Would you like to know about the various architect careers, the technical architect, the solution
architect, the cloud architect and the Enterprise Architect? If so, this video is for you.
Hi, my name is Michael Gibbs, and I'm the founder and CEO of go cloud careers, an organization
that's truly dedicated towards building the most high performance cloud computing careers.
Personally, I've been working in technology now for about 25 years. And I've been helping
others get their first tech job or get promoted in tech for more than two decades. And I want to
help you get cloud hired or cloud promoted. In today's video, we're going to be speaking with
Alonzo Coleman from my team and me, and Alonzo is going to be interviewing me on the various
architecture positions. And here's the reason I'm doing it. There's a lot of confusion between
these architect roles. And so many people desire their first solution architect job
or their first cloud architect job or their first Enterprise Architect job. And they're so confused,
they don't know what to study what to learn, because they truly don't
understand the role. So in this video, we're going to clarify all these roles so you can
know exactly what you need to learn. So you can build your best cloud computing career.
Hello, everyone, this is Alonzo Coleman, again, of go cloud careers. And with me is Michael Gibbs,
CEO and founder of go cloud careers. And today we are going to talk about the different varying
types of what an architect is. Mike, could you share a little bit of information about
your background, and then we'll get right into the different versions of what a cloud architect is?
Absolutely. Alonzo, I've been an architect. Now for approximately
25 years, I started off as a technical architect,
then ultimately worked as more of a Solution Architect kind of role, and then moves into
Enterprise Architecture roles. And obviously, I've done cloud architecture along the way. So
I fulfill that had every one of these roles. I love them all, but they're very different.
Wonderful, wonderful. Now, what we want to talk about everyone is that there are so
many different facets of an architect, and what we're going to do is break down the different
variations of what they are. So Mike, we'd like to find out first, what is a technical architect?
Great question, Alonzo, and a technical architect really isn't an architect at all.
It's really an engineer. And what happens with a technical architect is you have an engineer,
that's really great. And unfortunately, engineering careers and salaries really
peak before they really need to. So when you have an engineer that you truly love,
that super company has a great personality, and they want to stay in engineering,
you make them a technical architect, and they still do all these engineering things. They're
still hands on technology professionals. And they get a little bit involved in a post sales, design,
or even pay sales design. But they are techies. And their focus is on the technology. They're
deeply technical people, they may actually touch the technology, code it, configure it, build it.
It's really more of an engineer role, but it's called an architect. It is a technical
architect. It isn't like any of the other architect roles. But it is an architect role.
And it's a great place for someone that's a deep technology professional like a deep cut engineer,
or a really strong network engineer, and they wanted to kind of dabble in
architecture without going to the business executive side. This is the role for them.
Okay, wonderful, wonderful. So we we have that first step. So
what would you define? Or how would you define a solutions architect?
Great question, Alonzo. And I've been a Solution Architect. And I don't love the term solutions
architect. And here's the reason. It really means you're just designing, presenting and
selling a solution, but it's not very definitive. For example, when I went to the flooring store to
get new tiles from my house, it was a solution architect to determine what my flooring needed.
I went to a mobile phone store and a solution architect was selling me my cell phones. So
the solution architect is a term that's got a lot of confusion, and it varies by industry. But as a
rule, the solution architect does the following. They design a solution to solve a customer's
business problem with a single vendors technology. So for example, if I'm an AWS solution architect,
I meet with clients, I asked them about their business goals, their business pain points,
their business challenges, and I tried to design my solution on all AWS stuff,
or at least AWS things and AWS partner things. That's really what a solution architect does.
It is a real architect position. It is usually a pre sales position where we do the same design,
present and sell as we do with all those things, but it's typically focused on a single vendor. Now
sure Solution Architect at AWS will deal with customers that have connections to Azure or
Google. Sure, but they design presenting Sell AWS solutions, a Solution Architect at Nvidia designs
presents and sells video solutions and Solutions Architect at Cisco designs presents until Cisco
solutions, great job. No, I don't love the term because it could be anything because you can be
working in a software company or you're designing something and selling software,
you can be working in a network company where you're designing,
presenting and selling networking, or a cloud company or you're designing,
presenting and selling that networking. So I don't love the term solution architect, but it's very
common. It's a great job. Many of my students get solution architect rose almost every day.
They love it. I had it. I absolutely loved it. But it's single vendor. And that's the really the main
key point, honestly. Okay. Okay. So what you're saying is that it's just a wide
spectrum wide brush application of a title that could be representative of any industry.
But when it reflects into the cloud industry itself, it is more proprietary in its title,
based on whatever cloud solution provider is out there. Exactly. Okay. So what I'm wondering,
is there a another position that provides a agnostic version of what a Solution Architect is?
Absolutely. And that's called the Cloud Architect. Now, we have to be careful,
because AWS calls a cloud architect where they have a hybrid engineer architect role,
and they have solution architects, but generally speaking, the Cloud Architect is someone that
Design presents themselves across a variety of platform, okay, so I'm more of a cloud architect
and an Enterprise Architect. But when I design a cloud solution, I will never put all my eggs
in a single basket, and nobody should. So I met with meet with my customer and say,
that datacenter you have is pretty good. Let's turn that into an OpenStack, cutter Nutanix
cloud. Now let's connect you to AWS and Azure. And that way, if any of the clouds go down,
guess what? You're still available. So by being a cloud architect can get the following much
higher availability systems by using multiple clouds. Additionally, we get access to different
technologies that different cloud providers may be better with, for example, if we look at Google,
they're the world's leader in algorithms. Number one, search engine number two search engine.
So if I was going to design a machine learning solution, I bet me looking to Google.
Look, AWS has good machine learning such as Microsoft or Google, that's the world that it has
been for decades, algorithms. So a cloud architect is gonna say, Wow, let's put this on Google. Let's
put these two things on AWS and Azure, let's build an autonomous cloud, it's an end to end
solution designer. And because it's a rare skill to find, it's typically paid a little more than
a Solution Architect, but now we've got an end to end solution provider across multiple clouds.
I see. Okay, so it goes beyond just one particular focus on a cloud service provider,
but provides a industry wide set of solutions for any client that needs them. Okay, yes.
And like the cloud architect and Solution Architect this about a 50%,
business 50% tech job, but solution architect, I work for a single vendor,
so single vendor solution, cloud architect, I work with multiple vendors. Oh, I
see. Okay. So with that being said, once a particular professional is able
to understand all the varying solutions that a client has,
is there a higher or more another step in the evolution of what a cloud architect can be?
There's another kind of architects, I don't want to say a tire, it's different. Because you all
these architect positions are all great, it's really what's going to make you happiest in
your life. Where I'm happiest is in the Enterprise Architect role. Okay, and the
Enterprise Architect role didn't look, it does pay more, it's a higher, more executive position.
And then here's the thing if the cloud architect and Solution Architect are 5050, business,
and technical, the Enterprise Architect is 80 to 100%. Business. And what happens is, this is
usually a director or VP level position, okay. And here, we're spending our time with the C level,
and all the department heads, and we're truly figuring out what's going wrong in the business.
And from there, we're designing more enterprise solutions. Now, we may need
to hire some cloud architects to help us along the way. Because we're really like that liaison,
where that hybrid between the pure executive team and say, the cloud architect, and this is where I
like to play, where I get to do all my business work, I get to look at a little bit of business
process reengineering. It's kind of a hybrid between a management consultant in the cloud
architect. And that's what I love this role. And a lot of management consultants also like this role,
because it's really a management consulting role. How do we really, really optimize that
business? So this person, you know, typically is your MBA type, lots of business acumen,
lots of executive presence, even more than the other two, unknown thought leader,
but it's really a business business business position. So technical architect 80 to 90%, tech,
Solution Architect, 5050, Enterprise Architect 80 to 100% business, some cases, no tech, in
some cases, a little tech. So that's kind of your differences between the architecture but I want
to make it clear there is is no better or worse through different. Now there's different salaries.
I mean, the enterprise architects obviously pay the most, followed by the cloud architects
followed by the solution architects, followed by the technical architects. But we got to do
what makes us happy. In my youth. I have that technical architect role on Zillow. I love that
I got to do stuff with BGP and PIM multicast that I can't even describe. As I got a little older,
my transition was a Solution Architect, well, I enjoyed that. And then I got into these big
enterprise architect things. And that was where the fun came for me, because I love business.
But it's all about what makes the person happy. And all of these careers are absolutely wonderful.
Wonderful, my Yeah, you really broke it down for us and everyone that's listening. I want
to say thank you so much, you really talked about the technical architect,
the solutions architect, the cloud architect, and finally the Enterprise Architect,
everyone. I hope you all enjoyed our show with CEO and founder, founder,
Mike Gibbs, and Google Cloud careers and myself, Alonzo Coleman. We're looking forward to sharing
more content with you, and we look forward to seeing you on the next one. Take care.
Thank you for watching this video on the types of architects, technical architects,
solution architects, cloud architects, and enterprise architects. In order to help you
build your best cloud computing career, we do several things for you completely free. Every
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