What is a Solutions Architect?

PLUS: ChatGPT Can Now Remember Everything

Author

Lucy Wang
February 24, 2024

In Today’s Cloudbites:

🧑‍💻 What is a Solutions Architect?

☁️ New Course: AWS Interview Mastery

🏅 Free AWS Training & Digital Badges

📚 5 AI Tools to Improve Your Productivity

🤫 PLUS: ChatGPT Can Now Remember Everything

Read time: 6 minutes

Hi friends, welcome back to Cloudbites

Today, I’ll be sharing one of the most popular roles in the Cloud industry — the Solutions Architect. I’ll also be highlighting two key points from ChatGPT’s improved memory capabilities.

CLOUD COMPUTING ☁️

🧑‍💻 What is a Solutions Architect?

A Solutions Architect (SA) is responsible for helping customers successfully implement cloud technologies tailored to specific needs.

AWS offers over 200+ products and services, so it can often get complicated when trying to figure out the best solution for a particular problem or situation.

This is where a Solutions Architect comes in — a trusted advisor for the customer during their journey using the Cloud. 

What does a Solutions Architect do?

Solutions Architects provide technical guidance to help the customers make architectural decisions that result in secure, cost-efficient, and fault tolerant solutions. They leverage a deep technical knowledge of AWS tools and products to craft highly-scalable, flexible, and resilient cloud architectures that address customers’ business problems. 

What are their roles and responsibilities?

Solutions Architects generally allocate half of their time interacting with customers. This typically involves:

  • Showing customers what a proposed architecture would look like, through a whiteboarding session. 

  • Building out a proof of concept for a customer and showcasing it in a demo.

  • Conducting architectural reviews, to help customers improve on their architecture

  • Answering any general questions, by phone or email.

The other half of a Solutions Architect’s time is split between internal meetings, writing blogs or running technical workshops. They may also mentor their peers and/or juniors in the workspace.

How do I know if this role is for me?

If you’re wondering whether this role is the right fit for you, here are some things to consider:

  • Do you enjoy working with customers?

    As a customer-facing role, it would be perfect if you enjoy talking to people and helping them solve problems. 

  • Do you want to build architectures and solutions?

    Solutions Architects are responsible for laying the groundwork for architectures, so you should be actively learning and applying technical concepts and skills in the Cloud.

  • Do you enjoy learning and upskilling?

    It’s important as a Solutions Architect to constantly hone your skills, stay up to date with the latest in cloud technology, and complete new certifications. 

  • Do you have strong time management skills?

    A Solutions Architect’s workday encompasses a range of different tasks. It’s important to effectively make the most out of your time.

If you’re interested in learning more about the application process to land the role, check out my YouTube video featuring my ex-AWS colleagueRachel on How we became AWS Solutions Architects. 

☁️ New Course: AWS Interview Mastery

If you haven’t heard already, I have recently launched a new course! It’s called AWS Interview Mastery: Get Hired in The Cloud. 

The course is for beginners who want to land a job in the Cloud Computing industry and develop the skills and strategies necessary to succeed in AWS-related job interviews.

It's aimed at job-seekers targeting these positions:

  • Solutions Architect (SA)

  • Cloud Support Engineer (CSE)

  • Technical Account Manager (TAM)

As an ex-AWS Solutions Architect, I have poured a lot of effort into this course, to ensure it dives deep into exactly what you need to know to land a job at AWS / an AWS-related role.

If you’re interested in purchasing the course, you can apply the coupon code “WAITLIST20” for 20% off (exclusive to Cloudbites readers).

🏅 Free AWS Training & Digital Badges

Do you want access to free AWS training and earn digital badges?

AWS Learning Badges now offers training provided by AWS Skillbuilder. 

This is your chance to access training from AWS and earn digital badges for free!

To secure your digital badge, enroll from the available courses and score higher than 80% on the final assessment.

AWS Training Digital Badges

Here are the learning badges that Skillbuilder provides:

View the full list learning badges here.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) 🤖

🛠️ 5 AI Tools to Improve Your Productivity

  1. Otter.ai: Converts audio and video recordings into text with AI-powered accuracy.

  2. Whimsical AI: Create personalized and interactive storytelling experiences.

  3. Howie.ai: Provides AI-powered audio editing and enhancement tools for podcasters and content creators. 

  4. Nifty: A project management tool helping teams collaborate, organize, and track work using customizable workflows and integrations.

  5. Textio: A writing enhancement platform providing feedback to improve resumes, emails, and other (formal) written content.

🤫 PLUS: ChatGPT Can Now Remember Everything

OpenAI recently tested ChatGPT’s ability to remember the things in users’ previous chats to make future discussions more efficient.  

Here are two main takeaways that you should know:

  • You have the full access to manage what ChatGPT can remember, having the option to delete specific information, clear out the chat history, or even activate the feature.

  • Your data from memories might be randomly used to train their models, but if you don’t consent, you can decline it via the Data Controls section of your settings.

The memory upgrade is still being tested and is still not publicly available to most users. 

We can see that AI is slowly allowing more room for us to customize and integrate AI tools in our everyday lives, making it easier to improve our productivity. 

THAT’S A WRAP

Thanks for reading! 😊

P.S. How was today's email? Reply directly with your feedback, or DM me on Twitter @techwithlucy