Here's what people searched for most on ACG in 2021

What we search for says a lot about us. So what did you search for in 2021? Wait. Not you specifically. (That’d be a bit creepy.) No, in this post, we’ll cover the tech topics our learners most searched for on the A Cloud Guru platform over the last year. 

Without further ado, here's the Cloud Top 10 — the top 10 most-searched-for topics on ACG in 2021.

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We’ve seen Microsoft Azure gain a tremendous amount of momentum in the past year or so on our platform, but it settled down to the number 10 spot on our list. We expect it to gain even more traction as time goes on—with more companies (especially enterprise) choosing to get started in the cloud with Azure and others shifting to a multi-cloud strategy.

You can keep up with all things Azure with weekly video series Azure This Week.

Don’t know exactly what you’re looking for? Why not look for everything, then? 

DevOps skills are in high demand, and people are looking to better understand the skills and tools needed to move up or into those roles. Makes sense!

If you’re looking to understand or level up your DevOps game, check out our DevOps Learning Path.

A newcomer appears! Jenkins appeared in our top 10 searches for the first time early in 2021. Jenkins gives developers ways to automate parts of software development, like building, testing, and deploying. Jinkies! Ain’t automation grand?

Curious to get hands on with Jenkins? Check out our Learn Jenkins by Doing course.

Linux runs a surprising amount of the tech we see and use each day: public and private servers, Roku, gaming consoles, NASA space robots, and the Large Hadron Collider.

Looking to learn more about Linux? We’ve got you covered! Check out our Linux Training. 

Just getting started? Lay your Linux-loving eyes on our rotating round-up of free cloud training courses, which includes How to Get a Linux Job and Linux Operating System Fundamentals.

The king of public cloud wasn’t top on our list, but it remains one of our most popular topics across types of content, with posts like Which AWS Certification is Right for Me? and courses like the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C02) remaining popular throughout the year.

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Docker is such a mainstay that it’s not much a surprise to find it this high on the list. Docker is consistently one of the top developer tools our learners are focusing on.

Looking to get hands-on experience with Docker? Stop searching! We’ve got you covered with our in-depth Learn Docker by Doing course.

Automate IT. (Consistent!) configuration management. Automated deployment. Imagine doing all of the above automatically and avoiding poor configurations altogether.

Brand new to Ansible? Get an intro to Ansible, or check out Learn Ansible by Doing.

What’s life without containers? Not life at all. Or, not an accessible life. Good luck getting anything to work without a conductor behind your ecommerce apps as hundreds of millions of people rush to buy a Playstation 5.

Seeking to learn more about K8s? Check out our Kubernetes cheat sheet, get an apprentice-level deep dive into Kubernetes, or keep up with the K8s chaos with Kubernetes This Month.

One of the go-to languages for all things machine training. We expect to see this consistently perform at the top as machine training gets an exclusive home on cloud technology. In particular, cloud providers are optimizing hardware for training—such as Google’s TPU.

Looking to pick up some new Python knowledge? Get a premier in the free video Programming Languages of the Cloud: Python or check out our Intro to Python Development course.

Imagine, for a moment, trying to manage all the stuff in a VPC. Now two of them. Now 2,000. Not fun, right? Well, as applications inevitably scale to hundreds of millions of users, you’re really going to have to automate most of this. Praise Terraform.

Looking to learn more about Terraform? Check out our HashiCorp Certified Terraform Associate course, or grab the free Ultimate Terraform Commands Cheat Sheet.

Notably, what we don’t see is Google Cloud (GCP) consistently placing among the top search terms. 

While Google Cloud is growing as another option for companies—especially as they shift to a multi-cloud approach to their infrastructure—it still has some room to grow compared to AWS and Azure.

But if it's GCP know-how you seek, we still have you covered! Keep up with all things Google Cloud in our GCP This Month video series, check out our overview of which GCP certifications are best for you, or just browse our catalog of GCP training.

Several topics have remained remarkably consistent in interest going back even into 2020. Specifically, Kubernetes and Terraform have consistently been among the top-searched terms on ACG for a couple of years now. But that’s not entirely surprising. Containers and infrastructure management are some of the most important—and fundamental—tenets of cloud computing.

There are also several of what we’ll call horse races, to steal the terminology from political polling (or sports betting, if you prefer). 

We’ve seen searches for AWS and Python trade places multiple times, up until February 2021, when Python was our most-searched term. Much of the machine learning ecosystem is built on top of Python, while AWS is still the top cloud infrastructure.

From late 2020 to today, interest in Terraform went from high to top of the heap. But interest in Linux, Ansible, and Docker also increased. While Azure searches saw a bit of decline.

Check out this snazzy graphic to see how things played out between August of 2020 and May 2021 for some historical context.

This isn’t necessarily a comprehensive view of the demand for skills and expertise in cloud computing. 

While to a certain extent representative of the ecosystem, our searches are also snapshots of interest in moments in time. If there were any excellent example of that, it would be that Jenkins—an automation tool less than a decade old—placed among the top ten for the first time in February 2021.

So, when considering where to devote your time when building expertise in cloud technology, always consider multiple data points. 

However, we do hope that this data point will also at least aid in your decision of where to focus your efforts as we start a new year.

Whatever you do with this information, as we embark on a new year, remember to spend time taking care of yourself. For you, maybe that does mean leveling up your cloud IQ to jump start your cloud career. But it could also mean going on a walk — or tending to a farm in Stardew Valley. Whatever you do in 2022, keep being awesome, cloud gurus!

Got thoughts on what this list? Any surprises or upsets in your eyes? Join the conversation on Twitter or Discord.

Looking to level up your cloud career? Stop searching and start learning! Get started with A Cloud Guru to get hands-on and master the most in-demand tech skills.