Those interested in learning more about the SaaS, PaaS and LaaS are now able to take a certified university course after the first ever cloud computing course was launched at the University of Washington, last week.

Dr. Erik Bansleben, program development director, Academic Programs at the University of Washington, revealed the outline of a new certificate program offered by the university in cloud computing. Topics covered include cloud computing models: software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), infrastructure as a service (laaS) and database as a service

In addition, the course offers a market overview of cloud providers including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google, RightScale, CloudSigma, GoGrid and Force.com as well as strategic technology choices and development tools (including Eclipse and other IDEs, Heroku, Force.com and Elastic Beanstalk) for basic cloud application building. Other modules include web-scale analytics and frameworks for processing large data sets using Hadoop and MapReduce and advanced topics including database query optimization, consideration of NoSQL solutions, memory caching, fault tolerance and disaster recovery.

The course aims to educate students on how to “design scalable applications that minimize local storage and processing”, besides becoming “an expert in cloud computing concepts and be able to advise on adopting a successful a cloud computing strategy” for businesses. Students can take the course either online or in the classroom which is based in Seattle – recognised as “a hub for world-class cloud development.”

The first intake will begin in October and last for nine months. Students will pay a one-off $2,577 fee which is to includes practical experience as well. In addition to course instructors, guest speakers from cloud computing vendors and industry leaders will be invited to present actual case studies to further apply context to course theory.