Calling all azure (or maybe AWS) experts

[Banzai_Joe]

Hi,
looking for advice.
I was recently made redundant after being a Group ICT Manager for 13 years (2 weeks prior to promotion to Director ). I have good technical experience and expertise but no real quals to quantify what i've done. A lot of my job was the managing of the whole infrastructure (strategic and hands-on). The heavier tech stuff like cloud etc were managed services so i didn't really touch then.
I've picked back up on the CCNA course i started 4 years ago but never finished with the view to taking the exam and adding the cert to add to my CV.
My main aim is to get into cloud stuff like Azure. I have had very limited exposure to Azure as i deployed/administrated o365 into our domain, but this was mostly done from the o365 portal.

So, for the Azure geeks out there, what's the best cert/course to start with please? I'm likely looking at role-based (Azure Administrator?) but at the same time i need a course that assumes no prior knowledge of cloud computing. If i get on with it so to speak i'd then like to pursue to the next logical cert.

Been out of work now for 6 weeks, really didn't think that with my experience it would take this long, but.....i was wrong and i think my paper thin CV (quals wise) is in part to blame. Some of the eejits at agencies cannot look past the quals list and see that at my age and experience can count for a lot more.

So, any advice would be most appreciated.

 

[Banzai_Joe]

Lizardking; thanks for the links, i've enrolled on the 3 IaaS courses just cos they're free with the code. I was doing a free course on learning tree which cames with labs, but then i found out its free for a reason; the azure portal is much newer than their course material so trying to find the new way of doing things that are described in the old way, especially when you're studying something new isn't a nice experience, so i canned it.
memyselfandi; my experience over the past 6 weeks of searching is that Azure is appearing in job descriptions more than AWS.
What's kind of put me off AWS is the ridiculous amount of certifications they offer. I get that its a continuing/developing platform but seriously, there'll be scores of people obsessed with simply gaining each qual. It's a money-making scam imho. And the more certs they offer the more likely that the 'one' i do becomes obsolete/irrelevant much quicker. Not having that!

But thanks guys, good advice all round, keep it coming if you have more to add.
Much appreciated.