AWS Cloud Architect vs Solutions Architect - which one is right for you?

hey everyone i'm lucy and i'm a solutions architect working at amazon web services hey everyone i'm alistair and i'm a cloud architect working in amazon web services today we're going to be talking about the difference between a solutions architect and a cloud architect and how to figure out which one is right for you quick pause this video is sponsored by network teams networkings is your one-stop educational platform for it courses whether you're studying for an aws certification or want to improve your skills in networking and devops i would recommend checking out this platform they provide you with access to live online classes taught by experienced engineers you can see here that there's even courses based on specific career paths for example you can enroll in this course if you'd like to become a cloud architect at the end of each course you get awarded with a certificate of completion which is pretty cool if you're interested in finding out more about networkings i'll leave a link to the website in the video description below now let's get back to the video so as i said to start off with do you want to give a bit of intro about yourself and also explain what the role of a cloud architect does at aws sure so i'm an associate cloud architect in our public sector proserv team what i do in the end is deliver projects for our customers i'm very much a customer facing role where we go in we understand the customers needs and we actually go and build out the solutions to help our businesses and our customers solve their problems so on any day-to-day basis i could be coding up in python working with lambda designing larger architectures or working with organizations to figure out what people and processes they need to actually get the job done lucy how do you think that varies to solution architects yeah so solutions architects are quite similar in some ways we also interact with customers and we help them with basically getting into aws and migrating their services from on-premises to aws as well as helping them modernize their architectures but what we do is we are more high level we're trusted technical advisors for the customers as they go along their cloud journey we do things like helping them review their architectures making sure it's well architected and following best practices we also do things like customer enablement so we help customers learn about how they can use aws in order for them to meet their business and technical goals and so this is i think probably the main distinction right between a solutions architect and a cloud architect so this brings us to the similarities and differences of a solutions architect versus a cloud architect alice said let me ask this to you first what do you think are the main distinctions between the two and what are the biggest similarities we're both customer facing and in the end we want to get the best for our customers but one thing on a day-to-day basis i probably will work with one or two customers to deliver specific results and opportunities for the customers whether that be putting together an application designing a landing zone or actually coding up something that can be tangibly placed whereas you're probably thinking many many different paths that the customer can go and achieve their business goals yep that's exactly right i agree with the similarities and the differences i think as a solutions architect it depends on the team that you're in but typically you would work with more than one or two customers like for example for me since i work with smaller medium businesses i work with honestly hundreds of different customers to try and understand their business problems and technical problems and how i can help them build in high-level architecture so that it helps them you know think long-term and not just address their short-term goals but also help them achieve what they want for their business in the long run and i think that really shows in the differences on our day-to-day jobs most times i try to focus on one customer per day i'll start the morning in a stand-up where we're working with the customer team to actually understand what everybody's working on we'll provide some directions to them and some advice but in the end we actually want to help enable those customers to build out and with us just being the trusted advisor i work throughout the day i may build some things may speak to some more people and think about the strategic direction and at the end of the day we actually have hopefully built and deployed something and then like all of us here at aws we're trying to hire and develop the best so admin time comes in for us to help hire new people train up learn new concepts so that we can continually enable our customers to build and develop on the latest best practice definitely that's one of the similarities as well in aws as a solutions architect we do play a part as well in helping hire and develop the best so mentoring other people and also receiving mentorship as well so that's something i think is quite common just within a lot of roles in aws actually it's not just about talking with customers and just doing our work also thinking about how we're able to help the future generation of leaders you know the future and incoming cloud architects and solutions architects so speaking of the future generation and helping people you know get into aws how do you think people can choose between the two roles so in the end like we've discussed our roles are very similar they're both customer facing but i think the main difference and the main differentiator when somebody should choose a role is how much they want to dive deep and how willing they are to think outside the box when they come across problems because in the end we need to make sure that our systems work with very complex organization infrastructure so if you get to a point where something doesn't work you need to think about ideas to how you can still achieve the customer goals while still working within the confines of what opportunities we have there so if you'd like to get in dive deep ask questions you don't really need to know all the answers but in the end that's where you can come and join our team and have a lot of customer impact wow seems like we're going to have a lot of future cloud architects so if you're someone who is more interested in understanding system design and architecture but don't want to get involved with the actual implementation and diving into the code to help people actually implement it then a solutions architect role could be something to look forward to so the solutions architect role would also be for someone who really wants to be interacting with customers on a day-to-day basis to help them understand their business problems because at the end of the day we have so many aws services and as a solutions architect it's our role to help customers decide what's best for them and you know what combination of services will be best for their situation all right so this brings us to the end of this video if you have any questions for us drop it down the comments below please remember to give this video a like and subscribe to this channel to see more videos like this thank you so much alice there for your time today thanks for having me

Channel: Tech With Lucy

Views: 56,583

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Length: 6min 36sec (396 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 21 2022