Chirag Nayyar is an Alibaba Cloud MVP based in Singapore. He is passionate about helping businesses adopt cloud platforms more efficiently and supporting individuals that want to start their career journeys in the cloud industry. In this blog, Chirag shares his personal experience with cloud computing and his journey to becoming an Alibaba Cloud MVP.
I first encountered the Public Cloud Platform during my college days in 2012-2013. I was a part of the Dreamspark program where I got credits and training to learn about Microsoft Cloud. It was the first time I realized the world was changing so quickly toward software-defined everything. After graduating, I joined an organization that focused on large scale cloud migration. There, I started my professional journey and entered the world of cloud computing. I did everything from requirement gathering to solution walkthrough with detailed cost and TCO analysis.
In the middle of 2019, I visited Singapore for a customer meeting. There, I found about Alibaba Cloud Intelligence. Many people used it as their platform of choice. This inspired me to explore it more. In my field, comparing is always a huge driver for any customer to adopt a cloud platform. I started checking webinars and product documentation and signed up for an account. I went through use cases and survey reports that showed the proven results and success of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence globally.
The first project I built on Alibaba Cloud was a multi-tier, highly-scalable, personal WordPress blog. I used eight services (ECS, VPC, DNS, ApsaraDB RDS, Nat Gateway, SLB, and OSS) as the core of my solution. Then, I centralized the storage using OSS to store objects for auto scaling.
Reading information and watching help videos will help you learn in the short term, but hands-on learning will help you remember it long term.
With continuous exploration and experimentation, I built my confidence around the core services of the Alibaba Cloud Platform. Then, I applied for my first Alibaba Cloud Certification and completed ACA in February 2020.
Tech meetups and communities have played a major role in my career since 2016. I shifted to Singapore in October 2019. I wanted to interact with people, share what I learned, and learn new things from others. I joined the first Alibaba Cloud Singapore Community meetup in December 2019. There, I heard about the Double 11 (Global Shopping Festival) 2019 use case. It was mind-blowing! Then, I knew I wanted to put more effort into deeply exploring the platform. I got the opportunity to share with the community.
In February, I created a video tutorial about how anyone can learn about the Alibaba Cloud Platform on my YouTube channel and delivered sessions about "Getting Started with Alibaba Cloud." In May, I got the opportunity to deliver my session to the Alibaba Cloud Community of Singapore. One of the major topics was "Getting Started with Alibaba Cloud Certification." I covered the value of certification, various role base certifications offered by Alibaba Cloud, and how anyone can prepare for the exams.
After those sessions, I got a lot of support from the community. Many people that joined those sessions were looking for content to help them become stronger on the Alibaba Cloud Platform. This is the kind of thing that is expected from the Singapore community. I am going to continue participating and organizing meetups along with other community contributors. Due to COVID-19, we are all more connected online. It is beneficial for everyone to be able to join from anywhere. All of the previous sessions I have done myself are available on the Alibaba Cloud SEA YouTube channel. With the support of the Alibaba Team, I have started a series of bi-weekly meetups. Each meetup will deeply cover one of the Alibaba Cloud services and include a demo. If you are interested, you are welcome to watch on Zoom on July 15.
I would like to highlight one thing here. The support I am getting throughout my learning and sharing journey from the Alibaba team is tremendous. With support from the Alibaba Cloud local and HQ teams, it became possible for me to be a small part of a larger community.
I also feel very lucky to be a part of the MVP Community. It has boosted my confidence to contribute and prepared my peers and me. I have a vision of making everyone cloud-ready. The Alibaba team has given support to make this happen in Singapore and across the whole world.
The days of huge investments to learn about technology are gone. With Alibaba Cloud Platform's global availability, continuous innovation, and training, it is much easier for anyone to start learning. I encourage everyone to join this community and share your learning process.
Until next time!
Happy Alibaba Cloud Learning
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