Cloud Architecture for Solutions Architects Training Course

Course overview

Solutions architects must turn ambiguous business requirements into cloud designs that are secure, resilient, cost-aware and deliverable by engineering teams. That work involves more than selecting services: it requires making and documenting trade-offs between availability, latency, data residency, recovery objectives, operational effort and budget. This course equips architects to produce defensible target architectures and explain design decisions to technical teams, risk stakeholders and business sponsors.

Participants learn a structured architecture method spanning requirements discovery, workload decomposition, cloud service selection, network and identity design, data architecture, resilience engineering, observability, cost modelling and migration planning. The course uses the AWS Well-Architected Framework and comparable cloud design patterns to assess workloads across operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, cost optimisation and sustainability. Participants practise creating context, container and deployment diagrams; defining RTO and RPO targets; selecting managed services; and recording architectural decisions.

Instruction combines expert-led design sessions with a running enterprise case study. Teams analyse a proposed digital platform, develop a cloud reference architecture, test it against failure, security and scaling scenarios, and refine it through an architecture review. Each participant leaves with a practical architecture decision record pack, a workload assessment checklist, a target-state architecture diagram and a 90-day application plan for a current or planned cloud initiative.

The course is designed for professionals who already contribute to cloud projects and need to operate confidently as solution architects across delivery, governance and stakeholder-facing design work.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Elicit functional, non-functional and regulatory requirements using a solution architecture requirements catalogue
• Decompose a business workload into bounded components, data flows and cloud service responsibilities
• Create context, container and deployment diagrams using the C4 model and cloud architecture notation
• Evaluate architecture trade-offs with AWS Well-Architected Framework review questions and risk ratings
• Design segmented network, identity and access patterns using least-privilege and zero-trust principles
• Specify availability, backup, disaster recovery and data replication patterns against defined RTO and RPO targets
• Estimate cloud workload costs and identify optimisation actions using consumption drivers and unit-cost models
• Produce an architecture decision record pack and target-state roadmap for stakeholder approval

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Solutions Architects — who need a repeatable method for designing and defending cloud solution architectures
• Technical Architects — who translate enterprise standards into deployable workload designs
• Cloud Architects — who govern service selection, resilience patterns and platform integration decisions
• Senior Software Engineers — who are moving from application design into end-to-end solution architecture
• IT Infrastructure Managers — who need to assess cloud hosting, network and operational support models
• Digital Transformation Leads — who sponsor cloud initiatives and need to challenge architecture assumptions

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have practical familiarity with IT systems, including client-server or web application components, databases, networking basics such as DNS, subnets and load balancing, and common security concepts such as authentication and encryption. Experience contributing to a cloud project in AWS, Azure or Google Cloud is strongly recommended; participants should be able to read a basic architecture diagram and discuss application dependencies. Prior hands-on administration of cloud accounts is not required. The course does not assume programming, Terraform expertise, advanced networking certification or prior knowledge of a particular cloud provider.

Training methodology

The five days combine instructor-led architecture briefings with guided design work on a running cloud transformation case. Participants use requirement catalogues, C4-style diagrams, architecture decision records and Well-Architected review questions to make choices at each stage. Small groups compare service options, model failure scenarios, estimate workload costs and conduct peer architecture reviews. Facilitated debriefs focus on the evidence needed to defend decisions to security, operations and finance stakeholders. On the final day, participants adapt the approach to a live or anticipated workplace workload and create an application plan.

Course outline

Day 1: Architecture discovery and workload framing

• Solutions architect responsibilities across business, delivery and operations
• Functional and non-functional requirements catalogue
• Quality attributes: availability, latency, scalability, security and compliance
• Stakeholder mapping and architecture concern analysis
• Workload decomposition into domains, components and dependencies
• C4 context and container diagramming
• Architecture decision records and assumption logs

Workshop: Participants analyse a business brief and produce a requirements catalogue, stakeholder map, C4 context diagram and initial decision log.

Day 2: Cloud foundations, platform and integration design

• IaaS, PaaS and serverless selection criteria
• Shared responsibility model and cloud landing zone concepts
• Virtual networks, subnets, routing and private connectivity
• Identity federation, role-based access control and least privilege
• API gateways, event-driven integration and message queues
• Managed database selection for transactional, document and analytical workloads
• Deployment diagrams and environment separation patterns

Workshop: Participants create a deployment diagram for a multi-tier digital service, selecting cloud services, network boundaries and integration mechanisms.

Day 3: Security, resilience and operational architecture

• Threat modelling with attack surfaces and trust boundaries
• Encryption in transit, encryption at rest and key management
• Zero-trust access patterns and privileged access controls
• High availability across zones and regions
• RTO, RPO, backup, restore and disaster recovery strategies
• Observability design with logs, metrics, traces and service-level indicators
• Incident response runbooks and operational ownership models

Workshop: Participants run a failure and security scenario workshop, then produce a resilience design with RTO/RPO targets, controls and recovery runbook actions.

Day 4: Performance, cost and architecture governance

• AWS Well-Architected Framework pillars and workload review process
• Performance modelling using demand, throughput and latency assumptions
• Auto-scaling, caching and content delivery patterns
• Cloud cost drivers, tagging structures and chargeback allocation
• Unit economics and total cost of ownership comparison
• Terraform-based infrastructure-as-code governance concepts
• Architecture review boards, standards and exception management

Workshop: Participants complete a Well-Architected-style review and cost model for the case workload, producing prioritised risks and remediation recommendations.

Day 5: Migration roadmaps and solution architecture capstone

• Application portfolio assessment and the 7 Rs migration strategies
• Dependency mapping and migration wave planning
• Strangler pattern and incremental modernisation approaches
• Data migration, synchronisation and cutover planning
• Target-state, transition-state and roadmap architecture views
• Communicating trade-offs to executives and delivery teams
• Architecture assurance checkpoints and success measures

Workshop: Participants present a capstone target architecture, decision record pack, migration roadmap and 90-day action plan for peer and instructor review.

Tools & standards covered

AWS Well-Architected Tool, Terraform, diagrams.net, OpenTelemetry

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions