Foundations of Cloud Computing and Cloud Architecture

Understand workloads first, then select private, public, or hybrid deployment models. Apply SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS to fit business requirements while balancing on-premises security and cost savings.

Explore infrastructure as a service clouds host hardware and software via a provider, offering compute and storage with private, public, or hybrid deployments from AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform.

Discover how software as a service lets enterprises replace legacy systems housed in corporate data centers with hosted applications, delivering cost savings, scalability, and access across desktop and mobile devices.

Leverage platform as a service to develop, test, and deploy apps in a turnkey cloud environment, integrating with IaaS from AWS, Google, and Microsoft.

Launch and configure an infrastructure as a service compute instance on Amazon EC2, selecting a Linux image and instance type, then connect for production.

Develop a strategic business case for migrating applications and data to the cloud, and plan governance and security considerations. Migrate, test, deploy, operate, and continuously improve with automated feedback.

Demonstrate how to build a compelling cloud business case using total cost of ownership and return on investment, detailing cost, migration, and value metrics to guide decisions.

Plan migration details ahead of time, map major steps and resources, and consider replacement, refactoring, replatforming, rehosting, retaining, or retiring applications as you move from on-premises to the cloud.

Assess your business requirements and evaluate public cloud providers like AWS, Microsoft, and Google, focusing on elasticity, scalability, governance, security, and cost models.

Develop cloud talent by training and mentoring across roles—architects, developers, governance and security engineers—while adopting a flexible matrix structure, incrementally migrating simple workloads and budgeting for mistakes.

Prioritize cloud security by understanding options, models, and tools, emphasizing monitoring and proactive action. Advance to predictive security with centralized policies, access controls, encryption, and improvement through logs and discovery.

Select and test cloud security tools across public, private, and traditional systems to align with business and technical requirements, monitor data via dashboards and APIs for best practices and compliance.

practice continuous cloud operations to achieve zero downtime through feedback loops, redundancy, and rapid problem solving, integrating security, devops, maintenance, and bcdr across cloud and on-prem domains.

Leverage pragmatic cloud ops by focusing on people, processes, and governance while using tool sets to automate, monitor, and orchestrate multi-cloud and on-premises environments for proactive uptime.

Learn to implement proactive cloud monitoring and management across private, public, and multi-cloud environments, using holistic metrics, governance, cost and health reporting, and portable, third-party tools.

Cloud architecture remains an evolving, fast-moving field; develop the skill to keep up by selecting important new information and recognizing systemic changes shaping the field.

Understand how cloud architecture optimizes IT systems by leveraging cloud resources to meet business needs, integrating with traditional IT, and mastering compute, storage, networking, security, and governance basics.

Define cloud architecture as a business-driven configuration that optimizes cost, productivity, security, and governance while integrating storage, compute, AI, edge computing, IoT, containers, and serverless.

Evaluates cloud architecture decisions for Henry's hammocks, moving from on-premise systems to a public cloud, balancing IaaS and SaaS, security, and disaster recovery.

Develop a generalist cloud architect mindset by integrating broad storage and cloud technology knowledge with open-minded analysis, checklists, and a holistic, iterative transition from logical to physical architecture.

Define the as-is and to-be stages to understand current and desired cloud architecture, assess technology and data, and outline business problems such as increasing sales or reducing costs.

Document the as-is state—data ownership, storage, security, governance, and artifacts like data dictionaries and network diagrams—to inform a to-be cloud architecture that optimizes performance, cost, and value.

Balance business value and cost by using a minimum viable cloud architecture, and apply containers or serverless where appropriate to prevent underutilization or overutilization.

Design security into cloud architecture from the start, integrating encryption and identity management for data, applications, and networking, and align databases with laws like HIPAA for privacy.

Explore cloud storage types—block, object, and file—and how non-volatile, durable storage underpins reliable cloud architecture. Learn how compute integrates memory, storage, and operating systems to support CPUs and workloads.

Explore cloud databases, cloud native and third-party options, along with data loading, API/SQL interfaces, data lake and lakehouse considerations, and security features like encryption and identity management.

Plan and execute cloud operations to keep systems running, monitor performance with AIOps, and continuously improve, using playbooks, skills, costs, and business continuity practices.

Define the storage level in cloud architecture by distinguishing logical storage from physical storage. Match requirements for transactional versus analytical apps and choose physical storage on cloud platforms.

Define the right cloud data level architecture by selecting logical data level and physical database choices that serve transactional and analytical needs, with autoscaling, reserved instances, or serverless compute.

Learn how cloud architects design intra-cloud networks and secure VPCs, use identity and access management, and enforce encryption at rest and in flight.

Develop a holistic view of cloud operations—cloud ops, secops, data ops, and app ops—using AIOps and automation with containers and serverless to keep multi-cloud apps running.

Define your requirements and desired end state to set the foundation, then map from as-is to to-be and outline business processes, security, governance, costs, and performance.

Map the as-is on-premises architecture to the to-be cloud future by evaluating data, compute, storage, applications, governance, security, and operations. Use phased sprints to plan the migration.

Define the final physical architecture by binding cloud or traditional technologies to the logical architecture and testing configurations, while noting that sub domains and continuous improvement help manage complexity.

Continue learning on the job and through advanced cloud architecture courses, and seek employment in a cloud architecture team to see data cataloging and database modeling in practice.