Technical architect, solutions architect, cloud architect, enterprise architect, business
architect. Are you confused in the alphabet soup of architecture? If so, this video is for you.
Hi, my name is Michael Gibbs and I'm the founder and CEO of Go Cloud Architects
and we're an organization dedicated towards building high-performance cloud computing
and networking careers. Personally, I've been working in technology for over 25 years and
I've been helping others get their first tech job or get promoted in tech for over two decades now,
and what a feeling it is. In the last 27 years, I've been a technical architect, a solutions
architect, a cloud architect, an enterprise architect, and a business architect, and they're
all very different. And every day people ask me architecture questions and there seems so much
confusion. And I believe it's because people get these roles completely mixed up because
they're often clumped together as if they're a single role, but they are very different. We're
going to begin with the technical architect role because this is so much different than the rest.
The technical architect is a very technical position, is truthfully a hybrid between an
architect and an engineer. So this is a position for a deeply technical, highly capable engineer.
So if you've got an engineer that's really great and they have much deeper skills than the rest
of the engineers, and you don't know what to do with them because they don't want to move into
management, but they're also not super, super, super business savvy. And you don't know what to
do with them, you make them a technical architect because it's a position above the engineer, but
it's less than typically the bigger architecture roles with regard to communication skills,
executive presence, emotional intelligence, ROI modeling, business acumen. It's a more
technical position. So this looks unlike other architect position, this is deeply technical.
So a person who's a technical architect may actually build the things they design.
They may actually do some coding, they may actually do some scripting.
This is a technical role. Again, very different from the other architecture roles.
This is the farthest away from the CXO level audience, meaning the CEO, the CIO, the CTO. This
is a position for a great technical professional that also understands end to end system design.
That's called a technical architect, this is the most technical of the roles.
Now the next role in this group is something called a solutions architect.
Now this is a 50/50 technical/business position. It requires a lot of technical competency,
but on a single vendors platform. So an expert in Azure, an expert in AWS,
an expert in GCP or Oracle cloud, for example, or even an expert of a single vendors network,
like a Cisco solutions architect. This is a moderately technical role, 50% technical,
50% business, but it requires extreme knowledge of a single vendor's technology solution.
So like all the major architecture roles, it's a cross between an executive and an
engineering role. And this is a design role. So a solutions architect is a systems designer,
a solutions architect like most architects will start with the customer's executive.
They will ask the business, the legal, the technical regulatory requirements, and they
will help the organization craft the technology solution to improve their business performance.
This is a solutions architect. It requires strong communication skills, strong leadership skills,
excellent soft skills, plenty of executive presence or gravitas, whichever term you use,
strong presentation skills, strong sales skills on lots of business acumen.
Again, this is a hybrid technical/executive position. This is the second most technical
of all the positions along the way with the technical architect, being the most technical.
Now, as we move up into these architecture roles, the next role will be a cloud architect.
Now, this is a moderately technical position, a little less technical than
the solutions architect, which means a little more business. This is a very global position,
this covers all vendors and all technology platforms. See when you're a cloud architect,
it's really having deep knowledge of all the underlying technologies that make the cloud work,
meaning the things in the network, the things in the data center. Because what do we do as cloud
architects, we take things from the network and the data center, and we move them to the cloud
and we can't move things that we don't understand. So we as cloud architects focus on end to end
systems design. So end to end system design is not on a single vendor's product. In reality,
a multi-cloud environment which has become the normal remove single points of failure.
You would never connect all of your network together with just AT&T or just Verizon,
or just NTT or just CenturyLink or any service provider, you always use a combination.
So for organizations that are on the cloud that want real cloud performance and high availability,
and they're using multiple clouds. So the cloud architect is going to be that expert that can
design that end to end solution. Again, a position of big communication skills, lots of leadership,
excellent soft skills, lots of executive presence, extreme emotional intelligence,
strong presentation skills, soft skills, and business acumen. Again,
this is a leadership role with technology, so it's still moderately technical. Again,
this is a position where we design systems. So we're not going to be coding, we're not going
to be configuring, we are systems designers as cloud architects. This is a great position as a
hybrid business slash technology position. People here will know how to do end to end system designs
with the data center, with the cloud, with multiple clouds all at the same time.
Now the next position is called an enterprise architect. This is a great role toO, and I've held
this role also. This is what I call a somewhat technical position. It's about transforming a
business's operations with technology. So this requires full spectrum end-to-end knowledge
of technology. Knowledge of applications that organizations use, knowledge of IT platforms,
knowledge of other non-IT, but tech platforms. Anything you can do to improve an organization's
business through the use of technology, this is about digital transformation. This is a
75% executive position, 25% technical. So this is a leadership position with some technology
knowledge. This is a place that I really enjoyed being in. And this is a place where you're going
to design an end-to-end solution of a whole lot of different kinds of technology with the help and
support of an organization's tech team. So you're not going to be designing these systems yourself.
You're going to be a business leader. You're going to be interfacing with the organization, CEO, CFO,
CIO CTO. You're going to be right up there and not part of it. And you're going to be crafting
solutions for the organization, or you could work for a service provider that does this as managed
services or like a communications' vendor, they have people that help organizations with their
end to end systems design. A wonderful role, a super high paying role, because you're now
getting closer to the executive position. The more executive, the more customer facing you are,
the higher you'll be paid. Unfortunately, in today's world, in technology, the closer you
are to the tech, the engineering side, the farther you are from the sale or the money, realistically
speaking tends to be the lower the salary. So this enterprise architect is a very highly paid
position. It's a very strategic position. It's typically director level, VP level or above.
Now the last kind of architect, which is something I've done, which is fun, is called a business
architect. This is not a tech position at all, this is a pure business position. This is about
mapping an organizations' strategy to execution. This includes assisting an organization with the
people, processes and technology and optimizing business processes, optimizing technology,
optimizes how users communicate. It's about making the business better, transforming the business.
This is a pure leadership position, it requires extreme business acumen, lots of executive
presence, lots of CXO relevancy, lots of sales skills, lots of management, presentation skills,
all of it. So see, we've talked about a lot of different kinds of architects.
We've talked about a technical architect, this is a deeply technical position. And when people
think architects are really technical, they're thinking of a technical architect position, which
is different than a solutions architect position. A solutions architect is an end-to-end system
design with a single vendor solution like all AWS or all Azure or GCP or all Cisco, for example.
A cloud architect is a person who designs end-to-end systems
on the cloud to help transform an organization's business across clouds, across data centers.
An enterprise architect is about helping an organization improve their business
processes and improve their performance through the use of technology. And lastly,
a business architect is about optimizing and redesigning a business and business processes
to help the business become more efficient, more profitable, grow faster, or what have you.
I hope you've enjoyed in this presentation on technical architects, solution architects,
cloud architects, enterprise architects, and business architects. We know in our heart that
if you know exactly the kind of architect you choose to be, you can build the perfect
career development plan and get to your goals as fast as possible. Hope you've enjoyed this
video. And I look forward to seeing you in another video very soon, take care, everyone.
It was so nice having you join us for this video today. Let me tell you about some free services we
do for the cloud community. Twice per week we have a free "How to get your first cloud architect job
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I look forward to seeing you and I look forward to assisting you in your technology career.
Thank you so much. This is Michael Gibbs from Go Cloud Architects.