Are you looking to learn how to become a cloud architect? If so, this video's for you.
Hi, my name is Michael Gibbs and I'm the founder and CEO of GoCloud Architects. And we're an
organization dedicated towards building high performance cloud computing careers.
In today's video, we're going to talk about how to become a cloud architect. Every day
people ask us how to become a cloud architect and we understand for good reason. A cloud
architect is one of the highest paid technology professionals, in fact, the average cloud
architect in the US earns over $153,000 dollars per year. And a good cloud architect can easily
are two to three times that, especially if you have the right communication skills and
business acumen. So when we talk about the cloud architect career and how to get that
first cloud architect job, we're going to teach you all the components you need to learn.
We're going to teach you what you need to know on the technical side. We're going to
teach you what you need to know on the communication side. And we're going to teach you what you
need to know on the business side. So this video could really be your cloud architect
career development plan.
So let's first define the cloud architect job. See, the cloud architect is different
than a cloud engineer. The cloud architect is a system designer. This is not a person
that's going to be configuring things, the cloud architect is a system designer. And
as a cloud architect, you could work in one or two locations. You could work for a vendor
and we'll talk about that, or you can work for an organization.
We're going to start where, what the cloud architect would do for a vendor. For example,
AWS, GCP, Microsoft, or any of these organizations. In these organizations, cloud architects are
a customer facing role, they are a design role. They are a pre-sales role in many cases,
as well as a post-sales role, but these are design roles. And typically speaking as a
cloud architect in one of these organizations, you're going to meet with your customer's
executive team, the CEO, the CIO, the CTO, as well as the VP of IT. And then you're also
going to meet the director of IT, the manager of IT. And in many cases, you're also going
to be working with the engineering team. So as a cloud architect you're going to be doing
a lot of presentations and asking a lot of questions because you need to find the organization's
current state of their technology from the current engineers. And you also need to find
the future state of the business from the company's executives, because the technology
solution you design as a cloud architect needs to help meet the business's goals, the business's
strategy, and it also needs to maintain any business legal, technical, or regulatory requirements.
Now, cloud architects could also work at customer sites, meaning they could be hired by the
customers, say a bank for example would hire a cloud architect. The reason these organizations
hire cloud architects is they want their own internal cloud architects to work with the
cloud architects at the vendors to design the perfect solution for the customer. Customers
know that a single cloud may or may not be the right solution and that customers also
know that the vendors, it's in their best interest to sell their products. So big organizations
have their own cloud architects to design the systems for an organization. And of course
these cloud architects will work with the cloud engineering team at the customer site,
as well as the cloud architects and cloud engineers to the vendor's site. So again,
this is a design position, this is not a configuration position, this is not a scripting position,
this is a design position and it's a hybrid design slash business position.
So if you're going to be able to do systems design, you need to know how the systems work.
And it's not just enough to know how an isolated system works, you have to know how all the
pieces and parts of the solution fit together. So if you're going to be a cloud architect,
you're going to be working with network and data center tools. See the cloud is nothing
more than a virtualized network in a data center. Now, there's some advantages to the
cloud and there's some disadvantages of the cloud. And as a cloud architect, you need
to know what they are because sometimes it's best to stay in the data center, sometimes
it's best to go all onto a single cloud, sometimes it's best to do a hybrid cloud, and sometimes
it's best to do a multi cloud. And as a cloud architect, you need to be aware of how to
do these things. This is only possible when you understand the network and the data center.
So the technologies that you must understand and intimately understand these things, to
be able to design systems are server virtualization, containers, storage environments, firewalls,
IDS IPS systems, load balancers, everything from networking. Some things include IP addressing,
routing protocols, especially because BGP, DNS, routers and how they work, switches and
how they work and VPN concentrators. These are the main technologies you need to understand
as a cloud architect because you're going to be working with them every day. Either
you're going to be doing a lift and shift from the data center to the cloud, or are
you going to be designing these systems in the cloud. But you need to know how all these
pieces and parts work together, and you must know how to optimize the performance of the
system as a whole.
So these are what you need to know as a cloud architect, and of course you need to be aware
of the services on your cloud providers. See if you're dealing, for example, with the concept
that I know I need to know SQL database, all you need to understand is architecturally
what that module is. Could use Apache Cassandra? Sure. Could use Amazon Dynamodb? Of course
you could. Could use Google Cloud Bigtable? Of course. And as an architect, you just need
to know that you need to know SQL database and why you need to know SQL database. From
there it's very easy, you just pick the cloud solution that you're looking for. But in order
to design a system for a client, you must understand their current state and how to
get them to their goal future state, which is a combination of their business and their
technical needs.
Now that's only half of it. Now we're going to talk about the other 50% of what's necessary
to become a cloud architect. Since as a cloud architect, you're going to be designing systems
based upon your interactions with executives, as well as management, as well as engineers.
You're going to have to learn how to communicate to all three, because all three levels speak
different languages because they all have different goals and different skillsets. So
in this section, we're going to talk about the business acumen first and then the skills
necessary. So you can get that cloud architect job.
Beginning with the business skills. You have to understand what expenses actually are to
an organization, meaning I need to understand what capital expenses are and how they affect
an organization's bottom line, and operational expenses and what they are and how they affect
an organization's bottom line. Especially when you're dealing with a cloud computing
environment, which is going to migrate people traditionally from the data center, which
has high capital expenditures, and move them to the cloud, which is typically high operational
expenditures due to the ongoing costs of the paper use model. So you need to be able to
do that.
And as a cloud architect, you're going to need to do some ROI modeling or show the return
on investment capital that an organization will receive from your solution. See as organizations
and for you and your training program there's the concept of opportunity cost. If an organization
does not invest in this, they could invest in something else. And an organization has
to select which is the best investment. So if you want customers to use your cloud architecture,
your cloud architecture must provide a better ROI or return on investment than competing
opportunities. So you need to understand this, which is why it's so essential to get the
perspective from the businesses unit.
The executives will tell you exactly what you need to know, what their goals are because
the CEO is focused on the company strategy, but the CFO is focused on how to use the organization's
financial resources and the CIO, for example, is focused on executing the CEO strategy through
the use of information technology. And each one of them demands a different message as
does the manager of IT versus the engineers. You need to be able to match your message
to the tone. And each one of these from a business perspective is going to care about
different things. And that's from the business perspective, meaning the engineers are going
to be concerned about how they build this and the architects are going to be concerned
how they design it and we talked about the executives that would be concerning with the
strategy of the organization.
So now that you know, some of the business acumen, you need to know the next thing we
need to talk about are communication skills. Communication skills will affect your career
as a cloud architect, probably more than anything else other than your technical competency.
Communication skills will have a direct relationship with regards to your salary and your higher-ability
and communication skills are super important. So remember that. So when you're building
your cloud architect career development plan, if tech has 50% and business acumen and communication
skills are 50%, make sure you spend at least 50% of your time focusing on the non-tech
things, if you want a great cloud computing career.
So now that we're past the concept of ROI modeling, and we're talking about business
acumen, let's talk about soft skills. As a caught architect, you must train empathy,
emotional intelligence, and how to communicate with others. Now empathy is the most critical
soft skill. Empathy, or the ability to see things from another's perspective, will do
wonders for your career. It will help you be more successful delivering projects, it
will help you be more successful dealing with management and it will help you be more successful
dealing with low performers. And as an architect, you're going to be leading teams, even though
you might not be the manager, so your empathy is going to be essential to your cloud computing
career.
Now not just empathy, you need to be emotionally intelligent. You need to be able to take someone
that's sad or depressed or frustrated and bring out the best in them so they can keep
working on the architecture. Or sometimes in life, we all have hard days and we need
to be able to raise them energy in the room, manage our own emotions, so we don't damage
relationships and help manage others' emotions and that can build deeper relationships and
better outcomes. So, that is definitely something that's critical as emotional intelligence.
Do the research. When you look into emotional intelligence, you will see a direct correlation
between the higher levels of emotional intelligence, as well as salary, as well as employability
and career progression. In fact, individuals with more emotional intelligence compared
to individual with lower emotional intelligence earn typically about $29,600 more per year,
and that's just emotional intelligence and that's on average. Now on higher paying careers
like tech, especially where they're skewed, it can make a bigger difference to your career.
So emotional intelligence is not only critical skill for the cloud architect, it can have
a big impact on your salary and your long-term career. So make sure you're training emotional
intelligence.
Make sure you're training your presentation skills, as a cloud architect you'll be spending
a lot of time presenting. Make sure you're training your writing skills, as a cloud architect
you're going to have to write for executives, management and engineers. So you're going
to have to write it a lot of different levels and you have to be really good at it and you're
going to have to learn how to write quickly, succinctly, to the point. You're going to
have to learn how to describe how the solution works and why you would use it.
So today we talked about what it takes to become a cloud architect and how to get your
first cloud architect job. I hope you've enjoyed this video and we look forward to producing
more videos for you. Let's talk about some free services we do at GoCloud architects
to help the cloud computing community. Every Monday and every Thursday, we have a free
how to get your first cloud architect job webinar. And on this webinar, we talk about
exactly what it takes to get hired, what hiring managers desire, what your resume should look
like, things that you should train. And we talk about everything that's necessary to
help you get your first cloud architect job. And we even do an hour of questions and answers
after the one hour discussion that we provide. It's free. We do it on Mondays and Thursdays.
Please sign up. The link is in the description below.
Every Tuesday we do a cloud architect experience webinar. And on these webinars, we teach you
what it's like to work as a cloud architect. We will give you a presentation and we will
talk about some cloud computing challenges. And we will ask you how to design a cloud
architect solution while you're on the call. And we will talk about the kind of background
and training that you should receive to have real experience on your resume so you can
impress hiring managers and get your first cloud architect job. We do that every Tuesday.
Now, most Wednesdays, we do a YouTube Live at 9:00 AM Eastern, which equates to 2:00
PM GMT. And when we run these, we let you bring any cloud architect or any cloud computing
questions related to your career. You asked the questions and we will help guide you in
the best we can to help you find the best path to get you to your career goals. And
we do that completely free every Wednesday to help the community.
We also have a free AWS Certified Solution Architect Associate ebook, and e-course, the
link is in the description below. And on the week of the 15th to the 20th of June in 2021,
we are doing a live stream AWS certified solution architect professional live bootcamp, so you'll
be able to ask questions on this live bootcamp. If you're watching this after the bootcamp
is either begun or ended, don't worry, you will be able to see that live boot camp that
we've done on YouTube Live. And I will leave the link in the description below so you'll
be able to access the playlist for that bootcamp so you can have a free AWS Certified Solution
Architect Associate Training Program, courtesy of GoCloud Architects.
Thank you so much for watching this video and I look forward to seeing you in a video
very soon.