Cloud architecture is the foundation upon which your IT systems and applications will operate and thus, reap the benefits of cloud. It’s critical that you design and build this architecture with those systems and applications in mind, so that the architecture meets your IT vision and can evolve over time. Organizations have been adopting increasingly complex software applications to achieve business goals, so IT development teams must evolve their software creation practices, deploying applications in a repeatable and reliable manner. Having the right cloud architecture aids in this goal, and designing this architecture takes careful planning and attention to strategic long-term company goals.
Benefits of a strategic-focused cloud architecture approach:
Assess which cloud platform is right for your business
Get a detailed due-diligence review of your current infrastructure
Create a financial and business strategy foundation for migrations
Assess applications for cloud readiness
Develop infrastructure low-level designs
Configure APIs and automation tools
Improve quality assurance and testing
Establish a Foundation for Efficient Operations
DevOps designates a set of tools, processes, best practices and corporate management guidelines to make IT organizations more agile and more efficient, fully achieved with the adoption of automation. But sometimes this emphasis on speedy deployments can make security professionals uneasy. To both keep your organization secure and run quickly in the cloud, IT governance must be built into the architecture and deployment process. This expert attention to the security aspects during an application deployment is often called SecOps.
To implement complementary SecOps and DevOps into your organization, focus on achieving the following areas in your cloud environment:

Infrastructure as code

Continuous deployment

Automation (including deployment and testing)

Monitoring and security
As a result of the SecOps and DevOps folks working together to design a streamlined, yet secure deployment process, your organization will better embrace a culture of innovation in the cloud.
DevOps and SecOps, when established in an organization properly, helps reap the following benefits:

Speed up software fixes







Shorten software delivery cycles







Reduce deployment errors







Enable automated testing







Gain continuous integration and monitoring







Enable automated delivery
Design Thinking in IT
Want to learn more about designing architectures for the demands of business, not just IT needs? Check out our podcast on the topic: