Google Cloud Digital Leader
A Cloud Digital Leader can recognize and examine the various capabilities of Google Cloud core products and services, as well as how they may be applied to meet specific business objectives. A Cloud Digital Leader understands the fundamentals of cloud computing and can demonstrate a broad application of cloud computing expertise in a range of settings. Moreover, they have the ability to:
- Firstly, explain the capabilities of Google Cloud’s main products and services, as well as how they help businesses.
- Secondly, describe common business use cases and how cloud technologies can help a company succeed.
Talking about the exam, the Cloud Digital Leader exam is not exclusive to any one job function. Individuals who want or are required to understand the purpose and use of Google Cloud products can take the exam to test their knowledge and abilities. However, there are no prerequisites for this exam but it is suggested to have experience collaborating with technical professionals.
Exam Details
The Google Cloud Digital Leader is a 90 minutes based exam that will have questions of type multiple choice and multiple-select questions, including real-world technical scenarios for examining your ability for identifying suitable cloud solutions and Google Cloud products. The exam registration will cost you around $99 and is available in English and Japanese language.
Exam Scheduling
Please follow these procedures for booking an exam:
- Firstly, find the exam you wish to take on the Google Cloud website and click Register.
- Google Cloud certifications are available in a variety of languages. The list of available languages may be seen on the exam page. Create a new user account in Google Cloud’s instance of that language in Webassessor if you’re a first-time test taker or want to take the certification exam in a localized language.
- Secondly, register and choose whether to take the exam online or in a testing facility near you. This includes the Exam Delivery Method includes:
- Taking the online-proctored exam from a remote location. For this, first, check the online testing requirements.
- Secondly, taking the onsite-proctored exam at a testing center. Here, you can locate a test center near you.
Exam Course Outline
A list of subjects that may be tested on the exam is included in the exam guide. Examine the exam guide to see if your knowledge corresponds to the exam’s subjects. However, for Cloud Digital Leader Exam the topics are:
Section 1: Digital Transformation with Google Cloud (~17% of the exam)
1.1 Why Cloud Technology is Transforming Business
● Explain why and how the cloud is revolutionizing businesses. (Google Documentation: What is Digital Transformation?)
a. Define the terms: cloud, cloud technology, data, digital transformation, cloud-native, open source, open standard. (Google Documentation: What is cloud native?)
b. Describe the differences between cloud technology and traditional or on-premises technology.
c. Explain the benefits of cloud technology to a business’ digital transformation: this technology is scalable, flexible, agile, secure, cost-effective and offers strategic value. (Google Documentation: Advantages and Disadvantages of Cloud Computing)
d. Describe the primary benefits of on-premises infrastructure, public cloud, private cloud, hybrid cloud, and multicloud and differentiate between them. (Google Documentation: What is multicloud?)
e. Describe the main business transformation benefits of Google Cloud: intelligence, freedom, collaboration, trust, and sustainability. (Google Documentation: Why Google Cloud)
f. Describe the implications and risks for organizations that do not adopt new technology. (Google Documentation: Advantages and Disadvantages of Cloud Computing)
g. Describe the drivers and challenges that lead organizations to undergo a digital transformation. (Google Documentation: What is Digital Transformation?)
h. Describe the transformation cloud and how it accelerates an organization’s digital transformation through app and infrastructure modernization, data democratization, people connections, and trusted transactions. (Google Documentation: Reinventing the future with a transformation cloud)
1.2 Fundamental Cloud Concepts
● Explain general cloud concepts. (Google Documentation: Google Cloud overview)
a. Describe how transitioning to a cloud infrastructure affects flexibility, scalability, reliability, elasticity, agility, and total cost of ownership (TCO). Apply these concepts to various business use cases.
b. Explain how an organization’s transition from an on-premises environment to the cloud shifts their capital expenditures (CapEx) to operational expenditures (OpEx), and how that affects their total cost of ownership (TCO).
c. Identify when private, hybrid, or multicloud infrastructures best apply to different business use cases. (Google Documentation: Distributed, hybrid, and multicloud overview)
d. Define basic network infrastructure terminology, including: IP address; internet service provider (ISP); domain name server (DNS), regions, and zones; fiber optics; subsea cables; network edge data centers, latency; and bandwidth. (Google Documentation: Google Cloud Networking overview)
e. Discuss how Google Cloud supports digital transformation with global infrastructure and data centers connected by a fast, reliable network. (Google Documentation: Google Cloud infrastructure)
1.3 Cloud Computing Models and Shared Responsibility
● Discuss the benefits and tradeoffs of using infrastructure as a service (IaaS); platform as a service (PaaS); and software as a service (SaaS). (Google Documentation: PaaS vs. IaaS vs. SaaS vs. CaaS)
a. Define IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. (Google Documentation: PaaS vs. IaaS vs. SaaS vs. CaaS)
b. Compare and contrast the benefits and tradeoffs of IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS including total cost of ownership (TCO), flexibility, shared responsibilities, management level, and necessary staffing and technical expertise.
c. Determine which computing model (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS) applies to various business scenarios and use cases.
d. Describe the cloud shared responsibility model. Compare which responsibilities are the cloud provider’s, and which responsibilities are the customer’s for on-premises and cloud computing models (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS). (Google Documentation: Shared responsibilities and shared fate on Google Cloud)
Section 2: Exploring Data Transformation with Google Cloud (~16% of the exam)
2.1 The Value of Data
● Describe the intrinsic role that data plays in an organizations’ digital transformation. (Google Documentation: What is Digital Transformation?)
a. Explain how data generates business insights, drives decision making, and creates new value. (Google Documentation: What is Big Data?)
b. Differentiate between basic data management concepts, in particular: databases; data warehouses; data lakes. (Google Documentation: What is a Data Lake?)
c. Explain how organizations can create value by using their current data, collecting new data, and sourcing data externally. (Google Documentation: Integrate your data sources with Data Catalog, What is Data Governance?)
d. Describe how the cloud unlocks business value from all types of data, including structured data and previously untapped unstructured data. (Google Documentation: What is a data cloud?)
e. Discuss the main data value chain concepts and terms.
f. Explain how data governance is essential to a successful data journey. (Google Documentation: What is Data Governance?)
2.2 Google Cloud Data Management Solutions
● Determine which Google Cloud data management products are applicable to different business use cases.
a. Differentiate between Google Cloud data management options including data type and common business use case, including: Cloud Storage; Cloud Spanner; Cloud SQL; Cloud Bigtable; BigQuery; Firestore. (Google Documentation: Google Cloud database options, explained)
b. Define key data management concepts and terms, including: relational; non-relational; object storage; structured query language (SQL); NoSQL. (Google Documentation: What is a NoSQL database?)
c. Describe the benefits of using BigQuery as a serverless, managed data warehouse and analytics engine that can be used in a multicloud environment. (Google Documentation: BigQuery overview)
d. Differentiate between storage classes in Cloud Storage regarding cost and frequency of access, including: Standard; Nearline; Coldline; Archive. (Google Documentation: Storage classes)
e. Describe the ways that an organization can migrate or modernize their current database in the cloud. (Google Documentation: Migration and modernization tools)
2.3 Making Data Useful and Accessible
● Discuss how smart analytics, business intelligence tools, and streaming analytics can add value in different business use cases. (Google Documentation: What is Business Intelligence?, What is streaming analytics?)
a. Describe how Looker democratizes access to data by empowering individuals to self-serve business intelligence and create insights. (Google Documentation: Analyze governed data, deliver business insights, and build AI-powered applications)
b. Discuss the value of analyzing and visualizing data from BigQuery in Looker to create real-time reports, dashboards, and integrating data into workflows. (Google Documentation: Analyze data with Looker Studio, Analyze data with BI Engine and Looker)
c. Describe how streaming analytics in real time makes data more useful and generates business value. (Google Documentation: What is streaming analytics?, Streaming analytics)
d. Describe the main Google Cloud products that modernize data pipelines, including Pub/Sub and Dataflow. (Google Documentation: Dataflow overview, Work with Dataflow data pipelines)
Section 3: Innovating with Google Cloud Artificial Intelligence (~16% of the exam)
3.1 AI and ML Fundamentals
● Discuss the main AI and ML concepts, and explain how ML can create business value. (Google Documentation: Machine learning workflow)
a. Define artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).
b. Differentiate the capabilities of AI and ML from data analytics and business intelligence. (Google Documentation: Artificial intelligence (AI) vs. machine learning (ML))
c. Discuss the types of problems that ML can solve. (Google Documentation: What is Machine Learning (ML)?, Problem-solving with ML: automatic document classification)
d. Explain the business value ML creates, including: ability to work with large datasets; scaling business decisions; and unlocking unstructured data.
e. Explain why high-quality, accurate data is essential for successful ML models.
f. Discuss the importance of explainable and responsible AI (Google Documentation: Responsible AI)
3.2 Google Cloud’s AI and ML solutions
● Discuss the range of Google Cloud AI and ML solutions and products available, and how to select the most appropriate solution for different business use cases. (Google Documentation: AI and machine learning solutions)
a. Explain which decisions and tradeoffs organizations need to consider when selecting Google Cloud AI/ML solutions and products, including: speed; effort; differentiation; required expertise.
b. Discuss which Google Cloud AI and ML solutions and products might apply given different business use cases, including: pre-trained APIs; AutoML; build custom models. (Google Documentation: AI and machine learning products, AutoML)
3.3 Building and using Google Cloud AI and ML solutions
● Explain how Google Cloud’s pre-trained API, AutoML, and custom AI/ML products can create business value. (Google Documentation: AutoML)
a. Discuss how BigQuery ML lets users create and execute machine learning models in BigQuery by using standard SQL queries. (Google Documentation: Create machine learning models in BigQuery ML, Introduction to AI and ML in BigQuery)
b. Select which Google Cloud pre-trained API best applies to different business use cases, including: Natural Language API, Vision API, Cloud Translation API, Speech-to-Text API, and Text-to-Speech API. (Google Documentation: Natural Language AI, Translate docs, audio, and videos in real time with Google AI)
c. Explain how an organization can create business value by using their own data to train custom ML models with AutoML.
d. Discuss how building custom models by using Google Cloud’s Vertex AI can create opportunities for business differentiation. (Google Documentation: Introduction to Vertex AI)
e. Recognize TensorFlow as an end-to-end open source set of tools for building and training machine learning models and that Cloud Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) is Google’s proprietary hardware optimized for TensorFlow and ML performance. (Google Documentation: Accelerate AI development with Google Cloud TPUs)
Section 4: Modernize Infrastructure and Applications with Google Cloud (~17% of the exam)
4.1 Cloud modernization and migration
● Explain why modernization and migration to the cloud are important steps in an organization’s transformation journey, and how each application might have a different path. (Google Documentation: Modernization path for .NET applications on Google Cloud)
a. Discuss benefits of infrastructure modernization and application modernization by using Google Cloud. (Google Documentation: Infrastructure modernization)
b. Define the main cloud migration terms, including: workload; retire; retain; rehost; lift and shift; replatform; move and improve; refactor; reimagine. (Google Documentation: Migrate to Google Cloud: Get started)
4.2 Computing in the cloud
● Discuss the options for and advantages of running compute workloads in the cloud. (Google Documentation: Choose a Compute Engine deployment strategy for your workload)
a. Define the main cloud compute terms, including: virtual machines (VMs); containerization; containers; microservices; serverless computing; preemptible VMs; Kubernetes, autoscaling, load balancing. (Google Documentation: Load balancing and scaling)
b. Describe the benefits and business value of running compute workloads in the cloud. (Google Documentation: Advantages and Disadvantages of Cloud Computing)
c. Explain the choices and constraints between different compute options. (Google Documentation: Choosing the right compute option in GCP: a decision tree)
d. Discuss the business value of using Compute Engine to create and run virtual machines on Google’s infrastructure. (Google Documentation: Compute Engine)
e. Discuss the business value of choosing a rehost migration path for specialized legacy applications.
4.3 Serverless computing
● Discuss the advantages of serverless computing in application modernization. (Google Documentation: Serverless)
a. Explain the benefits of serverless computing. (Google Documentation: What is serverless computing?)
b. Discuss the business value of using serverless computing Google Cloud products, including: Cloud Run; App Engine; Cloud Functions. (Google Documentation: Cloud Functions overview)
4.4 Containers in the cloud
● Discuss the advantages of using containers in application modernization. (Google Documentation: Benefits of migrating to containers)
a. Discuss the advantages of modern cloud application development. (Google Documentation: Advantages and Disadvantages of Cloud Computing)
b. Differentiate between virtual machines and containers. (Google Documentation: Containers vs VMs (virtual machines): What are the differences?)
c. Discuss the main benefits of containers and microservices for application modernization. (Google Documentation: Cloud Application Modernization, What is Microservices Architecture?)
d. Discuss the business value of using Google Cloud products to deploy containers, including: Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE); Cloud Run. (Google Documentation: Use GKE and Cloud Run together)
4.5 The value of APIs
● Explain the business value of application programming interfaces (APIs). (Google Documentation: What is API management?)
a. Define application programming interface (API). (Google Documentation: Google Cloud APIs)
b. Explain how organizations can create new business opportunities by exposing and monetizing public-facing APIs.
c. Discuss the business value of using Apigee API Management. (Google Documentation: What is Apigee?)
4.6 Hybrid and multi-cloud
● Discuss the business reasons for choosing hybrid or multi-cloud strategies and how Anthos enables these strategies. (Google Documentation: What is multicloud?)
a. Discuss the reasons and use cases for why organizations choose a hybrid cloud or multi-cloud strategy. (Google Documentation: What is a Hybrid Cloud?)
b. Describe the business value of using Anthos as a single control panel for the management of hybrid or multicloud infrastructure.
Section 5: Trust and Security with Google Cloud (~17% of the exam)
5.1 Trust and security in the cloud
● Discuss fundamental cloud security concepts. (Google Documentation: Google security overview)
a. Describe today’s top cybersecurity threats and business implications.
b. Differentiate between cloud security and traditional on-premises security. (Google Documentation: Cloud network security)
c. Describe the importance of control, compliance, confidentiality, integrity, and availability in a cloud security model. (Google Documentation: Google security overview)
d. Define key security terms and concepts.
5.2 Google’s trusted infrastructure
● Explain the business value of Google’s defense-in-depth multilayered approach to infrastructure security. (Google Documentation: Infrastructure Security in Google Cloud)
a. Describe the benefits of Google designing and building its own data centers, using purpose-built servers, networking, and custom security hardware / software. (Google Documentation: Google infrastructure security design overview)
b. Describe the role of encryption in securing an organization’s data and the ways that it can protect data exposed to risks in different states. (Google Documentation: Default encryption at rest)
c. Differentiate between authentication, authorization, and auditing. (Google Documentation: Authentication and authorization)
d. Describe the benefits of using two-step verification (2SV) and IAM. (Google Documentation: Identity and Access Management (IAM))
e. Describe how an organization can protect against network attacks using Google products, including distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) using Google Cloud Armor. (Google Documentation: Configure advanced network DDoS protection)
f. Define Security Operations (SecOps) in the cloud and describe its business benefits. (Google Documentation: Google Security Operations overview)
5.3 Google Cloud’s trust principles and compliance
● Describe how Google Cloud earns and maintains customer trust in the cloud. (Google Documentation: Creating trust through transparency)
a. Discuss how Google Cloud’s trust principles are a commitment to our shared responsibility for protecting and managing an organization’s data in the cloud. (Google Documentation: Creating trust through transparency)
b. Describe how sharing transparency reports and undergoing independent third-party audits support customer trust inGoogle.
c. Describe why data sovereignty and data residency may be requirements and how Google Cloud offers organizations the ability to control where their data is stored. (Google Documentation: Implement data residency and sovereignty requirements)
d. Describe how Google Cloud compliance resource center and Compliance Reports Manager support industry and regional compliance needs. (Google Documentation: Compliance Reports Manager)
Section 6: Scaling with Google Cloud Operations (~17% of the exam)
6.1 Financial governance and managing cloud costs
● Discuss how Google Cloud supports an organization’s financial governance and ability to control their cloud costs. (Google Documentation: Cost Management)
a. Discuss how using cloud financial governance best practices provides predictability and control for cloud resources.
b. Define important cloud cost-management terms and concepts.
c. Discuss the benefits of using the resource hierarchy to control access. (Google Documentation: Resource hierarchy)
d. Describe the benefit of controlling cloud consumption using resource quota policies and budget threshold rules. (Google Documentation: Create, edit, or delete budgets and budget alerts)
e. Discuss how organizations can visualize their cost data by using Cloud Billing Reports. (Google Documentation: View your billing reports and cost trends)
6.2 Operational excellence and reliability at scale
● Discuss the fundamental concepts of modern operations, reliability, and resilience in the cloud. (Google Documentation: Google Cloud Architecture Framework: Reliability)
a. Describe the benefits of modernizing operations by using Google Cloud.
b. Define important cloud operations terms.
c. Describe the importance of designing resilient, fault-tolerant, and scalable infrastructure and processes for high availability and disaster recovery. (Google Documentation: Architecting disaster recovery for cloud infrastructure outages)
d. Define key cloud reliability, DevOps, and SRE terms.
e. Describe how organizations benefit from using Google Cloud Customer Care to support their cloud adoption. (Google Documentation: Google Cloud Customer Care)
f. Describe the life of a support case during the Google Cloud Customer Care process. (Google Documentation: Customer Care procedures)
6.3 Sustainability with Google Cloud
● Discuss how Google Cloud helps organizations meet sustainability goals and reduce environmental impact. (Google Documentation: Cloud sustainability)
a. Describe Google Cloud’s commitment to sustainability and reducing environmental impact.
b. Discuss how Google Cloud provides products to support organizations’ sustainability goals.
For Queries: Check Google Cloud Digital Leader FAQs
Exam Terms and Conditions
Before finalizing your exam registration, candidates must read and acknowledge the terms and conditions of the program.
Retake Policy
- The integrity of the certified user cohort is protected by our efforts to maintain exam security and enforce testing rules. Google Cloud guarantees that program regulations are followed carefully and consistently. If you don’t pass an exam, you have 14 days to retake it. If you don’t pass the second time, you’ll have to wait 60 days before taking it again. However, if you fail the third time, you must wait 365 days before taking the exam again.
Identifying and Preventing Misconduct
When a person is caught breaking the Exam Terms and Conditions, Google Cloud undertakes a thorough investigation. This may involve acquiring exam delivery records or information from other sources, as well as gathering data from exam delivery platform partners. The Certification team decides on a course of action after confirming the misconduct based on the evidence once an investigation is concluded. Exam results may be invalidated, certificates may be revoked, and other corrective steps may be taken. However, some of the misconduct and/or exam misuse examples include, but are not limited to:
- Firstly, false or fake identification is a serious offense.
- Secondly, improperly providing or receiving aid
- Thirdly, exam information can be delivered in a variety of ways, including but not limited to web posts, official or informal test preparation or discussion groups, memorization, or any other manner.
- Fourthly, having non-authorized objects on you during an examination
- Next, using unauthorized exam preparation resources (such as braindumps and/or unauthorized release of exam questions with or without answers)
- Lastly, attempting to delete or remove exam material (in any format)
Cancellation and reschedule policy
- If you fail to show up for your exam, you will forfeit your exam money and will not be refunded.
- Secondly, your exam money is forfeited and you will not receive a refund if you cancel your exam less than 72 hours before your onsite exam time or less than 24 hours before your online exam time.
- Thirdly, you will charge a rescheduling fee if you reschedule your exam within 72 hours of your onsite exam time or within 24 hours of your online exam time. Further, by entering into your Webassessor account and selecting “Register for an Exam,” you may set a new exam date and time. Choose to Reschedule/Cancel from the Scheduled/In Progress Exams option.
Study guide for Google Cloud Digital Leader Exam
1. Understanding Exam Objectives
For having a good start for the Cloud Digital Leader exam preparation, candidates must have familiarity with the exam objectives. The Cloud Digital Leader exam objectives cover four important topics that will provide understanding in the major sections. So, check out the exam guide for getting topics and to prepare better.
- Firstly, general cloud knowledge
- Secondly, general Google Cloud knowledge
- Lastly, Google Cloud products and services
2. Cloud Digital Leader Learning Path
Explore this free fundamental learning path developed for cloud-based business professionals. The Cloud Digital Leader learning path is designed to prepare entire teams or individual practitioners for the Google Cloud Digital Leader certification exam by increasing cloud literacy and validating knowledge. However, the learning paths include:
Digital Transformation with Google Cloud
- Learn about the possibilities and challenges that businesses face when they embark on their digital transformation path. Moreover, you’ll learn about the basics of cloud computing and how these transformation journeys connect to Google Cloud products.
Innovating with Data and Google Cloud
- Learn what data is, how to utilize it to make decisions, and how it plays a vital part in machine learning. Structured and unstructured data, databases, data warehouses, and data lakes will all be introduced in this path.
Infrastructure and Application Modernization with Google Cloud
- Examine the drawbacks of an out-of-date IT infrastructure and how cloud technology might help organizations upgrade it. Begin by learning about the various computing alternatives accessible in the cloud, as well as the advantages of each. Further, you’ll study application modernization and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) (APIs).
Understanding Google Cloud Security and Operations
- Examine cloud cost management, security, and operations, and how organizations may purchase IT services from a cloud provider and choose to keep part or all of their own infrastructure, as well as how data security is shared between the cloud provider and the business. Moreover, learn how to rethink IT resource management in the cloud and how Google Cloud resource monitoring tools may help keep a cloud environment under control and visible.
3. Google Cloud Adoption Framework
With confidence, make the transition to the cloud. The Google Cloud Adoption Framework assists you in identifying essential actions and objectives that will ensure a smooth migration to the cloud. However, there are four categories you’ll need to succeed in if you want to create a genuinely cloud-first organization. These concepts will serve as the foundation of your cloud preparation.
Lead
- The effectiveness of your cloud adoption is determined by both top-down directives from sponsors and bottom-up momentum from cross-functional cooperation among your teams.
Learn
- Both attempts to upskill your IT employees and expertise supplied by third-party contractors and partners influence your capacity to continue learning.
Scale
- The amount to which you abstract away your infrastructure using managed and serverless cloud services determines your capacity to scale in the cloud.
Secure
- Controlling who may access and influence which resources and identifying the data that has to be protected are two ways to secure the security of your cloud estate.
4. Google Cloud solutions
Use AI-powered, industry-focused combinations of our products and services to solve your most difficult business problems. Some of the cloud solutions are:
- Firstly, for the retail value chain, analytics and collaboration solutions are available.
- Secondly, solutions for CPG brand growth and digital transformation.
- Thirdly, to improve the industrial value chain, use migration and AI techniques.
- Next, the automotive value chain is undergoing digital revolution.
- Then, cloud-based digital supply chain solutions.
- Lastly, energy firms can benefit from multicloud and hybrid solutions.
5. Prepare with Practice Tests
The Cloud Digital Leader practice exams will familiarise you with the format of the questions as well as possible exam topics. However, taking practice exams is critical for enhancing your preparation. By evaluating yourself with Cloud Digital leader practice exams, you will learn about your weak and strong areas. Additionally, you will be able to enhance your response abilities, allowing you to save significant time during the exam. So, to prepare for the exam, go online and look for the best practice exam tests.
