Although I’m only a few months into my role as a Cloud Solution Architect at Microsoft, I’ve given a lot of thought about what this role means and how to explain it those individuals that might not be as tech-savvy. In this post, I’ll walk through a few baseline definitions to set the stage, my understanding of the role and why I think it’s important.

First, a Few Definitions

In true architect fashion, I’ll break down the more complex, three-word title into its individual parts - cloud, solution and architect - and then bring it all back together at the end.

Cloud - a network of remote servers hosted on the Internet and used to store, manage, and process data in place of local servers or personal computers.

Let’s expand upon that a bit and try to shine some light on what this means in the context of this role. The “cloud” refers to a public network of computational power - including storage, networking, security and processing - that companies like Microsoft, Google and Amazon invest in and provide access to in exchange for payment.

In other words, these companies, along with many others, have made significant investments in physical locations that host servers (along with a plethora of other services) with ridiculous amounts of computational power. In exchange for this large and unwieldy up-front cost, cloud providers charge companies only for the computational power they use.

And so far, it seems like this is a mutually beneficial model. Companies of any size offload the up-front costs of maintaining, upgrading and procuring an on-premises data center to the cloud solution providers, who regularly ensure the latest and greatest hardware is available in their data centers.

So, simply put - the cloud refers to computational power that cloud providers rent out over the internet to customers based upon usage.

Where the term “cloud computing” originated is a source of heated debate.

Want to learn more about what a Microsoft data center looks like? Check out this article or view this video.

Solution - a means of solving a problem or dealing with a difficult situation.

Typically, companies that want to leverage cloud computing have problems they believe the cloud can help solve. Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as throwing the cloud buzzword at the problem and standing back to marvel at your technical prowess. The cloud is complex and there is certainly more than one way to solve a problem.

In order to have a solution, you must begin with a problem. Large companies could find that they have outgrown processes established for a more lightweight company and look to the cloud to find efficiencies. Small companies might argue that they require the flexibility to ramp up computational workloads during times of high demand but want to scale back while experiencing low demand. Another company could require extremely fast computation of significantly large volumes of data. The cloud is something that these problems could certainly help to solve.

The key here is that problems should be the driving force of exploring cloud solutions. In the consumption-based business of cloud computing, both the cloud provider and the customer benefit if the cost of consumption is fueling a solution to a challenging business problem. Stated differently, in order for a customer to justify the expense of cloud computation, they should be generating value in some way as a result of the cloud consumption.

Architect - design and make.

This definition of architect is simple and useful. The Cloud Solution Architect role is not only responsible for the design and blueprints of a solution but also responsible for overseeing the implementation. There are a number of considerations when preparing for the implementation of a cloud-based solution.

Solution design should primarily (and certainly initially) focus on the problem. Why is this a problem in the first place? What happens if you don’t change your actions at all? Is the pain of staying the same greater than the pain of change? Addressing the root of a legitimate (or costly) problem is the basis of a sound solution.

With hundreds of services grouped into close to two dozen categories, the Directory of Azure Cloud Services shines a light at just how much you can do with the cloud. And just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. That’s why initially focusing on the problem generates such resilient and beneficial solutions. We could talk about cloud services all day (even every day for a week) and not even make a dent in solving your problem. Think of this list as an inventory of the Architect’s toolbox.

Once the business problem is fully understood, the cloud-based solution will likely leverage multiple cloud services. Choosing one over another and linking synergistic services together is where the architect lens is beneficial.

After coming up with a design linking several cloud services together, testing out the solution in a hands-on, fail-fast approach provides real-time feedback to the solution design. After a few iterations with milestones of proving the concept, recognizing value and implementing to production, a solution is thoroughly tested and vetted.

Now Let’s Bring It All Together

Hopefully that helps to explain the individual components of what being a Cloud Solution Architect means. This role is intended to help customers design and implement cloud-based solutions.

If you have a complex or costly business problem that would require flexible or wide-spread computational power, the cloud is likely something you should explore. The Cloud Solution Architect role will help to address and solidify the business problem, propose a collection of cloud services to address that problem and see the solution through to implementation.

Because there are so many services within cloud-based platforms, oftentimes certain patterns emerge for common workloads. There can be focus on application development and modernization, applying data science and machine learning, modern data warehousing, helping to automate manual business processes, and the list goes on.

Specializations are beginning to surface, where groups of certain skill sets are being realized. Two flavors of Cloud Solution Architects at Microsoft are Apps & Infrastructure and Data & AI.

Apps & Infrastructure Cloud Solution Architects (or CSAs, in Microsoft short-hand) focus on what it takes to develop cloud-based applications. Instead of handling the complexity of procuring the right on-premises hardware, Apps & Infra CSAs help modernize the application development process and enable developers to focus on developing instead of handling infrastructure investments.

Data & AI CSAs focus on enabling organizations to use data from various business systems and leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning to facilitate decision-making. Data warehousing, advanced analytics, and data platform are all within their wheelhouse.

Summary

In this article, I’ve shared my perspective on what it means to be a Cloud Solution Architect. Please kindly note the disclaimer below.

The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the text belong solely to the author, and not necessarily to the author’s employer, organization, committee or other group or individual.