to use IDs like Visual Studio, etc., that also comes with an Azure subscription where you have a monthly
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spend depending on the size of your license, but you have a monthly spend to just do something
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with, to train, to learn that is yours. And then, you know, in some companies, they allow you to use that for whatever you want to
12:31
use it for. And in some companies or quite a few companies, they even disallow to use them, which is kind
12:37
of funny. Because it's already paid for, right? Yeah. But the point is that there is free access to use the cloud platforms from all the major clouds
12:49
Yep. Fortunately, all the major cloud service provider, we call them CSPs
12:54
They are very friendly. They are very, you know, they're providing everything, want to help people to learn
13:00
That's why, yeah, that's why the book cam and also, you know, part of that is working together with the CSPs
13:07
Yeah, again, supply and demand, right? They want more engineers to know about
13:11
their cloud platform and therefore choose to use that and consume the services down the road
13:17
which is going to give them money. Yeah, exactly. We always say that, you know, the ocean is deep, right
13:24
And then the sky is even higher, right? So whatever we can do is just, you know, have our own, you know, mindset that's set to the learning
13:35
stage and build our own successful career. Yeah, yeah. So in this journey, which are some steps to take to move this along for a, you know, prospective person who wants to learn about cloud
13:54
Yeah, I think, first of all, you have to be determined, right? You know, transition from a well-established, you know, career, let's say, Trudelycheon IT, you know, moving to the cloud, moving to, you know, machine learning
14:08
moving to the big data processing in the cloud. You know, everything is there in the cloud, right
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And it's the trend. I was actually so shocked when I joined AWS and saw the cloud usage
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you know, the invoices and all these things. You know, it's just crazy, amazing how many people are using cloud
14:27
big enterprises moving to the cloud. So, yeah, that's the future. Definitely
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It makes a bit of mind. Yeah. So I guess there, There, a thing that comes to mind for me is how a company that is interested in doing a cloud journey
14:45
And they of course want to as a company to go about this in the most efficient possible way
14:51
not to be wasteful and it needs to be fast it needs to be agile and all these lovely values that we hear about the cloud What I think that they should focus on a lot is to make it clear for the employees
15:03
that this is the strategy, this is where we are going. And then as much as possible, in my opinion
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try to help and establish processes in, I don't know what you need
15:14
study circles, anything you need to help the employees along, to raise that motivation for
15:21
them and be inclusive, I think. Sure, yeah. That's from employee point view, right
15:28
But from our own point view, you know, we needed to, we need to jump ourselves
15:32
I mean, yeah, the market is right there, right? You know, I mean, if this employee, this company does not provide the cloud environment, then another one must be, right
15:42
Yeah, that's for sure. That's for sure. It's like that. Every company wants to look attractive to, uh, to
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good skilled engineers. Salary is one thing, that's great, but we know that we can get a good
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salary as strong engineers, we can probably get a good salary in many different companies
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So we need additional value. Yeah, so cloud computing, you know, different from traditional
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ways, it's scalable, right? It's like, you know, we usually use the, uh, the idea of a pet
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versus a, uh, a, uh, a, you know, a hood, a hud of, uh, of cattle, right? So traditionally, you know
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you know, a server, a database is a pet, right? So if the pet is sick, people are sad
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and then we want to do everything to rescue the pet. But, you know, with the cloud computing
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it's a herd of cados. You know, if one is that, we cured it
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We have another one because it's a group of, you know, EC2 instances for say, right
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So if, you know, it's elastic, it's scalable, it's highly available. That's the idea
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That's the idea. And there's lots of interesting things to understand about that mind shift from traditional IT
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where the IT budget is a fixed post of buying many servers, putting metal into racks and wires
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as opposed to cloud computing, where that hardware factor is essentially removed, or mostly removed
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Absolutely. Yeah. So the other shock I had when I joined AWS at 2016 is that, you know, I was seeing my co-worker, he used a laptop, you know, run a cloud formation script and build a virtual data center in Asia Pacific within a couple of hours
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That's amazing, you know, I came from the traditional IT, right? It took years, you know, weeks, monthly years to build a data center
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Yeah, that is, that is truly impressive when people are skilled like that and can do those things
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That just makes you look kind of magical, especially to people coming from a pre-cloud, you know, reality, if you will
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Yeah. And the process is repeatable, immutable. You know, it's infrastructure as code
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IAC, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So there are some important things to focus on to understand mind shifts wise
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And I agree with you that it seems appropriate to get down to actually doing some of these things, like step by step, really do it, to start to understand how that thing works
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Yeah. So it's everything, you know, the cloud will be in your mindset
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Yeah. For sure. And so this book is about that, about, you know, staying hungry, getting motivated
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and going towards a more cloudy career part of your career journey
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Yeah. And I want to share a little bit secret that we're actually working in home and in the book
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It's cloud architecting. So, you know, it's something we're thinking about right now
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Nice, very nice. Well, looking forward to that. So truly, I very much appreciated that you wanted to come on this show today
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and having a bit of a conversation. here with me about the curiosity of learning and about becoming a cloud engineer rather than
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just a regular old IT engineer. Cloud is much better, right? Thank you. Thank you for having me here. I wish, you know, more and more people jump into the
19:32
cloud and for the company themselves. Couldn't agree more. Thank you very much for being on the
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show today and guests, audience. Thank you for for watching and I'll see you next time on the
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function. Take care
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