should I take a 2-year HPE commitment or move toward Cloud/DevOps?

[u/Less_Let_4216]

I’ve completed around 6 months in my first job at a System Integrator, and I’m currently getting ₹25k/month. My work has been mainly infrastructure — HPE servers, VMware ESXi/vCenter, Hyper-V, Veeam, Windows Server, networking, Palo Alto, storage, etc. Since it’s an SI, I get exposure to different clients and technologies, but most of my work is implementation and technical support.

Now my company is considering spending around ₹3–4 lakh on HPE training and professional certifications for me, but they want a 1–2 year commitment in return. If I take it, I would probably become more specialized in HPE/VMware/infrastructure.

At the same time, I’ve started getting very interested in Linux, cloud, automation, Terraform, CI/CD and DevOps. I haven’t worked professionally on these yet, but these are the areas that genuinely make me curious. My current company being an SI also means I probably won’t get much DevOps exposure here.

So I’m confused about which direction is better for me:

1. Stay here for 2 years, take the HPE certification and build a career in enterprise infrastructure/virtualization/storage/networking.

2. Stay another 6–12 months, keep building cloud/automation skills on my own, and then move toward Cloud/DevOps/Platform roles.

I’m also seeing some of my friends working as SWEs at companies like Microsoft/Google and earning very well, which has made me question whether I should also consider SWE, although I’m not sure yet whether I actually enjoy software development enough to make that my career.

So what I really want to understand is: with my current background, what kind of engineer should I try to become, and would you recommend that I specialize in infrastructure through this HPE opportunity or keep my options open and move toward Cloud/DevOps?

I don't want to make the decision just based on immediate salary. I want to choose the path that gives me the strongest technical growth and career opportunities over the next 5–10 years. What would you do in my position?