Most major cloud vendors operate an enablement program certifying the skills needed for a ‘Solution Architect’ role using their products. There are many courses, certifications, and books about the role but all seem to contain different themes.
A simple search on job boards, LinkedIn, and other sites also shows that the demand for this role is growing.
However, what exactly is involved in this role? Why would an IT professional aspire to it?
Personally, I have a passion for learning technology and have always remained technical, resisting the managerial & hands-off career tracks.
Is the modern solution architect role still a good fit? Some thoughts that spring to my mind;
- What is the role?
- Why does a business need to employ one?
- I thought this was all bundled in; shouldn’t SaaS include it?
- The value of the solution architect
The cloud in the world of infinite resources. Elastic in nature with multiple vendors competing for consumer data, sector adoption and field consumption.
How does a business choose the right technology, solution and be successful with their own business mission at the same time?
Enter the role of the cloud solution architect.
“A cloud solution architect is an IT professional, a trusted technologist who can form and articulate a well-educated opinion to help a business be successful and meet their goals”.
Vendors provide a wealth of documentation, white papers & content. All are aimed at showing value to encourage adoption by their customers. A skilled solution architect must quickly upskill, review, and develop an informed opinion to help their client.
Applying example best practices or design patterns to businesses or services can help IT professionals understand technology much more; they have their place and should be reviewed.
However, ‘What is a best practice?’, ‘Why & Should it be used?” reviewing recommended or previously used practices, understanding if they are tested & validated solutions for particular business sectors, then forming an independent opinion if they are suitable for a specific business project is another way a solution architect can show value.
Protecting the business current working technology is also a major part of the solution architect role.
The ease of incorporation of new technology is something that is often underestimated. Vendors of all sizes will explain how easy a new technology is to consume and transform a customer for the better. However, a solution architect needs to understand the impact on the business and how to mitigate, help, and ensure a safe transition. How do you migrate, upgrade, consume, and transition? What happens during the transition, can it reverse, how can someone exit? Who is responsible for what?
These types of activities, while loosely reflected in certification exams, are generally not the focus of a certification. Vendor certifications are created to help with adoption of consumption of the vendors technology. Normally seen as a cost or, in some cases, a side project. The main function of a tech vendor is not enabling others with the knowledge of using technology but selling the actual technology and associated services.
A solution architect, while reviewing content provided by a vendor, can look to form logical designs, thoughst and decsions based on common business sectors, these reusable designs can be developed into example code (Even small snippets). This activity can help a solution archiect build relevant experience quicklly for new projects and develop a person much more than just studying a certification alone.
These little examples of understanding, & developing a technology for a business use case can also be used at interviews and project scoping, pre/post sales discussions. Developing this kind of material can also bring about the formation of personal ‘best practices’ to show the depth of technical skill and architecture prowess at the same time.
It is always hard to start the journey of learning something new, where do you even start?
A vendor-based certification is just one aspect of building an IT career & a solid technical skillset; achieving a certification is always a big milestone but is not the full acquisition of the complete story to work as a solution architect with the specfic technology.
Important areas to consider on how to use knowledge promoted from a certification, develop a mixture of soft skills, understand how to assess architecture risks of implementation, create design patterns & justify the decisions with anti-patterns. Remembering to be aware of integration or touch points with existing solutions and appreciate the operational impact.
Simply put, what a solution archiect needs to know is enough information to construct an ‘informed’ opinion to solve a business problem with technology and be able to articulate it effectively with other people to help implement it.