Key Responsibilities of a Solutions Architect
The Solutions Architect currently stands out as one of the most in demand roles in the technology sector. However, the title can be somewhat ambiguous, encompassing a broad range of responsibilities and functions.
The Solutions Architect role has played a strategic role in the success of many organizations for quite some time now. Given the complexity of today’s technological landscape, it’s increasingly vital for companies to incorporate a Solutions Architect into their digital strategy framework to remain competitive.
In this post, I will delve into a comprehensive exploration of the main responsibilities and key facets that define the role of a Solutions Architect and how to develop them.
We’ll be mainly focusing on cloud architecture since it’s been the biggest transformation businesses have been facing in recent years (more recently AI) having a huge impact on the way things get done.
A Solutions Architect is a professional who possesses a comprehensive understanding of a company’s technological landscape. This role follows a more generalist approach rather a than specialization on one area and is capable of translating business requirements into IT planning, governance, execution, processes, monitoring and maintenance.
From a very high level, they are in charge of the following tasks (just to name a few)
- Strategic and key technological decisions.
- Identity and networking architecture.
- Application and data processes architecture.
- Operational excellence trough devops use for Application, Infrastructure and Configuration code.
- Monitoring through observability platforms.
- Disaster recovery/business continuity solutions through multi-region deployments.
- Cybersecurity policy standarization.
- Resource consistency.
- AI integration
However, when it comes to a cloud adoption strategy, each cloud provider has its own set of guidelines for successfully adopting their cloud. Next, a list of the three biggest cloud providers Cloud Adoption Frameworks.
DISMCLAIMER ! Being An Azure Solutions Architect Expert Certified myself, I’ll be a little inclined towards Azure terminology and documentation. (I totally recommend John Savill’s Content https://www.youtube.com/@NTFAQGuy ,helped me a lot)
https://cloud.google.com/adoption-framework?hl=en
These Cloud Adoption Frameworks or CAFs for short are similar in conceptual terms and encompass the following phases.
- Strategy definition: Clear business outcomes understanding, cloud pricing models, Stakeholder alignment.
- Planning: Workloads, processes, applications, data and all IT asset cataloging. Planning making and proper employee training.
- Readiness: Landing zone design and implementation.
- Adoption: Workload, processes, applications and data migration to the cloud in incremental terms.
- Governance: Clearly defined identity and user access controls, infrastructure standardization, process standardization.
- Management: Operations monitoring, infrastructure updates, resource consistency.
- Security: Risk insights, busines reliability, asset protection.
Key strat additional aspects must be taken into account.
Hybrid or Cloud Native
After the strategy definition and planning, a cloud adoption model must be adopted, hybrid or cloud native.
If the company has large IT infrastructure, a hybrid cloud approach is the proper one. This hybrid approach enables the company to extend their existing resources to the cloud, however, some key aspects must be considered.
If the company is a newer one, then a cloud native approach can take place.
Some Important Technical aspects of cloud adoption
- Identity Management: Users between on-premises Identity Platform (i.e. Active Directory) must be synchronized to the cloud (For Azure it’s Microsoft Entra ID + Connect) and proper user’s permissions mapping.
- Networking: This is a complex one since it comprises various things. a) Proper VPN configuration (Site-to-site or Point-to-Site). b) Proper Virtual Network and subnet design. c) Proper security groups, firewalls and network routes, d) DNS, e) Private connection between Cloud and On-premises if necessary (Express Route for Azure)
- Data Migration: Data must maintain integrity between relocations, whether it’s only a geo relocation or if it’s a database engine migration (harder approach but sometimes necessary). Here, schemas must be migrated, data types must be respected, constraints, functions must be preserved. Database engine migration is not an easy task, it must be done really carefully!!
Another relevant thing regarding database migration is the database’s destination service. One thing is to relocate the database on a full server (Iaas), or on a managed service (Paas). The first one is appropiate if full control of the server is required. The second one is the most recommended to maximize cloud benefits (i.e. data replication, automatic backups, etc).
4. Application Migration Patterns: This part is huge. As I mentioned previously, Platform as a Service or Paas generally speaking is a better approach to Infrastructure as a Server (Iaas). It provides several benefits regarding operation, scalibility, reliability and pricing. If an application is going to be migrated to the cloud, there are 4 available patterns it can use.
Rehost, Refactor, Rearchitect and Rebuild.
Devops Adoption:
DevOps facilitate accelerated and dependable software deployments, decreasing the gap between Development and Operations teams. To optimize operational efficiency, it is imperative for organizations to establish a well-defined DevOps strategy. This strategy should encompass the inclusion of application code, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) processes, and configuration code within a version control repository, such as GitHub, Azure DevOps, Jenkins, or similar platforms.
Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
Even if the risk of a natural disaster wiping out a cloud provider region is quite low, it’s important to be prepared for it.
Clear recovery objectives, particularly Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) must be defined. It’s vital to choose a suitable disaster recovery architecture, such as multi-region deployment ensuring data redundancy and availability.
Many of the Paas services offer multi-region deployment service level, thus enabling a service to continue operating normally, however, this options tend to be more expensive.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/solutions/backup-and-disaster-recovery
Another emerging discipline worth mentioning is Chaos engineering, which focuses on the strategic modeling of IT infrastructures. It involves the intentional application of disturbances to these systems to gain deeper insights into their behavior under contingent scenarios. This approach is fundamental in identifying vulnerabilities and implementing strategies to improve the overall resilience of IT environments, ensuring they are better equipped to handle unexpected challenges.
Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity architecture is a fascinating discipline on it’s own. However, some important aspects have to be considered since cloud adoption is not excempt of cybersecurity risks.
Since COVID-19, remote work has been the default work method for many companies and many security issues have risen. To mitigate this issue, identity and connectivity services such as Microsoft Entra Conditional Access, GCP Beyond-Corp, have been pivotal in enhancing secure access controls.
Another important consideration is public endpoints protection with services like Azure’s Private Endpoints which conceals corresponding services endpoints inside the cloud’s network without going out to the internet.
Additionally, implementing firewalls, whether Standard Firewalls or Web Application Firewalls is imperative for safeguarding applications against external threats. These elements collectively form the backbone of a robust cybersecurity architecture in the cloud, ensuring data integrity, confidentiality, and availability.
AI Integration
We are living an amazing techonological revolution driven by Artificial Intelligence (AI). It’s transforming every way in which we interact with technology ranging from personalized product recommendations in ecommerce websites to advanced personal assistants and co-pilots.
Obviously AI is also being integrated in the enterprise with products such as Copilot for Microsoft 365 which learns and analyzes your enterprise documents, Azure Copilot which learns and automates Azure Infrastructure Management, Github Enterprise and Github Copilot which deeply enhances your coding skills by making code suggestions from a text prompt and an existing codebase.
The leader company in AI is OpenAI but it has very close competitors like Anthropic and Mistral. There’s a thriving ecosystem of companies that are pushing the boundaries at an astounding pace.
All this innovation gives its adopters a big advantage over the ones who don’t use it.
As a solutions architect is your responsability to leverage AI with tools as Azure Copilot and Copilot for Office 365 to be more efficient in everyday tasks both strategic and operative.
Example of strategic tasks:
- Understanding strategic documents, legal contracts, risk understanding and management.
- Infrastructure as code files generation, Advanced Policies Generation given the monitoring data.
- Cybersecurity vulnerability analysis.
- Many more.
Conclusions
In this article, we have briefly explored the essence of enterprise architecture and the multifaceted responsibilities of a Solutions Architect. We have also highlighted key considerations that are integral to the broader architectural landscape.
A Solutions Architect must continually update their knowledge in both technological advancements and business trends to effectively deliver business value through technology. This role demands a generalist approach, equipped with the ability to communicate effectively with both business and technical stakeholders, including product managers, cybersecurity experts, database administrators, and others.
I hope that you find this post informative and insightful. Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Solutions Architect Certifications
https://learn.microsoft.com/es-es/credentials/certifications/exams/az-305/
https://aws.amazon.com/es/certification/certified-solutions-architect-associate/
https://cloud.google.com/learn/certification/cloud-architect
Additional References
- John Savill’s Youtube Channel
