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What is a solutions architect? A vital role for IT-business alignment

Hard skills include a deep knowledge of business processes and solutions, while soft skills include good communication. This process is very detail-oriented and serves as a connecting piece between enterprise architecture and technical architecture. It also requires a breadth of knowledge in the technical and business inner workings of the company. ITIL is the industry-accepted range of qualifications that contains 5 levels. The highest credential is the ITIL Master for those experts who deal with IT service management and have deep experience with ITIL practices.

  • Since we’ve discussed high-level goals of solution architecture adoption, let’s break them down into specific responsibilities and underlying skillsets.
  • I’d give a selected few people the Software Architect title if they want it but experience tells me the people who would actually deserve the title of Software Architect usually aint that in to titles.
  • With analytical approach, solutions architects need to understand all of the technologies and topics related to a business to have a deep enough understanding to create a solution.
  • Of course, all architect roles are crossed with other architect roles, but network SA should concentrate more on networking areas such as LAN, WAN, internet, intranet, VPN, IDS, IPS, Firewall, etc.
  • Learners are advised to conduct additional research to ensure that courses and other credentials pursued meet their personal, professional, and financial goals.
  • Enterprise architects work with many stakeholders including business units, IT departments and other areas of the organization to ensure that they are all working towards the same goals.

Describing these applications and how they behave and interact with each other is defined in solution architecture. The main indicator of the quality of work of a good solution architect is the stability of the IT infrastructure and the speed with which it can adapt to the ever-changing business requirements of the market. The overall goal of an architect is to ensure a smooth development lifecycle and efficient use of available resources in building enterprise architecture for each application. The enterprise architect is responsible for overseeing the entire corporate ecosystem of the company.

Solution Architects focus on:

A solutions architect works with an organization to understand their problems and provide various solutions to change or improve architecture to alleviate the issue. They play a central role in an organization’s efforts to introduce and successfully implement new technology solutions. They will work directly with EAs, TAs, business architects, etc. to achieve future state architecture.

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So, an experienced solution architect should be able to listen, advise, empathize, and explain. In general, the solutions architect’s role is to explain the business requirements to the development team and lead them in building a product that can solve real business issues effectively. The position is very responsible and requires wide-ranging IT skills and knowledge. With companies increasingly relying on software and emerging technologies, the role of this expert will continue to gain weight. It is an architectural description of a specific solution based on predefined processes and best practices.

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The solution architect must be able to describe the solution in a language understandable to all. Learners are advised to conduct additional research to ensure that courses and other credentials pursued meet their personal, professional, and financial goals. Now I am more focused as a developer, I am an architect of applications themselves, therefore I am an Applications Architect. There are also infrastructure architects, information architects, and a few others, but in terms of total numbers these comprise a smaller percentage than the „big three“. Dragan is a Software Development Director with over 20 years of experience in his career.

This is one crucial point, as there are many different practices related to platforms, programming languages, and tools. The architect needs to determine which of the technologies will be most suitable for a particular project. This is a daunting task that requires experience with different technologies and highly relevant assessments. Business owners often think about effectiveness, productivity, cutting costs, optimization, etc, while software engineers worry more about specific engineering challenges. Designing a successful large solution is a highly collaborative process that requires ongoing communication, coordination, and cooperation across different people and teams involved in large solution development. This process is led by the Solution Architect and involves the key collaborations depicted in Figure 1.

Solution architect skillset and background

In a rapidly changing technology environment, organizations face the need to transform their processes and systems to meet emerging business requirements. This digital transformation demands specific expertise and a set of practices to align business focus with technology solutions. Before embarking on product deployment, the role of a solution architect is to analyze your company’s IT landscape to map business expectations with current IT capabilities. This will allow them to determine whether newly developed software will fit the existing enterprise environment. To carry out this task, a technology solution architect has to understand how all the processes, operating systems, and application architectures pull together. Knowing these aspects, they will be able to design a suited digital solution.

solution architect definition

A good and well-considered architecture is essential for the effective development of any software. The correct architectural solution makes it possible to scale the product at minimal cost and painlessly for an existing product and customers. Simply put, this is the foundation of the product on which the long-term success of any project depends. Solution architecture is oriented on specific business problems of the company and serves to achieve business goals.

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Along with developers, engineers need to understand and interpret the product requirements to build the apps, systems, and solutions to achieve the desired outcome. They also need to be able to resolve problems and address bugs that might arise during solution architect performance goals the development process. Solutions architects will use various tools to develop their designs and diagrams. These tools – such as the LeanIX EAM – help SA’s map design IT infrastructure, produce diagrams and facilitate the to-be architecture.

solution architect definition

A solution architect is also responsible for the continuous maintenance of a system developed. This person makes sure that there is a secure and stable IT environment for a software solution to work properly. Solution architects also ensure that such a solution will remain relevant in terms of the business value it should deliver. Solution architects are critical to modern businesses due to their ability to bridge the gap between technical and business use cases.

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This means that an infrastructure specialist helps grow and maintain the production side of a corporate software ecosystem, rather than software development itself. These specialists oversee the existing IT systems and networks, and explore and integrate new ones, making sure that they meet all requirements in regard to resilience, security, performance, availability, etc. The solution architecture was designed considering all the business requirements. We’ve considered a role-based access control (RBAC) with three different roles to enable access level management. Our team has also implemented core logical modules, features, and logical layers such as management of Documents, Actions, Training Records, and Human Resources to bring more value to our Customer. The interconnection of modules and solution elements is presented on the detailed product scheme.

At first, a software architect works with the tech team to elaborate on all possible options of how the idea can be made a reality. Most businesses rely on a deep and wide technology stack that’s interconnected and integrated. Here’s what to know about a solutions architect’s salary, needed skills and how to become one. The average annual base pay for a solutions architect in the US is $197,854, although it ranges from about $99,000 to $172,000, according to Glassdoor [1].

Meeting the requirements of all stakeholders

Therefore, more and more organizations and companies all over the world are facing the ultimate need to go digital and adopt innovations and high-end software to multiply their efforts and keep growing. Additionally, a solution architect exercises a leadership role over a project manager (PM). Such a role presupposes working closely with a PM to make sure resources, plans, and strategies are in tune with the project’s objectives. In a quickly changing IT world, companies need to change their modus operandi to meet their current business needs.

solution architect definition