Welcome to my first blog post or rather first flight. For anyone reading this and still contemplating or procrastinating about starting their blog, this is a good nudge to take a bold step and take off!

There are many benefits to writing as an IT professional - you can read more here in this bulletin by Ankur, but there are primarily three of them I’m looking to gain as I begin this journey.

Give back

Blog posts and technical documentation by IT professionals have helped me over the years in my career when I’m stuck with a technical challenge, so I think it’s only natural that I give back in the same way.

Journal

Just like every other professional with good experience would have worked on a good number of projects, from time to time there comes a need to show evidence or make reference to your past work or a specific task and maybe even need a specific detail - writing and documenting takes care of that for you, more so when it’s publicly available.

Guide prospects

I posted an application via a tweet one time to mentor and teach just a handful of individuals and I got about 4x the number I expected, then I went on to do 4 months of intensive weekend classes teaching Cloud Computing concepts and associated technologies.

A career in Cloud Computing is potentially very rewarding and there are loads of opportunities and also individuals trying to transition or get into it, therefore, I intend to pass on valuable information, guides and tips via writing.

Motivation

After several years working in industries like fintech and telecommunication using various tools, computers and technologies while spending nights in Datacenters configuring Cisco devices, SAN storages and bare metal servers to support and manage infrastructures of small, medium and large-scale enterprises, then I took a strategic step to switch lanes and now working with latest tools and cutting-edge technologies to drive performance, reliability and efficiency of modern infrastructures on the Cloud - I do believe I have more than a few words to put out.

Why Cloud Computing?

Let's talk about On-Prem first. IT infrastructure has evolved over the past decades in ways that new and entry-level engineers or IT technicians might not know what the term On-Prem is.

On-Prem is just the short form of On-Premises which basically means physical infrastructure in the context of Cloud Computing i.e. your IT infrastructure is located on your (company) premises.

Managing On-Prem infrastructure is more challenging mentally and physically compared to Cloud infrastructure. From the Motivation section above you might already have an insight into how challenging it could be if you have to spend days and nights working in a very cold space full of very loud machines.
Setting up new systems or servers for a specific application is not 'very simple' On-Prem, imagine setting up an email server or backup servers or even setting up services like Kubernetes, you'd have to configure and install operating systems, networking, storage, and then apply all the required administrator settings.

On the Cloud, you can have some of these services offered as SaaS or PaaS products - meaning you don't have to worry about managing some components of the service, the Cloud owns and/or shares some of the responsibilities with you.

On the Cloud, you can just sign up for an Email SaaS product like Office365 and you don't have to set up any servers, you are only responsible for your data. Storage for backup servers can be set up in minutes on the Cloud by just clicking a few buttons.

This makes life so much easier and for me personally, the fact that I can work from anywhere in the world with just my computer and an internet connection was the deal sealer for me. You can read more about the advantages of Cloud Computing by Amazon Web Services (AWS) here.

Next on the Not OnPrem blog >

I will be doing a lot of writing in this space - technical documentation, day-to-day journal, hybrid infrastructures, system failures and downtimes, cloud engineering projects, cloud computing careers, beginners guide and more.

That's it for now folks, you're welcome to join in this journey - subscribe and also join the new Not OnPrem community on Discord and Twitter.