After completing the Microsoft Professional Program for Data Science last year I made up my mind to dive into the Big Data certification next. The end of the year snuck up on me though. Time doesn’t stop. You either make time to get something done, or you don’t.
When 2018 started I listed the Big Data certification on my goals for the first half of the year. I made certain to set aside time to complete the work. The track is ten courses long, but two of them were completed as part of the Data Science program. That left eight courses to get done. I knew the final capstone project was likely in April. So, I budgeted time to get seven courses done before the end of March.
I finished in mid-March, allowing me time to review the previous capstone project. That extra work paid off, allowing me to complete the April capstone project once it was live.
Nobody goes to school to become a data janitor
But this certificate might be the closest thing we have to a Data Janitor school. Check out the course list required to earn the Big Data certificate:
Microsoft Professional Orientation: Big Data
Analyzing and Visualizing Data with Power BI
Introduction to NoSQL Data Solutions
Querying Data with Transact-SQL
Delivering a Data Warehouse in the Cloud
Processing Big Data with Azure Data Lake Analytics
Processing Real-Time Data Streams in Azure
Orchestrating Big Data with Azure Data Factory
Developing Big Data Solutions with Azure Machine Learning
Microsoft Professional Capstone: Big Data
To get started, go to https://academy.microsoft.com and create an account. From there, link your Microsoft Academy account to your edX account. edX is where you take the courses, and Microsoft Academy issues the certificates once edX reports your scores. This process can take a few days for your scores to appear, so be aware there could be some latency.
One thing I want to stress is the quality of the edX courses taught by Graeme Malcom. The way he structures his courses resonates with my learning style. If you decide to go through these programs, I would urge you to select his courses every time you have the chance.
The course content is a great mix of Azure technologies. But it is not Azure only, as there are options to use platforms such as Spark, Hadoop, Jupyter Notebooks, Python, and Node.js, to name a few. It was through this content that I started thinking a bit more about our Global Data Estate, resulting in my recent posts on Azure and AWS data technologies.
The capstone project incorporated a little bit of everything covered in the course. Unlike the Data Science program, we did not need to submit a final report or go through a peer review process. I liked that aspect of the previous capstone, as it added to the overall educational experience.
There is a dearth of people in this world that can analyze data
Data science and analytics is a growth field. Data administration is not. You should consider hitching your career path to something on the rise. Data cleansing is now over 95.4% of any data science project.
The role of data administration is being automated away. Our days of tuning indexes are ending one page at a time. As a data professional the pivot you must consider right now is taking on a larger role in data analytics projects.
Find a way to get some experience with something other than resetting passwords.
Stop spending your lunch hour arguing with others about the nuances of a temp table versus a table variable.
Take the time to enhance your current skills. Otherwise, you may find yourself replaced by a handful of Powershell scripts. In the cloud.
Summary
Nobody ever brags about having small data.
The Big Data program is a wonderful way for data professionals and administrators to augment their current skills. There is a benefit to yourself and others when you reach out to learn new data technologies. I’m not saying to quit your day job just yet. What I am saying is that you should notice as Microsoft makes shifts. BY the way, there is now an Artificial Intelligence certificate.
That’s where you’ll find me next.
Because data isn’t just sexy, it’s addictive.
Congratulations Thomas the nice think is the variety of topics but if i may ask the money invested ( almost $ 1000 ) for the whole program worthwhile ?
Well, I certainly thought so, but you don’t need to pay to take the courses. You can audit the course for free. The $1000 is just to get the certificate issued. If you want the knowledge, you can get that for $0.
Hello i’m saiful from high education polytechnic.. how can i get the certification for big data.. how long the course program and the price fee for that program. TQ
Sorry, but this offering has been discontinued by Microsoft.