Would you like to learn the difference between a cloud architect, a SysOps engineer and a
DevOps engineer? Well, if so, this video is for you.
Hi, my name is Michael Gibbs and I'm the founder and CEO of Go Cloud Architects. We're an organization
dedicated towards building high-performance cloud computing careers. I've been working
in technology for 25 years now, and I've been coaching and mentoring others for nearly two
decades.
Today we're going to talk about the differences between cloud architects, SysOps and DevOps.
And the reason we're going to do this is people come to me to learn how to find their first
cloud architect job, which is something we love to do. But then when people see job descriptions,
they just don't know where to start. So I want to kind of clarify these things so you
can learn how to get your first cloud architect job or your first SysOp job or your first
DevOp job so you can have a career that's going to make you very happy. Now, the reason
this is so important and the reason we're talking about this is I often look at cloud
architect jobs when they're posted. And when I look at these jobs, I can't figure out what
they are because these jobs are part cloud architect and then they're looking for a full
cloud engineer, and then they're looking for full SysOps and then they're looking for full
DevOps.
Now last week, we talked about the difference between a cloud architect and a cloud engineer.
And now, we're going to try and clarify some of the other cloud computing careers. Today.
We're going to start with the cloud architect. The cloud architect is a cross between an
engineer and a business executive. The job of a cloud architect is quite simply to know
all of the systems that make the cloud possible, which [inaudible 00:01:41] speaking are the
network and the data center that have been virtualized. The cloud architect is going
to be a customer facing position. It's going to be a position where you're going to meet
with an executive of the client. You're going to ask their business legal, and they're technical
challenges, regulatory requirements, and their goals. And from there, you're going to find
a technology solution that's going to meet the client's needs, that's going to improve
their business efficiency, enhance their profitability, reduce their costs, give them competitiveness
and a new service.
A cloud architect is someone that designs. They design solutions in the cloud. A cloud
architect may be migrating someone from the data center to the cloud if it's an existing
environment. A cloud Architect may be designing a hybrid solution where basically you have
that data center attached to the cloud. And a cloud architect could be designing a multi-cloud
solution. See, the cloud architect is a design position. Just like an architect designs a
building but they don't actually build the building, a cloud architect does the same
thing. They design the systems, but they don't actually build them. And that's very, very
important because if you're training on how to configure the systems and you want to work
as a cloud architect, your training is in the wrong direction. Likewise, if you want
to be doing automation resources and you're training to be a cloud architect, you're going
to have a hard time finding a job because it's a completely different skillset. So we
talked about the cloud architect being a design position, someone who design systems to meet
a client's business legal and technological requirement.
Now, let's talk about SysOps. So what is SysOps? SysOps is really an operations role. See,
we previously had roles like systems administrator. Well, that's now SysOps. SysOps are all our
people that try to automate or make the systems that the cloud architects actually design
or run, and run very efficiently. So what do SysOps people do? SysOps people will monitor
the health and utilization of your resources in the cloud. Your SysOps people are going
to do backups. Your SysOps people are going to do some automation, things like cloud formation
templates, Terraform. They might be doing some scripting with Python. SysOps professionals
might do some resource tagging, for example, to help identify costs. And they're going
to manage resources like your VPC, your EC2 instances. Your SysOps people are going to
work with other teams like networking and security. Let's talk about how we separated
these. The cloud architect designs, the SysOps people maintain.
Now, let's talk about DevOps because, again, it's a different profession. DevOps is going
to be a combination of both development and operations that are kind of married together.
You see, DevOps professionals, they oversee code releases and they also manage the deployment
process. And see, what's going on here is if you've got the development side and an
operation side and you marry them together, what you get is a very, very agile and a very
fast and a very solid software development release cycle. So DevOps is really just the
coordination between the development and the operations team. And that's where they're
getting this term DevOps operations. When you think of DevOps, think of something that's
going to accelerate the software development release cycle because you've coordinated the
development team and the operations team. And then think of DevOps people as those that
actually use DevOps tools. What are some of these DevOps type of tools that you think
about? They're things like Git, they're things like Jenkins or things like Chef.
So, when you're thinking about AWS jobs, or you're thinking about SysOps careers and you're
thinking about SysOps Associate versus an AWS Certified Solution Architect Professional
or anything in your cloud career, make sure you understand exactly what the job is. So
when people come to me and they say, "How do I get my first cloud job?" Or, "How do
I get my first cloud architect job?" I say, "It's very important to know exactly what
it is that the job that you desire and focus your time, your effort, your training, and
everything you can towards achieving that goal." So now you know the difference between
a cloud architect, SysOps and DevOps.
Let's talk about some things that we do to assist the cloud architect community. Every
Monday and every Thursday, we have a free How to Get Your First Cloud Architect Job
webinar. And on these webinars, we teach you what you need to know to get hired. For example,
we talk about the level of competency that's required to get your first cloud architect
job. We talk about what employers desire. We talk about things to do to your resume
to make sure you can get hired to get that first cloud architect job. And we talk about
things like soft skills, emotional intelligence, anything that we can to give you some bonus
points along the way to help you get your first cloud architect job. And we do that
for free on every Monday and every Thursday.
Now on every Tuesday, we have a Cloud Architect Experience webinar. And on this webinar, what
we do is we actually talk to you about what it takes to get real hands on experience,
the kind of experience that employers desire to help you get your first cloud architect
job. See, we know that certification is not enough. Certification training is wonderful.
It teaches you the name of services and how to configure them. But as we've talked about,
a cloud architect is a design role, meeting with the client, learning the requirements
and then figuring out what to do. So with the Cloud Architect Experience webinar, we
talk about how to get that kind of experience, how to learn how all the systems work so you
can be functional as a cloud architect.
Many Wednesdays, but not all, but when we have time, we do it. On Wednesdays, we often
do a question and answer session where you can bring us any questions related to your
cloud computing career or a cloud architect career or your tech career in general, and
we will answer your questions in real time. We do those very frequently on almost every
Wednesday. Please subscribe to our channel. And from there, you'll be notified, especially
if you hit the bell of all of our YouTube live streams.
If you're in the process of getting certified, we have a completely free certification package.
We have a free AWS Certified Solution Architect Associate Training Program. I'll leave the
link in the description below. We have a free AWS Certified Solution Architect Associate
ebook, again, to help with your certification journey, and it's free. I'll leave the link
in the description below.
I want to thank you so much for watching this video. I have taken it as an extreme honor
and a privilege to be able to communicate with the cloud architect community as often
as we do with YouTube. And we love to speak with you. Thank you so much. And I look forward
to speaking to you on another video very soon.