Patrick AbotsiI am an alumni of the University of Toronto, having completed a certificate of international project management through its school of continuing studies when I first moved to Canada. I was pleasantly surprised to learn from one of the emails I continue to receive from the SCS, that UofT is now offering a cloud computing continuing education program through the same School of Continuing Studies.
The certificate, titled Cloud Computing, aims at providing fundamental knowledge of the different cloud service models: IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. Students also will learn more about the financial, technological and organizational challenges in evaluating cloud strategies, and the economic as well as technological implications in selecting a cloud service for an organization. Data governance is also a primary topic of the certificate, which will include an undertanding of the privacy, comliance and legal protection of different cloud solutions.
The following three courses are required to obtain this Cloud Computing certificate:
1) Foundations of Cloud Computing (which, as of the date of this blog post, costs $769)
2) Design & Architecture of Cloud Systems ($769)
3) Cloud Systems in Practice (price not listed)
These courses are available at the St George campus and as of the date of this blog post, enrollment is opened for the Spring/Summer cohort.
There is an option to take both the following two micro courses instead of the Foundations of Cloud Computing course:
1) Cloud Computing I: Analyzing and Recommending Cloud Adoption ($559, available online or at St George campus)
2) Cloud Computing II: Architecture, Accessibility, Security and Privacy ($559, available only online)
As this is a new course, there is not much in terms of review available. That being said, it is good to see local universities offering cloud computing courses and programs. Cloud-related education in Ontario and across Canada is still at its infancy and we should see more and more local colleges and universities offering cloud-related courses in the next few years.
That being said, these programs will need to prove themselves in terms of the education provided and actual recognition by employers. Would it be easier, for instance, for someone with a cloud computing certificate from the university of Toronto to find a cloud-related job, than someone who studied by himself and obtained the AWS Solutions Architect Associate certificate? This remains to be seen.