Do you want to be a Cloud Architect ? Are you stuck in a Sysadmin / DBA job ,and want to transition into the Cloud? Are you interested , but do not know how/where to start ? Then, you are in the right place . This is Part 1 of a 3-Part series , where I share the secret sauce how best to get started on the journey to become a Cloud Architect , and enhance your career.

2. Azure Dublin Meetu
Hugo Barona Elkhan Yusubov

4. Meet Sam .
Sam has around 10 years
of experience in IT as a
SysAdmin + IT Operator.
Sam recently completed 3
cloud certification exams.

5. With his newfound cloud
knowledge , Sam attends a
Cloud Architecture
interview for a prestigious
IT firm .

6. Unfortunately , the interview
does not go well . He is asked
about topics he had not
encountered in the cloud
certification exams ,and
as a result -
he gets rejected .

7. Meet Stephanie .
She works as a Lead
Developer in an IT
company.
She has developed quite a
few products using cloud
services.

8. She is asked to take over
the role of a Cloud
Architect for a large-scale
application which will be
published across the
enterprise.

9. She delivers the product , but it
is neither scalable ,nor resilient
enough , even though she is a
great coder , and had put the
best programming standards in
place .
She loses the trust of the client
and as a consequence , her
manager.

11. So , the million $ question is –
1 . What went wrong ?
2 . What did they (particularly) do wrong
?
3 . How can I/you prevent myself/ourself
from doing the same mistakes?

13. Let me (briefly) introduce myself -

14. Currently , an Assistant Director,
Cloud Practice at EY (Ernst & Young).
Before that I led the CCOE ( Cloud
Centre Of Excellence Team ) at Accenture.
Have 10+ years of IT experience , working on
Cloud since 2017.
But , most importantly (and I want to
focus on this for a minute) , I successfully transitioned
my career
from being a C#,SQL developer
to a CSA(Cloud Solution Architect).

15. My journey

16. What happened in 2017-2018 ?
1 . Realization that I needed to
transition to something else ( Most
important).
2 . I documented my purpose / future
goals clearly.
3 . Then , I took appropriate steps to
enable my cloud journey.

17. I want to help you do the same , in case
you guys are interested in making
this transition !!

18. It doesn’t necessarily matter who you are right now -
All roads lead to Rome , Cloud Architect
Ref - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2pXoh3Cmo8

19. All you need to do is
START !
Ref - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2pXoh3Cmo8

20. I will try to leave 5-10 minutes at the
end to address any queries you might
have on this topic.
So , you can ask the questions on chat .
If I cannot answer them during the session
I promise , I will personally reach out to you ,
and answer them later.

22. Overall Agenda (Part I , 2 and 3 ) -

23. Agenda (Part I ) -

24. Before ,we get into how to
become a cloud architect ,
we need to first understand
the basics.
Note –
Getting the basics right is very important.
In this ever-changing landscape of myriad technologies , it
is only possible to stay relevant , if you understand the
foundation topics well .
The trick to note here is that the fundamentals / basics
have not changed that much over the years.
They have (kind of) stood the test of time .
Today there is Kubernetes tomorrow there will be
something else , but the essence will stay the same (
mostly ).

25. If we do not start with the basics
there is a high chance that ,
we will fall into one of the 2
scenarios that I mentioned at the
start of the presentation.

26. Ok , but what is architecture ?

27. IEEE 1471:2000 definition -
‘’The fundamental organization of a system embodied
in its components, their relationships to each other,
and to the environment, and the principles guiding
its design and evolution.’’

29. Grady Booch , IBM Fellow
“architecture represents the set of
significant design decisions that shape
the structure and behaviour
of a system where significance
is measured by cost of change.’’
Ref - https://twitter.com/grady_booch/status/1257355498598342656?lang=en

30. Martin Fowler
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DngAZyWMGR0
“the set of design decisions
that must be made early”
What is architecture ?

31. Matthew Parker , previously Global Head
of engineering – Pivotal Labs
“Architecture , in the field of
software development ,
are decisions that are hard to reverse ”

32. Some examples could be -
“Whether to deploy our application on container based
compute environment like Kubernetes or go with
a serverless model like AWS Lambda? ”
“Whether to go with synchronous API-based
communication or use a event-bus based asynchronous
messaging system like RabbitMQ/AWS SQS? ”
OR
OR
“What programming language do you use for your
application development? ”

34. Ok , then who/what are architects ?

36. “Architects have a holistic understanding
of the system , across a different spectrum
of views and viewpoints , and they offer a
different perspective of the
system/design.”

37. “The architect doesn’t have
to be the smartest
person in the room.
Instead they make
everyone else smarter.”
Gregor Hohpe ,
Enterprise Strategist , AWS
https://architectelevator.com/architecture/multiple-dimensions/

38. Anatomy of a Cloud Architect

39. Why do we need architecture ?

41. Architecture matters -
“Bad architecture / no architecture slows down the ability of our customers to compete , as over time it becomes
harder and harder to ship new features”

42. https://martinfowler.com/bliki/DesignStaminaHypothesis.html
Let me explain ,

43. Ref - https://betterprogramming.pub/agile-
architecture-intent-vs-the-immediate-36d327289b2d
Agile architecture - Immediate Architecture to
Architecture Intent

44. But , what does this have to
do with me ?
Why do I (personally) care about
software/cloud architecture ?
Why would I want to become a Cloud
Architect?

45. https://info.flexera.com/CM-REPORT-State-of-the-Cloud
“Almost all organizations are using at least one cloud”
Reason 1 – Cloud adoption is increasing

46. https://info.flexera.com/CM-REPORT-State-of-the-Cloud
Reason 2 – Companies are spending
money on cloud

47. Reason 3 - Because , a 2020 survey by
the Job
search engine Indeed says – “Software
Architect is the best job ”
Look around you , you will see
that architects are typically
paid 5-10x , the salary
of standalone engineers/developers.

49. What is cloud architecture ?

51. Cloud architecture is the way technology components combine to build a cloud,
in which resources are pooled through
virtualization technology and shared across a network.
The components of a cloud architecture include:
• A front-end platform (the client or device used to access the cloud)
• A back-end platform (servers and storage)
• A cloud-based delivery model
• A network

53. If I had to define Cloud Architecture , or focus on a part of it , that makes the most sense to me , is to go with
the below analogy -
Pets Vs Cattle – At a high-level , if you understand this
you understand the basics of cloud architecture

55. Your implementation of these architectural
attributes might vary from use-case to use-case , but
If you can ensure that your architecture
respects this set of constraints , then you can confidently
claim that you have created a “well-architected design”

56. Noticed something ?
Essentially , even in the cloud,
nothing has changed that much .
All the constraints / quality
attributes that you
needed to maintain in your datacenter
based applications are relevant even now ,
more so than ever .

57. Moving / migrating to the cloud , does not
mean that you do not need to think about
Scalability any more .
The same constraints are present in the cloud also ,
but the toolchain available is more robust and
easy-to-consume.

58. Even at a high-level , the AWS WAF ( Well-Architected
Framework ) emphasizes the same NFR(s)

59. The cloud might
be new , but the
essence of
architecture
remains the
same .

60. Essentially , the attributes that public cloud offer , for
example – infinite compute , pay as you go offering and
so on , helps architects in building solutions that
respect the quality attributes we discussed before .
Cloud Platforms / Cloud Service
Providers (AWS, Azure, GCP) help
architects in building better
solutions.

61. And these are
called – Non
Functional
Requirements

62. Normally , in architecture design , there
are different types of requirements
• Functional
• UI
• Business/Domain
• Non-Functional (NFR)

63. Being a cloud architect , you should
focus on documenting , defining ,
implementing and managing the NFR(s)
of the system you are designing.
Typically , these will be documented in SADs (
Solution Architecture Documents )

64. Quite frankly , architecture is more complicated -
But , it is better to get started with the quantifiable
ones ..

66. Cloud-native architectures

67. Cornelia Davis , Amazon , Cloud
Foundry
“CLOUD-NATIVE = LOOSELY COUPLED
RUNNING IN THE CLOUD”
“Cloud is where you compute ,
Cloud-native is how you compute”
Ref - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpZHLtu8mj0&t=1045s

68. Principles of Cloud-native architectures
https://www.ibm.com/cloud/architecture/architecture/practices/cloud-native-principles/

69. “At a high-level , if you really think about it ,
Cloud native architecture principles
are just extensions of the best practices/standards
that enforces the same NFR(s)
that we discussed”

70. Let’s take an example –
One of the key principles of cloud native architectures
is immutability .
This means that the infrastructure is not modified in
place after deployment .
This means that we must have an automated way of
creating
a new instance of an application .
This means that if our existing application is down , we can
quickly create a new instance.
This means my application is (as a consequence) RELIABLE

71. So , simply put cloud-native application
architectures are a way to build better applications
that work better , scale better , are more reliable ,
take full advantage of the cloud , provided
you play by the rules .

72. The last part is very important – you need to play by the
rules .
Cloud service providers like AWS ,Azure OR cloud native
platforms like Kubernetes , VMWare Tanzu are here
to help , but you still need to architect your
system correctly.
And that is where cloud architects come into play.

73. Cloud-native is an approach to
build & run applications that can
leverage the advantages of the
cloud computing model.
In a nutshell ,

74. Cloud native is a big topic , stretching across a lot
of components -

75. High-level mind-map :

76. Okay , let’s take a step back
and look at what we covered till now .

77. I spent a lot of time on the basics in Part 1 ,
so that I can leverage this foundation
to concentrate on actual guidelines on how
you can start your journey in Parts 2 and 3.

78. There is no shortcut
to becoming a cloud
architect.
You need to spend
the required time ,
and effort .

79. So , coming back to the question we
started with at the beginning –
1 . What went wrong ?
2 . What did they do wrong ?
3 . How can I/you prevent myself/ourself
from doing the same mistakes?

80. Scenario 1 ( Sam ) – Needs to understand
how architecture is important , and how
to design applications that respect the
NFR(s) to get a Cloud architect role ; only
certifications are not enough !

81. Scenario 2 ( Stephanie ) – Only
programming/having a limited
perspective of a system will not help in
large-scale enterprise architecture.
Having a holistic view is equally
important , if not more.

82. Overall Journey -

83. SNEAK PEEK INTO PART 2 -
• We will discuss actual actionable steps
to enable your cloud journey.
• Will go over 10 concrete actions that
helped me in my journey when starting.
• Discuss tips & tricks to stay focused ,
and not get overwhelmed with the
abundance of knowledge available in
the market today.

84. Join me if you are free-

85. Scan below QR code to
contact me on LinkedIn
Or if you are URL kind-
of-a-guy , use the below
hyperlink -
TurjaChaudhuri-LinkedIn

88. Scalability
Ability to easily adapt to larger demand
by allowing greater supply.

89. Reliability
Ability to easily withstand interruptions
or failures.

90. Efficiency
Ability of the system
to easily perform at the required level.

91. Security
Ability to easily protect important
or trusted data from non-approved
entities.

92. Maintainability
Ability to easily manage and operate
a system over time.

93. Extensibility
Ability to easily add new features
to a system , by extending
existing modules.

94. Testability
Ability to easily test
a system for issues or bugs.

95. Observability
Ability to easily monitor a system
for changes / alerts.