By Thamani Wijesinghe

The Young Professionals Affinity Group of IEEE Victorian Section successfully arranged a talk on “Cloud Technology and Career Pathways” on 4^th May, 2015 at the Richard Newton Conference Room, EEE Building, University of Melbourne.

This talk was predominantly organized to provide a basic overview of new technological trends which are vital for Network/IT/Computer Engineers willing to take up a career in the Cloud Computing/Networking industry. The guest speaker of the event, Mr. Mobeen Malik, Associate Manager at Accenture, Australia, conducted the session beautifully with valuable facts and interactive discussions.

So what do we mean by cloud computing? Simply put, cloud computing is computing based on the internet. Cloud computing allows users access to all the applications and software which we might have had to download in a physical computer or server. Therefore cloud computing can be extremely advantageous to us in the near future. This method is flexible, secure, eco-friendly, interactive, auto-updatable, as well as relatively cheap. The major advantage of this technology is that we can work on this from just anywhere.

Mr. Malik covered a number of related topics in the program including State of the Server Room, Typical Data Centers, Introduction to Cloud Computing, Cloud Service Model, Leading Cloud Providers, Trending Technologies and Professional Developments. He focused majorly on the career paths that can be taken in accordance to this technology. The talk was followed by a Question/Answer session where participants were able to communicate with the speaker regarding their issues.

A total of 16 attendees consisting of professional engineers and post graduate researchers in the fields of IT and Networking participated in the event. 12 of these attendees were IEEE members. The event was helpful to all of the participants and the section hopes to organize more events like this in the future.

Thamani Wijesinghe