|text=Jeff Bezos wants $300 for an annual subscription to access some of the premium content in their learning catalog. On top of that, some of their courses are taught by 3rd party training companies that charge $2,000 or more for a 3-day course. For the biggest value, take the Udemy video training course by Neil Davis - which can be bought for $15}}
While most people will think that a Solutions Architect's job is determine the "perfect" solution given a set of requirements, the reality is that it's not a static thing. The solution must evolve over time and be refined in operation, not just drawn up in development or prototyping. You should always perform some sort of process improvement such as Deming's PDCA in your implementations so that you can tell that you're [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjNPpjYNiow Well Architected]
==Key Personal Characteristics==
Are you a Solutions Architect, or want to become one?
You will need:
#'''Hands-on experience ''' - a Solutions Architect is not an entry-level position. It takes years of experience in the technology sector before you have seen and learned enough lessons to truly become a valuable architect.#'''Business analysis skills ''' for understanding and interpreting the customer requirements.#'''Strong interpersonal skills ''' for dealing regularly with various stakeholders - architects don't work in ivory towers.#'''Broad technology skills ''' - software, hardware, various vendors and so-on.#'''On-premises technology''' - you can't architect Cloud solutions without knowledge of the physical underpinnings and classic alternatives; plus hybrid or integrations with traditional IT infrastructure.#'''Other clouds''': you can't know just one. You should know AWS, Azure, GCP and perhaps even more cloud operators such as Digital Ocean, Linode, RackSpace or service offerings from giants like IBM/RedHat, Canonical etc.#'''Core technology skills ''' - Computeyou must have a solid base in compute, storage, networking, databasesand database technologies so that you can easily work with higher-level abstractions and state of the art technologies that build on or reinvent these core skills.#'''Automation, containers and serverless ''' technologies#'''Programming or scripting ''' useful
==Global==
Any Solutions Architect with credibility is going to acknowledge that the giants of proprietary software solutions have built their empires on the backs of Free Software. But the product offerings have grown like weeds in a garden, so it can be hard to distinguish the original crop. What solutions or equivalents exist?
=== Cloud Computing Platforms ===
The '''[[:en:OpenStack|OpenStack]]''' platform was started by RackSpace and NASA and is a free, open standard cloud computing platform. The March 2023 release included 41 services.