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CloudProfessionalAQS-CMS

IICTI Certified Cloud Migration Specialist

Professional certification covering 10 modules, from portfolio rationalisation, 7Rs disposition and migration business case to post-migration FinOps, resilience and performance optimization.

Exam
1 h 30 min
Questions
120
Pass mark
70%
Valid for
3 years

About this certification

Holders demonstrate that they can apply and evaluate portfolio rationalisation, 7Rs disposition and migration business case, telemetry-driven discovery and application dependency mapping, landing zone architecture, guardrails and compliance-by-design and hybrid network, DNS and connectivity engineering for migration, plus 6 further areas, in realistic professional scenarios, as defined in the AQSCERT scheme for Cloud Migration Specialist.

Who it is for: Professionals working, or preparing to work, in cloud roles.

Syllabus

What you'll be assessed on — 10 modules. The percentage is each module's share of the exam.
  1. 01Portfolio rationalisation, 7Rs disposition and migration business case10% of the exam
    • Evaluate an enterprise portfolio and design a defensible disposition and business case that sequences value, risk and licensing constraints.
    • Scope: Application portfolio rationalisation, 7Rs/TIME disposition, TCO and NPV modelling, migration readiness assessment, cloud adoption frameworks (CAF, Well-Architected), licensing (BYOL, Windows/SQL Server, Oracle) and executive sponsorship.
  2. 02Telemetry-driven discovery and application dependency mapping10% of the exam
    • Analyze discovery telemetry to build accurate dependency graphs and move groups that minimise cross-boundary latency and cutover risk.
    • Scope: Agent-based and agentless discovery, NetFlow/eBPF/connection-table analysis, CMDB reconciliation, rightsizing from utilisation percentiles, hidden dependencies (batch, DNS, hard-coded IPs, licence servers) and move-group affinity analysis.
  3. 03Landing zone architecture, guardrails and compliance-by-design10% of the exam
    • Architect a scalable, governed landing zone whose preventive and detective guardrails satisfy regulatory and organisational requirements before workloads arrive.
    • Scope: Multi-account/subscription/project hierarchies, policy-as-code (SCPs, Azure Policy, OPA), IaC pipelines, centralised logging, data residency and sovereignty, shared responsibility and regulatory controls (GDPR, DORA, NIS2, ISO/IEC 27017).
  4. 04Hybrid network, DNS and connectivity engineering for migration10% of the exam
    • Design and troubleshoot resilient hybrid connectivity and name resolution that support replication traffic, coexistence and cutover.
    • Scope: Dedicated interconnects vs IPsec VPN, BGP route preference and failover, hub-and-spoke and transit topologies, IP overlap and NAT, MTU/MSS, hybrid DNS forwarding and split-horizon, egress control and bandwidth planning for replication.
  5. 05Identity federation, privileged access and workload identity migration10% of the exam
    • Design identity migration that preserves authentication paths, removes long-lived credentials and enforces least privilege across hybrid estates.
    • Scope: AD/Entra ID hybrid identity, SAML/OIDC federation, Kerberos and LDAP dependencies, service accounts, workload identity federation, PAM and break-glass, least privilege, CIEM and secret migration to managed vaults.
  6. 06Database and large-scale data migration engineering10% of the exam
    • Engineer data migration pipelines that meet RPO, downtime and integrity targets at scale with verifiable reconciliation.
    • Scope: Homogeneous vs heterogeneous migration, CDC and log-based replication, schema conversion, LOB and sequence handling, offline transfer appliances, throughput calculation, data validation and reconciliation, object storage migration.
  7. 07Replatforming, refactoring and incremental modernization patterns10% of the exam
    • Evaluate modernization options and lead incremental refactoring that reduces risk while moving workloads to cloud-native platforms.
    • Scope: Strangler fig, anti-corruption layer, branch by abstraction, containerisation and Kubernetes replatforming, managed services adoption, session/state externalisation, 12-factor remediation and mainframe/legacy offload patterns.
  8. 08Wave planning, migration factory operations and automation10% of the exam
    • Lead a migration factory that sequences waves by dependency and risk and sustains predictable, automated throughput.
    • Scope: Wave sequencing and pilot selection, migration factory roles and runbooks, block-level rehost replication tooling, automation pipelines, throughput metrics, change freeze windows, RACI and vendor coordination.
  9. 09Cutover engineering, rollback design and hypercare10% of the exam
    • Design and lead cutovers with measurable acceptance criteria, rehearsed rollback and controlled hypercare exit.
    • Scope: Cutover runbooks and go/no-go criteria, DNS TTL management, blue/green and canary cutover, data freeze and final sync, point-of-no-return, rollback and fallback replication, hypercare, SLO-based acceptance and incident handling.
  10. 10Post-migration FinOps, resilience and performance optimization10% of the exam
    • Optimize migrated workloads for cost, resilience and performance using measured data and FinOps governance.
    • Scope: FinOps Framework phases, commitment-based discounts, rightsizing and autoscaling, storage tiering and egress cost, tagging and unit economics, DR patterns and RTO/RPO, observability and decommissioning of source estates.

Exam blueprint

Multiple-choice examination (120 questions, 4 options, single correct answer) built from professional scenarios.
Questions per module120 questions · 1 h 30 min · pass 70%
  • Portfolio rationalisation, 7Rs disposition and migration business case12
  • Telemetry-driven discovery and application dependency mapping12
  • Landing zone architecture, guardrails and compliance-by-design12
  • Hybrid network, DNS and connectivity engineering for migration12
  • Identity federation, privileged access and workload identity migration12
  • Database and large-scale data migration engineering12
  • Replatforming, refactoring and incremental modernization patterns12
  • Wave planning, migration factory operations and automation12
  • Cutover engineering, rollback design and hypercare12
  • Post-migration FinOps, resilience and performance optimization12
Question types
Single choice 100%
Delivery
Online (remote proctored), Test centre, On-site (corporate)
Retakes
Up to three attempts within any 12-month period. A 14-day waiting period applies after a first unsuccessful attempt and 30 days after a second. Each retake requires a new booking and fee. Retakes draw a different randomised form from the question bank.

Provisional cut score — psychometric validation is required before live delivery. Blueprint v1.0.

Your path to certification

  1. 1

    Register

    Create a free account and start the programme.

  2. 2

    Practice

    Online practice test (coming soon).

  3. 3

    Training

    Optional

    Online course or classroom — or skip it.

  4. 4

    Certification

    Independent exam and certification decision.

Training is optional and does not by itself confer certification. Find a training partner

Eligibility & prerequisites

Required

  • Valid government-issued photo identification
  • Agreement to abide by the AQSCERT Code of Professional Conduct

Recommended

  • No formal prerequisites; relevant professional experience is strongly recommended

More information

Certification process
  1. 1. Application — Create an account and apply for this certification.
  2. 2. Eligibility review — AQSCERT checks the formal eligibility requirements.
  3. 3. Assessment — Sit the 1 h 30 min examination online or at a test centre.
  4. 4. Independent decision — A decision maker not involved in your training or assessment reviews all evidence.
  5. 5. Issuance — A digitally signed certificate with QR verification, valid for 3 years.
  6. 6. Recertification — Before expiry, evidence 60 hours of CPD or re-sit the examination.
  7. Certificates may be suspended, withdrawn or revoked in line with the Certification Scheme. Status is always shown on the public verification page.
Scheme & accreditation
Certification scheme
Cloud Certification Scheme
Scheme code
AQS-SCH-IT-08
Scheme version
v1.0 (effective 1 Jan 2026)

Accreditation: AQSCERT is accredited by DA, an IAF MLA signatory, to ISO/IEC 17024. Our programmes are developed by leading experts from industry.

Ready to start AQS-CMS?

Practise online, add optional training, then sit the independent exam.

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IICTI Certified Cloud Migration Specialist (AQS-CMS) · IICTI