Take the first step on your journey to becoming a Cloud Architect with this learning path, which will lay the foundations of how to architect solutions for the cloud. This learning path includes three practical scenarios to help you understand the role of Cloud Architect. 

We'll start by taking a look at what a cloud architect does and evaluating if the role is right for you. 

We then begin learning the fundamentals of cloud computing and web development. You'll learn to recognize and explain the key building blocks of web services such as HTML, CSS, and Javascript.

We then delve into the benefits of DevOps practices and how they help to maintain quality, availability, and security in cloud infrastructure and in the development and deployment of applications. Containers are also a powerful tool for development and operations processes and you'll learn how to use them in your deployments.

We then have a gentle introduction to serverless computing and how serverless computing can be used to architect cloud solutions. 

We then dive right into the first of three practical scenarios architecting a cloud solution. We examine how we approach designing a cloud solution from a customer brief. We elicit and define the technical requirements. We then evaluate some of the services available on AWS, Azure and Google Cloud Platform before deciding on a solution design and building a POC. We have a hands-on lab to help you walk through the proposed design for yourself! 

We then begin exploring some of the business drivers, benefits and considerations of migrating business services to the Cloud.  

We then explore some of the options, approaches and frameworks available to help design and plan for a Cloud Migration. 

Finally we immerse ourselves in two practical scenarios to provide a gentle introduction to some of the common day to day situations experienced by Cloud Architects. 

In this final scenario, we walk through planning and architecting the migration of an end of life data center application from on-premise to a cloud environment.  

If all this catches your interest and you're ready to begin your career as a cloud architect, then this is the learning path for you!

Learning Objectives

• Obtain an understanding of the cloud architect role and if the cloud architect role is right for you
• Learn some of the fundamentals of web development
• Learn how DevOps practices and containers can be used to streamline your deployments and operations in the cloud
• Understand the business implications of migrating to the cloud
• Be introduced to the basic frameworks for architecting cloud solutions 

Intended Audience

This learning path is intended for anyone looking to build cloud solutions and take the first step in their career as a cloud architect.

Prerequisites

To get the most out of this learning path, you should have a basic understanding of building and deploying applications. Some existing familiarity with cloud computing would also be beneficial but is not essential. We recommend completing the Cloud Literacy Learning Path first to gain this understanding first.