AI Architect Career Q&A: Answering Your AI Architect Career Questions

All right. Welcome, everybody, to our, generative AI architect webinar at Google Cloud Careers. My name is Chris Johnson. I am the chief operating officer. Here I go cloud careers. I am joined today by Mike Gibbs, our founder and CEO. Welcome, everyone. Dave Linthicum, our AI extraordinaire. Guru, your legend. Cheers, everybody. We've got Tyrone in the background. Also, Tyrone is will go cloud careers. He's going to be helping me with the, moderation and keeping everything going. Well. All right, so let's get this started. Like I said, we are doing our AI architect, our Gen AI architect webinar today with Dave and Mike. So I just I'm going to take just a few minutes to kind of tell you how this is going to work, and then I'm going to hand it over to the two of them. So we're going to have two halves to this. our presentation half where we're Mike and Dave. We're going to be talking about the role and the way that we develop, individuals for the role. We're going to be and then we've got the second half where we're going to be doing a Q&A session. The important thing that I want to point out is that I do not want you to wait until that second half to ask us your question. Put those questions in the chat box as we think of them. That way you don't forget them. Or if you get disconnected, we've got your question. Or if you've got a lead for, family emergency or work situation or whatever it might be, we've got your question. We're recording the webinar. So when we get to the Q&A session, we're going to answer the questions that have come in. So if you're here, we'll ask you to come up, maybe, and answer your questions if you're not able to come up. And of course, we'll still answer the question. But if you're not here, we'll still answer your question. As long as you've shared it in the chat box. That's why we asked you to put them in the chat box as you think of them. That way, you're not like me. And forget them. Or, you know, have to step away. And. And you never put them in the chat box, so it's not going to get answered. So like I said, we are recording. So we'll be sharing the recording of this with all of you. And yeah, I think that's that. That's my big bet. I do need to tell everybody. Two days ago, we celebrated our five year anniversary of the first career development program. Eric, go, cloud architect. Go cloud careers. Five years ago, I was go cloud architects. A lot has happened in five years. We've now, grown from that one program to multiple programs. So, including the AI architect program with Dave. But, in honor of that, we've got a 60% off anniversary discount. That we started, two days ago. So I'm going to ask Tyron. Terence put that there in the chat box. That's a link to all of our programs. So not only can you take advantage of that discount, but you can also just look at the program pages. See what the programs are. See what the curriculum is like. See what the roles are like. Maybe it'll generate some questions for you. Maybe it'll give you some clarity. Take advantage of that link. But to enroll, if you choose to. To get insight and gain information. So that is what we've got. Like I said, in celebration of our five year anniversary. That seems just like just yesterday. It feels like, And sometimes it feels like 50 years, but, it's, it's a fun time for us here to go cloud careers. So we always like to celebrate that. And this is our world celebrating with that 60% off. That's all I've got. I'm going to step to the back. Me and Tyron will be here in the back, and, Mike and Dave will be here on the front. So I will hand it over to Mike and Dave. So welcome everyone. I'm Mike Gibbs. I'm the CEO of Go Cloud Careers, and I've been an architect for little over 25 years now. Prior to that, it was internal medicine. But we all in architecture come from some interesting background. And, I've worked as a chief architect for the healthcare vertical for Cisco, for example, I worked as a principal architect for Riverstone Networks, which is now Nokia, a principal architect at, say, Comcast. And I've been in this field for about 25 years. I'm really excited here because David Lithium is joining us. And look, the first AI project I had was in 2001, and I thought it was cool. It was a banks auto trading system. But David's background in AI is better than anybody I've ever met. Not only is he worked with it since 1985. Not only did it have did it get him a job in NASA in the 1990s, but

I don't think Dave has worked on a project for any major enterprise. And I'll let him tell you in a minute that didn't have I probably in the last 15 to 20 years. So David brings an extreme amount of wealth of experience. I've had a 25 year architecture career. David is 35 or more. So, David, are you I'm well. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for speaking to our audience. You want to tell us anything else about yourself before we begin? Yeah, I've been doing architecture, one form or another, since the early 90s when I was working at mobile and then on to NASA a few other gigs and basically, you know, using, miscellaneous all kinds of technology, including AI. That was my specialty when I joined Boeing Computer Services in the 80s and focused on building and deploying AI systems for the US Army, and other government agencies, moving forward, it's just about, you know, in my role as CTO and my role as, you know, technology leader in my role as chief cloud strategy officer at Deloitte and buying and selling consulting companies, you know, over the years, I served as architect. And that's kind of what my trade is. In other words, the ability to kind of look at the business and figure out what kind of technology that they should bring to bear, to add value to the business, to solve some of the core problems and then focused on that like a science. You know, wrote 17 books to ten of them, are focused on architecture. Even my last book, An Insider's Guide to Cloud Computing, that focuses on doing architecture well, your ability to understand the real value of cloud and how the cloud is, it can should be used and not used. And then unlocking the Power of Cloud, where I was a coauthor, which was published, six months ago. And the theme is always the same. In other words, how do we get value out of this stuff? What's the pragmatic use of this technology? How do we ask our questions of each other? In order to get to the most optimized solution? One of the thing I noticed early on is that there probably are 5000 permutations of technology you can use to solve any given problem. And obviously there's a few of those are going to be optimized to solve the issue. And it's really kind of trying to find those, which should be the search. So I can solve any problem with enough money and time, but I'm not going to do so on an economic way that's putting priority around the business. So architecture, at the end of the day, is the ability to look at the business and represent the business in terms of how technology should be configured in use there. We're not advocates for technology. We're not cheerleaders for AI. the cloud around cheerleaders, particular plant brands. We represent the client. We represent the business. And that's kind of the core mission of what we do. So this is not about selling technology. explaining it. Our AWS is a great solution. In the first day you talk to a client. This is about figuring out what their issues are, breaking them down into a functional primitive, and then building them up as a set of requirements, and then taking those requirements and backing the correct conceptual architecture and then, backing the correct physical architecture in it. And that's what it is now, obviously, there's security and governance and lots of stuff that has to go along for the ride. But if you follow the procedures, you follow the methodology, follow the logic. You come to us to learn. We'll teach you, you know, the steps in order to make that happen, in order to get it right each and every time, the first time. And you can get it right each and every time. The first time. So I represent that, represent discipline, represent order, procedures, methodologies and really trying to get to the right correct in state. And those are the architects out there, many of my friends, who are the ones who are, you know, having the best bang for the buck and the best business value. Thank you for that, David. So. Right. So we do have some questions here. So we're going to get into those before we get to them I'm going to ask Tyrone. Tyrone, could you share the link to the AI architect program? Specifically? I know you've shared it in the chat before. But I just want to make sure we put it in there right now. Kind of where we got a breaking point. So time I was going to put that link there in the chat box. That's the link to the AI architect program with Dave. And, that has our anniversary discount power already applied to it. So I wanted to share that with all of you. Let's get to our first question. So let me see. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to find people, we're going to go on that. What are the questions we put in the chat box. So Robert is the first person we're going to say, if Robert wants to come on mute and ask us questions. If not, I can read them off. And if you're not able to come out mute, Robert, just let us know in the chat box. So while we're waiting, let's be okay.

Is Microsoft okay? All right, so, I asked you, I tried to invite you to come off mute up, so I'm not sure if that if you made that your Microsoft Zoom or your Microsoft funded computer. So Robert's question was I means different things to different people from infrastructure, such as GPU networking, data pipelines to higher level architectures like agent tech or multi-agent systems. And this context, how should we properly define AI architecture? That's a great question. I'll answer and then Mike and follow up. If I missed something. At the end of the day, it's the ability to look at the strategic value of this technology and how it applies to business. In other words, we're going to be sitting between the business and the technology framework that is AI. And that's all things. I obviously we focus on generative AI and or generative AI architecture class. But generative AI is a derivative of machine learning. So we focus on that because it's a base system. And obviously generative AI can be deployed using a genetic based framework, AI agents and we focus on that. So it's anything that deals with advanced learning systems that have cognitive capabilities is what I architectures about. That includes the deep learning that includes, you know, generative. That includes a genetic, that includes machine, that includes, you know, all kinds of frameworks. And we look at all of them and then figure out how to put them in production. At the end of the day, AI is enabling technology, just like databases and networks and other things that are out there. And so we focus on how AI is going to sit within a enterprise ecosystem and the role that it's going to play. And so we focus on the architecture of that. Obviously, many things kind of come into that. We have to deal with infrastructure, networking, we have to deal with security, FDA, with governance, all those sorts of things. But AI architecture is any architecture that deals with systems that you've used, cognitive capabilities. I think that would be my elevator answer. Yeah, and I love that. And I would say that the AI architecture, just to add a different perspective, is everything necessary for the AI systems to work the way people do their job, the processes with it, the underlying infrastructure, whether it be a GPU, a TPU, whatever it is, it's just everything to make the entire system work. Kind of like our body is in architecture and in our body. We've got a cardiovascular system that pumps blood, for example, to the body and a pulmonary system to oxygen. But the architecture of us is everything, all of our cells. So to me, I just look at it holistically. Everything that's there. Right. I going to go ahead and do, the second question from Rob. He says, 85%. If 85% of the skill set is non-technical and the left table going back to your diagram earlier, if the technical knowledge versus the non-technical knowledge, the left table, the non-technical doesn't seem specific to just AI architecture, but it could be applied to any architecture discipline. So let's look at this because this is where I actually come from. In medicine, everybody goes to medical school. And then somebody becomes a cardiologist and someone becomes a neurologist, and they all have the same underlying knowledge, and then they have very specific knowledge. So the 85%, they're common among all architects. But in that specialty is something different. For example, insecurity. You'd have to know a whole lot more about data security, data loss prevention strategies, data categorization strategies, when to tokenize, when are you scared? What have you in a security role? You know my so much more about encryption and security. You be thinking about much more identity things, much more zero trust, much more whatever. So it's like a doctor that specializes in one thing. They all have that same underlying thing, but that 15%, that is the 15%, that's very different. How would you frame it? David. No, I would say the same thing. I mean, at the end of the day, you know, this becomes a, job around information and job around communication. And so it's, I mean, the technology is always going to be changing. It's under, you know, constant, you know, constant evolution over time. And that's why I like to put, you know, volatility, which is the technology is into a domain. And so in other words, we put the architectural disciplines around it and how we leverage the different technologies and we really kind of focus on the patterns. Gotta remember you know databases has a pattern AI has a pattern. Network security governance all has a pattern. And so we have meta patterns that we look at in terms of how we configure the systems and the technology in terms of how we implement that is going to be changing forever. And so I'm never going to be, detailed focus on a particular piece of technology, because in a year it's going to be, you know, people have moved on and they're on to other things. We have to use a brand and a type of technology to implement them, implement the solution.

But the understanding should be that that's going to be completely dynamic and changing. So when we set architecture out, we have to architect the thing to accommodate these changes and not necessarily focus on a particular technology, the ones that fail out there. And certainly the AI world seeing 95% of these things are failing, not able to return our AI and look at the essence of what they did wrong. And it's exactly that they focus too much on the technology and not as much on the business. So they picked the wrong use cases. They didn't configure the conceptual technology correctly, and they just really kind of focused on implementing I, you know, OpenAI and Gemini and all these things like that. And it ended up missing the mark because there was no link back to the business value. use case. And so you have to kind of treat technology like that. Now, if I'm an engineer, technology is very important to me because I'm getting my engineering skills are going to be dependent on a particular technology. I'm the Google engineer, AWS engineer, and things like that. But that's why you use different engineers with different skill sets on different architectural projects. So when I was at Deloitte, I knew, you know, I had the emails and the phone numbers of, you know, 100 different engineers and I could configure them based on what my solution was going to be about. So I went through the architecture, I brought them in to actually implement the technology, and they were different people because I was using different technology. That's just the way the world works. Yeah, perfectly explained that. I'm glad that I thank you for that. All right. Okay. So let's see. So if Nicholas is here, now see if Nick was come from you. Yeah. Hi. How are you, Nicholas? I'm very good linkages. So. Yeah. Right. I, I'm a cloud, architect, work around the integration space at the same time of GCP, that sort of thing. Trying to transition into, when I'm a data consultant because I do a level up, automation using, integration Muslims as all things. So, thinking next, year on, if, I want to become, like an AI consultant. So, do I like, I've been listed to, you'll, was be seen information going on, which is very important. I mean, how do I transition or what's the roadmap for me to become, under consultant, in the next year or two, that sort of thing. Trying to start my own, startup, that sort of thing. Well, realistically, the map is going to be figure out where you are and the skills that you currently own and the skills of where you want to be. So I can give you a 2 or 3 question quick test on what I typically use on an architect to see where their gaps are. And then I can recommend if it's something that you could learn on your own or if it's something that we should train you in. If you want. Yeah. I don't even mind training. I just don't need to know. The path. Yeah. Well, the path is going to be different if we, based upon your skills. So that's why I was going to ask you 2 or 3 questions to baseline your current knowledge. So go. The first question is a very basic business question. Could you explain to me what Ebit is? In practical terms, we want EBITDA. To know that sorry okay. So that was earnings before interest depreciation and taxes. And I wanted you to know that it was revenue minus cost of goods sold minus operational expenses whatever. But it excludes interest and taxes because if you're going to build a business case, you're going to have that kind of financial acumen. So train with us or get an MBA, one of the two. But you really going to need to enhance that business in order to provide any kind of real consulting. And, you know, when you've got that kind of it's difference between a six and an $800 consulting per hour than an 80, and that business is business. The second side of things is let me understand your architecture. I'm going to ask your I'm going to see what your knowledge is of cloud computing. And I'm going to say that if I used a single cloud provider and I used ten availability zone and five reasons and five regions, tell me why, I can't guarantee a 99. 999% availability system. And that architecture, even though I should be able to. But if you got, I'm trying to get

because this level of infrastructure will determine what you can design. The study question. No, you didn't. I didn't get it. Why can't you, on a single cloud provider, no matter how many availability zones and regions you use, ever created, 99. 999% available system and guarantee that. That, things that's got to do with, Like, To get 99. 9. I mean, I, I'm going to be talking about, the, the infrastructure and the load balancing. It's okay. The reason I ask that is that I want someone that has a good cloud architecture knowledge, perspective to understand that there's a shared control plane between regions, and if that goes down, the whole cloud down. So I want them to understand that there's APIs, identity systems. And if those key systems go down, the entire cloud goes down. I want that person to understand that there's a common network. And even if they have regional networks connected via BGP or routing or can take that entire cloud down, I want people to know that a significant DDoS attack to that single cloud can take the entire cloud down, which is why you can never have true high availability on a single cloud. So what I would set, I'd like to ask one question. Okay. Necklace. Could you tell me what? Tell us what you do. What you've been doing on a day to day basis. Like what's your like? What's the work that you do on a day to day basis? Yeah. I mean, lately I've been working, more like, integration. I mean, I'm, more like, I manage, the integration, of, the API from, National Grid to National because we're doing, like, a separation. So, again, involvement on the, API gateway, that's all things. So, it's like, like migrating APIs from one state, which is the national grid state to, national gas. And at the same time, like, refactoring those APIs. That's all. Fifth International August. I mean, I'm a more in that sort of space then, it's so, yeah. So if I were to put it in a simple non-tech term for someone like me because I'm the non-tech guy, you're, you're on the doing side, you know, the, the the AI, yeah. I mean, is, integration, like you, I mean, I don't call it, I mean, I but I don't do that popping up. I'm on the design. Lots of APIs. Do we have, regarding no functional requirements, I look at looking at them, the business values, what the stakeholders want. And, what sort of APIs do we need to replicate across the, different states, that sort of thing. Gotcha. So, I think that answer, I think that answer again, like a lot of information. Yeah. So what you're doing is what we used to call design engineering. We were getting involved in the design, but you're not building a business case. You're not actually, spending the time with the board of directors on the C-suite. No, no, because, but fortunately, I did, my took off in 2014, but I never got a job from it. I mean, it's just like you said, it doesn't give you. Yeah. That's all. Yes. Until gap won't do that. So the real key is you need to learn architecture. And, by architecture, I actually mean the art of architecture. And the, And that's. How do you do the consulting? How do you get the business? How do you sell a consulting engagement? How do you align your stakeholders? So there's that. And you could either learn that from us or you can get a job. If you had an MBA, for example, you can go to McKinsey as a management consultant. And they would teach that as well. Architecture, business and management consulting are very similar, but otherwise we would teach you have to get business. Yeah. No, I'm on this some. Sorry. Oh, sorry. I'm really sorry. I'm on a, to, Because I've made up my mind, to, to discuss with you. Anyway. So, I've been looking at your, your course for the last, maybe two months now, so, so I'm really ready to go for it. I just I'm ready to, sign on. I mean, I'm very interested. And so that that's going to be the path, because that way we can give you the business skills. You'll be able to build a business case about why someone will invest in your architecture and your consultant. Yeah. I mean, yes, definitely. The do I need to learn? Cool. Like, not necessarily. I don't need to be like a machine learning engineer. I kind of know anyway. But, do I need that sort of, understanding so that I've in the knowledge

gap eventually. Well, that won't get you. That won't solve your knowledge gap, because knowing how to do has nothing to do with knowing how the systems works or how to design often. Okay. And. It's knowing how to configure the router versus knowing what happens when when BGP neighbors turned out. How does it impact somebody 10,000 miles away. So it's a different set of skills. That's what I would say. David you have any other things that you had I couldn't agree more. I mean he just needs to focus on on, you know, what's the difference between where he is now and where it needs to be. And I think where he needs to be is, you know, probably getting better defined in his mind. And I think that's, you know, ultimately the core issue here is just to kind of figure out where your deficits are and then bring skills to bear that, remove the deficits and your communication skills and architecture skills and things like that has to be going pretty well, because you're going to be grilled on stuff like that. And if you come from a technical background, it's going to seem weird to you because why are we talking about, you know, efficiency and code and efficiency and network bandwidth utilization and things like that? It's getting get to architectural concepts that are pretty, specific and around the business specifically. And you have to figure out how those links occur. And there's few places out there where you can go to find that stuff out. There. There's not I don't as far as I know, there's not like the architect book to go to. There's different frameworks and things like that people can use as checklists, but you can't go there to get the, information you need to become a good architect. That's typically through experience and, you know, people mentoring you over the years, things like that. Yeah. Thank you for that. I really appreciate your time. All right. So, let's see, lucky had a question say, if lucky was coming off, if, with their question. Yeah. Good evening everyone. Hey. Good evening. Thank you for the patience of, Please. Currently going on, cloud computing course, but I wanted to know how I could integrate, generative, I think so it's. Or is it, something I could do after or it is something I could integrate. Let you get. I need to ask a clarifying question. When you say you're going through a cloud computing course, which one? Cloud, practitioner does, AWS okay. So, so I mean, I'm asking who is pro, which is like what program, what course, where you go doing. Is it I'm doing is it our training? Is it LinkedIn learning? Is it, some other provider, like we're just trying to get a frame of reference. Do we know what to, be learning? Okay. Is, a virtual learning? Okay. So is it specific to a certification? Yes. The AWS Cloud practitioner, I think you said yes. Does it? Okay. So I think you actually asked two questions. And one of the things that you had mentioned is you're learning the AWS Cloud practitioner. That is learning AWS vocabulary. What AWS calls things, what it's lacking is anything related to cloud computing. And I'll tell you what I mean. For example, they will tell you that AWS has an EC2 instance, but they won't tell you it's a virtual machine. how you size a virtual machine, whether it be extra CPU cores or higher clock rate. It won't teach you how the impact of Dram on that virtual machine, or how you would size that. The impact of storage on virtual machine. It'll just tell you the name it and give you a few boxes how to clear. So if you saw me earlier, say, you know, if we go back to the slide real quick, phase one develop the actual skills for your career because they won't be taught in a certification. I interviewed a thousand AWS certified people and many of them passed the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional, and they didn't even know what cloud computing was. No, they knew how to set it up. configure it. They knew which boxes to click, but they had no idea what block storage was. The weaknesses in block storage

where they would use block storage, object storage. So you're going to have to learn cloud computing. And, you could learn it from us, or you could learn the network, the data center, which is ultimately the cloud. Now, the second question you asked, realistically speaking, was and I'll repeat it, and then I'll have David answer, because I know how he's going to respond to this is, how would I integrate AI into cloud computing? That was the question you asked. And. Dave was going to tell you why. That's probably not the question you want to ask. Yeah. ask is, you know, what is the business benefit and how are you finding out the right trajectory for the system. And, and so even I am going to be applicable and, you know, that needs to be understood. You got to remember there's there is some cross, you know, there's some cross disciplines here in terms of, you know, and I always say in many cases we're going to be moving AI systems on cloud. And you have to do with cloud infrastructure, cloud security, cloud governance, things like that. But at the end of the day, the AI architect, who is looking at all the platforms needs to determine, first off, if they is even going to be a fed. I remember a as expensive as 20 times out of a regular system. So we have to look at this with the ability to have an objective consideration of the value of the technology and how it's going to work. So we're representing the business. So it's not necessarily, you know, am I going to do cloud or I do I need to understand both things like that. It's just basically understanding how to pick the business apart so you can figure out which direction you need to move into. And that's kind of the step one, and in many cases of AI is going to be indicated. Then we have to do an AI architect, which means we get all the AI related talents and architectural practices that are on board, the ethicists and the AI engineers and things like that. And we're teaching you how to go through that. But you have to have a more holistic understanding and more of a business representation. When you look at this, it's never going to be, you know, switching from one technology to another. It's going to be working from the business problem to the technology solution. Sometimes that's going to be AI, sometimes it may not, you know, sometimes it's going to be cloud, non cloud. And your ability to get to that conclusion is what is the deficit there. That's what you need to understand. Great answer. Chris you're muted. Thank you so very much. You're watching I appreciate thank you. Okay let's see. So we've got Shadrach, let me say they can come off mute. I, they had a couple of questions. Okay. All right, I should I dropped a little. Hello, Mike. So my question is I've been working as a data scientist for Tesla. Okay. And here's what my confession is. I look at all your courses, they look amazing. And I feel like, should I become an AI architect? Since I've already been doing a lot with AI systems, what a lot of AI projects and what have you. Or since I'm coming from Africa, maybe the Cloud Architect and all that may be a better fit for me. From where I'm located geographically. So I'm looking at all of these dates and only two, but I really want to get a job and get it first, so we don't. Because I read something on your site where I think David was saying that you cannot easily become an like something like, can I easily become an architect because, people have to look at your portfolio and see what he was at number of years before they can do that competition. Also, I don't know what I'm right, but that's what I'm the other person like. So, I'll take half of it. I'll have David do the other half. Okay. So every day I've got somebody that never worked in tech before that gets an architect job. Now in enterprise architecture, if you're curious, 50% of all enterprise architects don't come from a tech background, 50%. They come from consulting, they come from program management. They don't come from an engineering background because enterprise architecture is so very different. I think of, Yvonne, for example, who went to AWS as his first tech job. He worked as a waiter and that was in cloud solutions architecture. I think about wonder who was a stay at home mom who got hired by Microsoft as a cloud solutions architect. I think about Claire, who was a nurse practitioner who got a director of architecture job after us. I think in the Fuli over there in London, who's now in Manchester, who became a chief technology officer as his first tech job ever. That was a queue that was not fairly experienced. I think a Kemal who was working in radiology, who's now over at American Express, I think of J to two weeks ago, was just got his first Cloud Architect job.

It's not your background. I will also tell you that I've had engineers with 20 years experience, and it takes me about a year to transition them into an architect, and then when they do, they have a great engineering experience. But I'll also tell you that sales reps, nurses, teachers of all become architects does their first job and in many cases it's easier for them. And you might ask how and why is it easier for one person to get these jobs for the other? Well, let me just kind of show you real quick. If we look at certain jobs. So let's say I had a network engineer that was moving into I that network engineer probably doesn't know any of these things on the AI side, but that network engineer and I was one for three months, probably wouldn't have business acumen, knowledge, they wouldn't be CXO relevant. They wouldn't know how to manage stakeholders. They probably sell, manage vendors, ask the right questions and influence others. Negotiate, organize, change, what have you. Now, all of a sudden, you give me a project manager. It's never been an engineer before. They've had to manage stakeholders be somewhat emotionally intelligent. They have to write two page briefs for executives. They have to manage all kinds of vendors along the way. They have to ask the right questions. They have to influence the board. They get involved in strategy conversations. They're constantly involved in change. They're giving presentations all the time. That project manager that's never been an architect already has 50% of the skills. So the point is, is you can get any job you want as long as you have the right skills. It has nothing to do with. Or whether it was Geoffrey who got his first job as client, or Pierre, who was a sailboat operator that's now at least web. It's about the skills. And that's why I got my first job as a principal network architect with us as principal architect in less than two years, and it's based on skill. David, how do you feel about that? Because you've seen people from all backgrounds and walks of life. Yeah, absolutely. Right. I mean, in other words, the thing is, you're trying to attain the behaviors of the job that you're looking for. And, you know, in this case, you have an existing job, which is very different, I think, with the job that you're looking for, which is going to pay better. And I think it's a better job. And I made that decision, by the way, back in the early 90s, I was a developer and they offered me an architect role. And I go, yeah, I don't know if I'm going to do that. I got took the role and never looked back. But I also understood when I stepped in that role that it was completely alien to me in terms of the skill sets that I needed. It comes down to communications, understanding. And I had to do a quick, you know, education very quick on how I talk to people and how I lead people. I remember walking around with the ten minute manager and trying to read that, which was helpful but not great, helpful. And you have to kind of obtain the skills to figure out how you're going to do well in the job that you're going to need, but it's also how you get the job. You're talking about getting a job fast and quick. Then if you're able to go in there and talk the talk and walk the walk, in other words, you have the presence. You have the ability to communicate and answer some very tough questions. And what an architect does and how you would carry on an architect role. It doesn't matter the experience that you have. Mike's absolutely right. It matters with your ability to kind of get through that interview where they're convinced that you're going to be somebody that has a very close chance, of being successful. You got to remember, there's there's, 100, I architect jobs chasing one candidate now. Yeah. Believe it or not. And so they're going to be apt to compromise and hire people with less experience who but still have the acumen and still have the behaviors, still can talk the talk and walk the walk where it's going to be reasonable to assume they're going to succeed in the job. But in many cases, they do. One of the things I found when I was at Deloitte is I hired lots of people who came from that background. So they were, you know, retired Army, retired teachers, retired cops, you know, who went through the architecture program, were able to get enough skills to get the position, took junior roles. But baby, basically, after a year or so, that worked their way up to complete. Architect ran their own teams. And when two years ago, they were walking a beat or teaching a class. And so you can do it if you have enough, motivation to make it happen. It's possible. But you do need to understand. You need to learn a lot about a lot of stuff, and you need to be able to get by and interview. have this, have the acumen and have the attention where you're going to command respect. And that's where people fall short. They'll learn the skills, they'll learn the methodologies and memorize my books or mix books or whatever. And then, you know, try to regurgitate that in front of somebody who's going to give them the position where if they don't command the respect, if they don't have the leadership capabilities, they're not going to get it. That's why it's important when you go to an architect class, that we do it like we do here, we send you to the business skills class so you can learn both because I tell people, you know, in the I architecture class all the time, this is an executive position.

I'm not teaching. You draw pretty diagrams. I mean, I can do that. And chances are I is going to do most of that in a few years anyway. Yeah. Your job here is to lead a team. communicate. Your job here is to, to drive business success. And you can understand that this is a role you need to have. Yeah, purely an executive role. It just gets confused. So I just got a I just got one of those wonderful messages. Mike. Oh, another person got hired. Yes. Oh. That's great. Tell me. Right. I'll share the details with you after class. But, but. Yeah. Sorry, guys. Everybody saw that. I got distracted over here. That's always a good distraction to have, wonderful distraction. Oh, I liked it because I said I'm not cloud hired because it's not there. It's not their ultimate goal. It's a step towards, but it's still an architect role. So that's good that they got big goals. But I'll share with I'll share it with you guys when we get off here. You all are familiar with the individuals, so, Wonderful. Okay. All right, all right. So don't get too distracted. Let's see. I've trying. I think I gotta add another question. So I'm going to see if they come up and unmute themselves again. Okay. Here, here. So now over here from Africa we like killing two birds with one stone. So I'm thinking is it a glue for the cloud architecture. Go for the At architecture and hope that it covers most of the things I could have learned from the Cloud Architect program. Oh, okay. So I'll give you a little secret. So most people don't realize all the security challenges that exist in the cloud compared to the traditional environment. And because of that, in my Security Architect program, I also have the students attend the Cloud Architect classes and the Security Architect classes. Because security means the data center, it means co-location facilities, it means private clouds, public clouds, and everywhere in between. So in our program, you would be getting cloud Architect training and Cloud Security Architect training. And I did that, like I said, because knowing how to secure the cloud was so critical for that security architect role, and because there's just nobody that really understands security. And quite frankly, there's not a lot of people that understand cloud. There's are cloud certified but don't understand cloud. So by doing it in our program, you could take either Cloud architect job security architect jobs or cloud security architect jobs, specifically in the security Architect program. Okay, that answers my question. Thank you very much. Amazing. Awesome. Thank you. Great questions. Let's see, what do we have now? Let's see. Got rich. Let's see if Rich can come up for me. And while we're waiting on Rich, I do want to give everybody a heads up. We have a hard stop at 3:00. 25 minutes from now. So I'm going to try and get Mike and Dave to make sure we get all these questions answered. Unless either one of them tell me they can stay longer than I'm. I'm here until the end of the day, so I will stay longer. But there's one that's really quick, and I don't want anybody to be. It's not just for you, Mike. It's. It's a elaborate one for you. This one is quick. So the question is if I will draw diagrams in the future, will that affect opportunities? The answer is no. We don't really spend any time drawing diagrams anyway. I mean, David said last time, you know, 1% of his time is drawing diagrams. That's the same thing for me. We're managing stakeholders. We're leading teams, were meeting with people. We're evaluating trade offs that that's no impact on our job. It just it'll save us a half, a half of 1% of our job. I wanted to take that out because I don't want anybody to see it and understand this is one of those jobs that can't be replaced by. I was one of the few. Dave, what do you have to say on that? Thanks. Oh. Same pattern. Yeah. Same thing. In other words, I don't draw diagrams. And there's audit automation. And by the way, not just I mean there's automated tech tools we've been using for years, things like that. And it doesn't really matter. It's how you think through it. The diagrams are nothing more than a teaching tool to stakeholders and a teaching tool to, your peers. Yeah. All right. Now let's see what Rich has. Sorry about that. Rich. Can you hear me? Yes, absolutely. Yes. Thanks a lot for that. Yeah. Quick, quick question. From a business, system back. Right. My main question was what the difference between the AI architect and the enterprise architect? I was very interested in together at one point, and I was just, pretty much got a good grasp of what enterprise architects. Would probably be to customers for an AI architect.

An enterprise architect, one for the enterprise architect, focused on the entire business and enhancing every element of the platform architect, like the AI architect, is focused on the AI to give that business competitive advantage as opposed to every other thing that goes along with it. Does that work for you, David? Yeah. It works. I mean, the enterprise architect is, dealing with the systemic architect for the entire enterprise. And so they obviously have a pretty important role. Typically, AI architects may deal with a group of solutions, but typically it's going to be a single solution. In other words, it's an application business solution that they're building. And there may be no dozens of AI architecture projects underway within a particular enterprise. There were in my clients when I was at Deloitte, and so there's many AI architects, typically enterprise architects, there's normally 1 or 1, one team of people that's led by one enterprise architect. Now, for Brett, thanks for that. Take care of you, Rich. Yeah, yeah. No, it's good to just get that kind of understanding. Of what? Each one would do. So it almost in my mind, I'm just trying to get an understand, like on a day to day basis. What I would like an AI architect do what enterprise architect do I know is obviously a lot of stakeholder management. We work on the C-suite and things like that. But I think like a enterprise architect, they're more C-suite type. Yep. Communication. Yep. Yeah. You can think of AI architecture is AI consulting and enterprise architecture is management consulting. So I would venture to say that the actual day to day tasks are probably going to be very look very similar. But the recipients are the audience are the partners of those tasks would be different, if that makes sense. There's going to be communication. research, there's going to be meetings. There's going to be phone calls or TV. There's going to be, discussions. There's going to be brainstorming. There's going to be getting your butt chewed up by the boss, probably there's probably going to get your butt chewed up by the customer. You know, congratulated by the customer. You're going to get, you're going to be smooth and then trying to convince this team member to do this thing, and that being able to do that thing and call on this person to give advice on this thing and getting it based on this other thing, I could be completely wrong, but, based off of my experience, I've seen that the it all looks the same, and it's the same types of things as the participants in those activities with you are different. So, Thank you. Yeah. Tony is next. I'll see if Tony can come up from here. If not, I can read the question. So pretty straightforward. One this size by type of question that I get to answer first. Usually. So Tony asks, if we register for the Security Architect program, will we have access to the AI architect program? No, not on their face. The Security Architect program is a standalone program, and the as is the Enterprise Architect program. These are all career development programs focused for that career as a security architect, or that career as an AI enterprise architect. That career as a cloud architect. Now, with that being said, all of our students that are in rolled in a program, they have the opportunity to enroll in additional programs. We do that at a, again, a student pricing, I guess you would call it, it's not full price. So that's a benefit of being an enrolled student. B but I will warn you that I will. ask you questions to make sure that you're not just collecting programs like people collect certificates. If you're in a program and you're interested in the content of another program, I'm going to speak with you directly and find out to make sure that there's a desire and a purpose and an alignment towards an ultimate goal. And then we're not just collecting programs. That's why, most companies would love to sell one person all four programs at full price. That's not what we're here for. We're here to get you towards a singular goal. And if multiple programs might help you to your specific goal, then sure, we would love to have you take advantage of that, that special pricing to get those additional materials.

But I will have a conversation. I've had a conversation with everybody that wants to buy multiple programs, because I just want to make them make sure they get to where they want to be the fastest they can. Yeah, we just want that focus because we know that if you focus on being a great AI architect, you're gonna be awesome. Now, if you had a desire to be an AI security architect, then it might make sense to combine two. But we just want to make sure when people want to do more than one, it's getting them to a bigger goal, a more strategical. And we because we just don't want to take people's money without helping them get to the to a really big goal. Now, so, let's say I dobut I say that over, let's come up me here. This one is specific for Dave, and these are able to come on me. I'll read it off. Our sheet. Sorry. All right. So, so this question from our word is. Hi, David. Can you share with us an example of an architecture solution is designed for a customer. Recently. I'm asking this as I would love to hear your experience due to all the horror stories going around about AI solutions going wrong, I and I that may made a mistake or deleted customer's database and then lied about it. When asked why did it, what elements do you consider to design a solution that protects the customer's IP and has helped guidelines to rein in all the I probably shouldn't say, but this nation. Yeah, I got I think I got it. Yeah. Don't be freaked out all the with all the hype stories that are out there with the tech press these days, everybody's kind of taking and exaggerating many things. And the agents deleted my homework is kind of a common issue now, those are just silly things that I think are done by silly people that is so small of a of an impact out there, it's not even worth discussing. Last thing I built was a logistics management system, built on, built on generative AI. And so the ability to, in essence, look at a supply chain optimizes supply chain based on the past 20 years of data, looking at the suppliers, figuring out inventory depletion rates, figuring out when things should be ordered, things should be manufactured, things like that. So there's an automated brain and essence running the supply chain. And this is via a company that was a global 2000 company that decided during Covid when the supply chain went haywire. They needed a better solution. And far and so far when I check back with them, it's running awesome today and it's, it's added, about $1 million a month in value and they're able to build and deploy systems through any kind of supply chain shortages and things, able to see when the supply chain is going to be, challenged or to raw materials ahead of time, switch to different manufacturers for switch to different vendors and do sort of magically behind the scenes. That was the last thing I built, but built hundreds of things over the years. Don't be afraid about all of the stuff you're hearing in the press about some of the things that are occurring these days. The big problem we have is we don't have enough people going through these architect programs. And so they're making mistakes. They're not finding the right use cases. path to success with any technology. In this case specifically, I so part of the thing that we teach you as an architect is to be responsible. We always use we talk about ethics. Ethics is a core part of the videos that I made. You know how to consider things whether you, you know, the whole thing, whether it's not what you can do, whether you should do it, and also protecting your data and thinking about the different new attack vectors that come along with AI. So privacy is an issue. Ethics is an issue. You know, all these sorts of things are kind of popping up. It's probably less of an issue. And I think the press is leading it to be. But the thing is, you're responsible for delivering a technology and delivering a system and a solution that's going to do no harm and bring value back to the business. And we're going to teach you how to do that. If you're able to accept those as a parameters, you're going to be just fine. You start throwing things out into production without rhyme or reason, without a core plan in terms of how business values are going to come back and how you're going to protect the IP and protect your data. That's when people run afoul of things, and that's what's going on now. And people are still experimenting now. So a lot of this stuff you're you're hearing about where, you know, these projects have gone way, way off range, is because it wasn't really deemed to be a production project. They just went through it as an experimentation system to get to the other side, see what the technology can do. People are building real stuff now, but we just had people playing around with the technology for the last three years, in 2022

and now in 2026, they're shifting the gears and getting into productive states and actually building deploying systems. All right. So, I'm going to get up and try and get, try and focus on questions that are targeted to Dave. Because I know Dave, has a, hard stop. So. And then I'll do the rest. Yeah. So, Robert, he says, I've been exploring AI architectures, but I'm conscious that my 20 plus years in networking, cloud design are deeply ingrained from my recruitment standpoint. It's this kind of transition, something that works in practice. Or does it tend to be difficult repositioning? Yeah, it's up to you. But, you know, just my experience, I've had people switch to architecture from network engineers and from infrastructure engineers and hardware engineers. And so if you're willing to adopt the skills and learn about the skills that you're going to need to be a successful architect, you're going to be just fine. It's the problem. You're still solving problems very much like you did as a network person. You're still understanding the plan. You're just thinking about many more moving parts and how they kind of work and play well together. So you're adapting your problem solving skills to be a bit more holistic, but you're still going to be problem solving. I think you'll be taken back when you go through a course. How much you, that your technical brain is able to adapt to what architecture needs, basically another set of logic and other set of disciplines. And you also have an understanding in terms of how that works. And so you're not coming from a business, background, but you understand how the technology is going to work. So that's going to help you out as well. But the thing is, if you're willing to do the training and you're willing to take the time and understand you're going to be just fine if that willingness isn't there, you're not going to succeed. But there's nothing that's going to cause, you know, cause you not being able to transform from that position to an architect position, it's totally up to you. Thank you. You know, there's. And my background is networking as well. My CCI number 7417. You can imagine how long ago that was. And that was the last time I touched the router because I worked as a network architect after that. Sorry. That's. Can you hear me? Yes, yes. Sorry. Right. That's not exactly the question I ask. The question more was about. I have a brand, my export. Right. I have a brand on my CV and on my LinkedIn profile. More than 20 plus years. I do like I talk in my notes around it. Right. So and having the opportunity, I would just dive into it. The question was how it would be perceived by the external market that you go, oh yeah, that's a good one. Yeah, that's a great question. Yes. Yeah. Thank you. And that's, that's actually a very easy question for us. Yeah. It's really. So you, you hit the nail on the head with the word it's all about the brand. Yeah. And so I'll let Mike talk about that, but I won't let my talk too long. We had we actually do a lot of it. We. What we do is we do a lot of taking what you have in your past and translating it to what it could be in the future, taking those things that you would have done as a network architect, those kind of conversations, stakeholder things, translating and pulling out the things that are there. And then we will have to modify, change things. We have to change the kind of content, create change what you think to talk about these things, change how you describe it. And in many cases depending upon the role like not for the AI architect role, but if you started to move into an enterprise architect role, you would change the way you walk, talk and dress too, because now you'd be moving into a more executive role. But we have it all the time. I went from internal medicine to network architect in about nine months, and that was a big brand change. I have engineers like Harshal, for example, who had 14 years of cloud engineering, and before we migrated him into a cloud architect. Well, I had people like protocol that had 20 years. And honestly, I just had a guy, Nikolai, who's in Germany, and Nikolai was a Russian national in Germany, telling me how hard of a time it was for him getting a job as a Russian national. He couldn't qualify for security things, whatever. And I remember when Alonzo and I met him on a phone call and he said, network engineering is dead. I don't know what I'm going to do. And I said, I promise you, you give me six, nine months, we'll rebrand you and have you going a role. And now he's over in Cisco as an architect. So yeah, we know how to do it. Yes, there is thing, but it actually takes a lot of polishing, a lot of changing the business side. A lot of the skill is changing the kind of content you create. And when you'll happen, you'll notice things better. Relationship people will tend to follow you, but you'll notice it. And some cases you'll be able to do it at the same company. In other cases, you know

you may have to change companies, but you'll definitely be able to do it. And we definitely hope that's a big part of what we do. Thank you. Yeah. Great question. I'm glad you clarified that. Yeah. Thanks. That was a as a very, very important clarification, but great, great. We got to answer two great questions. That was yeah, that was nice. All right. Let's see here. All right. So, So I guess this would be kind of a follow up to his original longer question about horror stories. Albert says, what are your suggestions regarding the design of safety guardrails and VR plans for AI solutions? Well, that's governance. And governance is a core component of what AI architecture is about. So your ability to put, you know, guardrails, governance, guardrails, policies, you know, within the models themselves, but also at the periphery as well, how you consume it, how you, you know, process information which flows into the models but doesn't flow in the models. Yeah, I'm always taken back by the lack of thought in terms of governance and how people deploy these AI systems. Some of these things that I audit, you'll see them take proprietary information and PII information, just drag and drop it, you know, into a limb, for the purpose of analysis. And there has to be some sort of limitation to that. Everybody is using AI now for these one off tactical, you know, productivity issues is called shadow AI. And the thing that scares me to death about those sorts of things is because there's not a lot of governance in terms of how people are leveraging these systems. So the guardrails have to be put into the yellow lens that they're leveraging. They have to be certified. They have to be, secured. You have to deal with encryption when encryption is needed. And, and ultimately it's fundamental to the architecture. So that's why governance is a huge thread. In the AI architecture stuff, security is important as well. Obviously, we're trying to keep things secure, but the guardrails are keeping people out of trouble. Normally, things they don't plan on doing or they don't know better, is core to that. And we don't have enough of it now in some of these deployed systems that we're seeing some huge mistakes and very risky mistakes that are being made. The recent Amazon outage, for example, wasn't a genetic issue and it was caused by lack of governance in the system. In other words, they didn't put a governance layer in, therefore they're able to make mistakes. When this case took down Amazon for six hours, fortune. All right. So that's, with that, I'm going to take this moment. I'm going to ask Dave. Dave, if you would like to share any last words, before you have to leave us as it relates to whatever's on your mind as a, to the architect program, the architectural, and then my guy and everyone else will stick around and finish out the questions. Yeah. This is a great career path. You know, I've been doing this for a long period of time. Obviously, I is in a huge in flux sweat right now and a bit chaotic. But when things settle down, the need for core architectural talent is going to be core to everything that's out there. When I just looked at some of the recent hiring studies and what's going to be the hot jobs into 2026 and 2027, architect came up. Number one. I engineer was on there as well. I think we only need to implement it, but we need one and the other and we need to build these skills. Right now we have a lot of people running around who are waving the arms around AI who don't know necessarily how to build and implement these systems. And I think when people touch the stove, and realize that they're going to need some discipline and some talent behind it, and we don't have that discipline in talent, we don't have enough trained people. It's going to be very difficult to hit AI at scale that every, every one of the global two clouds and companies that I talked to want to. So this is a hot position. It pays really well. But the other thing, it's fun. I go to work every day just have a blast. And, you know, solving issues and dealing with cool problems and, you know, building systems that are really kind of taking the business to the next level. And it's a great, you know, position to make a career after doing that. And I'll leave it at that. All right. Thank you. Thank you for that. And thank you for joining us today. Thank you. Tyrone, can you put the link to the AI program in the chat box? So since we just talked about that, so, I guess we will let you go, Dave. So you guys see you later. Take care, David, and thank you. You got it. Bye, guys. Bye bye. All right, so we've still got a few more questions here that we're going to get through. I am going to have to make Mike, have a cut off at some point because he also has a class and he's got to get ready for, here in just a few minutes. Why not just a few minutes? An hour and three minutes. Now, at this point, so let's, I'll take it to the next question. Let's see

if we can come up mute with their question. If they can't, be our v, c. Hello, Chris. Hi. Hello. How are you doing? Wonderful. How are you? I'm good, I'm good. My daughter's been in a technical background for 11 years, and I was completely into system engineering, networking and, security level as well. And, I have learned, so many things in the whole, infrastructure engineering. And I like to move to the enterprise architecture and now have completed the CCnp certifications on Microsoft expert level and ethical hacking for the security. And I have been working as an implementation engineer for the T-Mobile stores. For the Fortigate firewalls. And I got a plenty of chance to work globally with all the technologies, in this past 11 years. So, presently I like to, move myself to the architect role. Is it a good idea to move, with the 11 years of experience? Or still I have to, technically gain more knowledge, and then I have to move. Move for it. So what if I told you that if you spent the next 20 years in engineering, you would never gain the knowledge of the architect? Because it's a different set of knowledge? I agree my completely. So that is exactly the reason I have chose to, do the 1210. Okay, the talk of ten won't get you there either. Here's what TOGAF will teach you. But like, according to your presentations on your videos and everything, your, personal, suggestion is to go for the togive, to, get the packages from your enterprise architect. So, which one is the right decision to do? So let me show you again. My first process is learn the skills of the job, which are not covered until GAF or any certification, then become what the hiring manager wants. Then build a real world portfolio and then get certifications to get you interviews. But know that the certifications will teach you no skills and then prepare for the interview. So here's what toga for state. Step one determine the architecture vision. Scope the architecture. But you know what? It doesn't tell you how to do it. Phase B map out the business architecture. capabilities, but it doesn't tell you how. It doesn't even tell you what a business capability is. So talk F is the functional equivalent of me giving you the steps to do an open heart surgery. Step one remove the vein from the leg. Step two open the chest up three. Use a rib spreader. Step four cross clamp the, coronary artery. Step five remove the heart. Step six. But I didn't teach you how to do it, so if you want. So there's a big difference between, certifications and architecture. And that's why I said in the beginning of this presentation, the only reason we use certifications are to get you interviews. They will never get you hired. They will never give you architect skills. All right, Mike, I have a quick question for you. Is it a good, time to, get into the enterprise architecture? With 11 years of experience, do we have to go for it? Your 11 years of experience doesn't have anything to do with us. What would you like to be? be an enterprise architect? It'll probably pay 2 to 6 times more than you're earning as a network engineer, but that's up to you if you'd like to do it. If you don't want to be an enterprise architect, it's not a good thing. But I don't understand what your 11 years of experience has to do with anything about your next choice. That's where I'm trying to networking on the system of mine for 11 years, and I have a very strong knowledge on the, firewalls and also the implementation spot as well for the all the, networking equipments, technology, equipment. Yes. But we're going to get a different thing. So you have to do what you choose to do. But knowing how to configure a firewall is irrelevant in the architect world. Knowing which firewall you should choose when you need behavioral anomaly detection versus being able to get away with signature, knowing which features would help a business get to its goals versus waste. Not knowing the trade offs of using one firewall versus another is architecture. It's not the engineering of how to do it. It's the same thing in my domain. If I had OSPF, what kind of losses do I need in an area? How many losses can those routers handle? How and when should I segment things into, say, a sub area versus a totally sub area? How do I integrate. So it's those conversations. It has nothing to do with being able to go to a router. So that's why I said do anything that's going to make you happy.

But years of engineering experience. That's why when I've got someone like protocol with 20 years of engineering experience, it takes me a year to get them hired. But that's why I got Jermaine, who was a sales rep selling landscaping gear, who got hired as an enterprise architect. In nine months. I had, Wallace the gardener. There's a video of him on our YouTube channel, who was a sales rep hired by JP Morgan Chase as an enterprise architect, as his first tech job. I hadn't fully who had a sales background, first job as a CTO, which is an enterprise architect job. So it's not what you've done in the past. It is the skills that you start collecting from today that will help you in the future. Architecture is business. Engineering is about tech. Gotcha. Mike. Well, thank you so much. So I believe I have to go for the, enterprise architecture. Is that correct? If that's what you want. Yes. If that's the query you want, then I would definitely go after it. I happen to like. It's not. It is not. I just want I'm curious. I'm very much kudos on doing that, role. Mike so I definitely want to be an enterprise architect. So I'm doing all my works. With your videos, I want to, take the course. So I just, before that, I want to, have the confirmation from you so you gentlemen can suggest a good idea what I have to do. Everything has to start with something that you want to do, that you desire have interest in doing that. So that's why I was saying, like, it has. That has to be the starting point. So if you have interest in that then absolutely. Let's follow that interest. But if your interest is in, property development then I'm going to encourage you to go towards property developer. So that yes, that's what we're saying. So like you've clearly you've got technical competency. Clearly you know how to learn things. communicate. So if you want to point all of that towards the enterprise architecture, then let's do that. If you want to point it towards security architecture, because that tickles your fancy. Let's point towards security. Yep. So that's, that that's why we keep saying the if it's what you want, we can make it. It's attainable. Yeah. But if it's not something you want, it makes it so much harder. And that's why we don't. That's why we always start. It's got to be something that interests that are our desire are. Yes. Oh, well, yes. Because I want to play the true perfect. So that is exactly what I want. But for that I need a word from you guys so that, I don't take any, false decisions in my career. Yeah. Is that a it's a great idea, but it's one of the best careers that I know that has one of the highest salaries in the world that is always in demand. Yep. You all right? My. Oh. So. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you so much. Very well. Fine job I've ever had. All right. So, let's see, we've got, I think we've got Cynthia is next. Say, Cynthia, Cynthia had to leave, I believe so. Cynthia will watch this on the recording. Cynthia says, very impressed with the presentation of my previous work as an enterprise architect. Struggle design and cloud migration monetization approach. The business priorities are unclear. There's limited transparency. Okay, that makes sense. I felt that the enterprise architect team was brushed off by both management and engineers of present value. In situations like that. Okay. What a great question. So I've seen this happen again and again, and then I know I've actually fixed this situation in many. So the enterprise architects are never going to be loved by the engineers. The engineers are going to say, who is this overly high paid person that doesn't know a lot about tech? So the engineers are not your audience. Who your audience is an enterprise architect. Is the executive team, the C-suite, the board, the key business stakeholders, the key technical stakeholders and delivery level people. And then, of course, the solutions architect. What happens is, and I've seen it again, is when we have someone that's an enterprise architect and they haven't had enough executive training, an executive background, maybe they came from the technical role and they didn't get a sufficient executive training. What happens is they walk into the room, they have a conversation with the executive. They don't speak in executive body language. They don't address executive ready concerns. And that executive says, why do we have this enterprise architect here? They're not solving my problems. I can't speak to them. And they get relegated to the side and I've seen that. So then you've got an enterprise architect team that people think on the ivory tower. They're creating a bunch of documents, but not really getting anything done. You give those enterprise architect some real business school acumen, some real C-suite skills, some real influence. An executive presence like, David was talking about that architect goes in and their next job, they speak to the C-suite, they speak in board ready terms, and that person says, wow, I need this person on my team. And then they view him as a trusted advisor. So that's the key is you have to speak the same language

because we are there as a consultant. And like I said, 50% of the people come from executive background and some 50% come from tech backgrounds. And those that come from tech without the exact executive appearance usually struggle in the enterprise architect world. Which is why I train this. And it's why, when I transitioned from a solutions architect to an enterprise architect at Cisco, my company sent me to business school. They got me an executive coach. They got me leadership coach, they got me a sales coach. They got me executive presence training. And that's why I created this, because my education, you know, cost more than most people earn in a couple of years. So I didn't want anybody to have to do that. But that's the reason why usually speaking. All right, let's, let's check our next one. It's from, I believe it's pronounced Rothstein. I mispronounce that, I apologize. And if you're not able to come off mute, I can read your question off. So their question was, can someone be a good enterprise architect without previously having worked as a solutions architect? Absolutely. And I'm not even sure that a solutions architect is a great background for an enterprise architect. And here's the reason. The enterprise architect is focused on the entire business, the way that people do their jobs, the kind of people you hire, the competitive advantage for the business and all the other things. The solutions architect is focused on one workload, one thing, one project. So as an enterprise architect, I could be managing a $5 billion technology portfolio and have a team of 170, 550 people working for me. And as a solutions architect, I might be focused on a website and have nobody working for me with no leadership skills. So when I went from the solutions architect, I had to go to business school. I did all these other things and it caught me at the same time. 50% of architects don't come from a tech background. Maybe you came from consulting and it really doesn't matter. But just look at what a consultant would bring. Someone that came from management consulting, for example. They typically have business acumen. They've been trained in strategy, negotiation, they've been trained in change management. Any kind of strategy consultant from an Accenture Deloitte, KPMG was trained in executive presence and executive communication skills. If they worked as a business architect or went to one of these things, they were given presentation training, business process optimization training. They were trained in influence or had it for their last job eliciting information, selling, consulting, writing for executives, managing stakeholder CXOs. So when I get a management consultant, they already have all the skills here. The only skills they actually have to learn are the underlying technology. When I get someone, let's say I have an AI architect or an and let's say I've got a solutions architect that focuses on some of these things and a little bit of these things. There are a lot harder of a transition to an enterprise architect role than a program manager, than a sales rep, but it can be done because it really hasn't. It doesn't matter what you've done in the past. You know, one day I was practicing internal medicine, the next day I'm a principal architect. You can do it too. Kamal uses the example. He was working radiology. Now he's over at American Express. It really doesn't matter your background. It matters the skills that you learn. And you have to have really good skills that top 25% like we talk about. And you have to be able to show your skills, but your background doesn't matter. You're relevant. All right. Next question. We've got two questions left and then we're going to wrap it up. So Yogendra says many companies ask or domain experience like banking or insurance or pharmaceuticals, etc., or architect roles. What's your take on such job appetite? So when you actually have a company and they're looking for knowledge about a certain industry, what they're really saying is we want business acumen. And not only we want you to know business, but how our business operates so you can offer competitive advantage. So in my youth, I design systems for banks. I did, and guess what? I did okay. In my career I really did. And then one day Cisco decided to say, we're going to create a healthcare architecture team. And I said, And they said, we want people that are experts on the healthcare system that understand healthcare delivered, how hospitals run, how physician offices run, how emergency medical services run. And I applied for that job in heartbeat. Well, immediately I was the chief architect. And why? Because I could practice medicine. Prior to that, I was a nurse. paramedic and I could literally walk into any other hospital. Understand the chief nursing officer, chief nursing informatics officer, chief medical officer, whatever, everybody in that hospital I knew what they needed to do. I needed what the words in their job, and I knew how to create architectures for them. So many of the jobs will want that level of experience. What we do is we give you the business acumen for any role

and then we do industry specific projects health care, banking, retail, what have you to make sure you get a good blend of it. But yes, over time, if you work in banking for a couple of years as an architect, you'll have much better architecture opportunities in banking potentially than in other world, because more business acumen. More business expertise means better architectures. So it can be a great way to build your career. I would say I would also add, that is probably one of the things that if it appears on a job description, there's a 50% chance that it's legitimate. Yeah, more or less. Probably everything else on the job description. Yeah. Because they're not just going to on the job description that they need somebody with medical background or hospitality industry background. That's not going to be the in a lot of the Frankenstein as we call them, job descriptions. So if you see domain experience like banking or insurance or hotels or travel or medical, that one might actually be a legitimate desire of the hiring manager because they probably have someone that's working and that they have teams that are working in that domain or in that article that need that, that knowledge. Now, that does not mean that if you don't have it, you shouldn't apply. Yeah, you can still apply. Sort of side of that story from Mike is that he didn't tell the other side of that story. Someone else that was supposed to be getting the role, that didn't have the medical experience, and Mike ended up getting it, but, that's a whole nother story for a different day. So just because I say that doesn't mean that it's going to be the deciding factor, but, All right, last question. So, do we teach AI security in our security architect program? Absolutely. No, it is not an AI security architect program because that's a niche down specialty. But yes, we do teach AI security. We teach how to secure everything private clouds, public clouds, multi-cloud, any kind of enterprise security thing that any business would actually have. We teach auto security. An AI is definitely a component of any modern. Hope. You okay? Gross. Architecture. Itself. And the I with my glasses. There we go. Okay, well, that's one way to end the webinar, Chris. Poking himself in the eye with his glasses. There's a reason why we have a two hour limit on this, Mike. Because apparently that happens. Stuff like that happens when we go let go too long. So I want to thank everybody for joining our webinar today. It's always a great one when we have both Dave and Mike, joining us. It allows me to do less talking. So I always appreciate that. So, I want to ask, and this order, Alonzo, if you would put. Oh, you just put your thing there in the chat box. Okay? You just. Tyrone, if you would put the link, say you already did it, but I'm going to ask you one more time. There we go. I was going to ask for the I specific one. Thank you. Oh, if you look in the chat box, you'll see Tyron just posted a link to the AI architect program. Architect program? That's got our 60% up, but it's out to where you can learn about the program. Learn about Dave, learn about the role. Yeah. Above that, you'll see a lot of us where Alonzo says if you got questions, if you're interested in talking, hey, check out a lot of that post. Then above that you'll see Tyron posted the link to all of our programs. Because we've got our AI architect program, our security Architect program, our enterprise Architect program, our Cloud Architect program, all those programs, and you can see that, at that link, and on our website, as I've said, we've got our 60% of anniversary discount going on right now. It's been five years of go cloud careers and I think now we're at five programs. Oh go figure. So, take advantage of that. We'll be sending out a recording to all of you, once that's processed and uploaded and edited and all that stuff. So, Mike, if you will wrap us up, not too long because we got to get you to class, if you will wrap us up and we'll bend it. I love that. Thank you so much for your nice comment. Or on the chat box, or as one of our students who works for a cloud provider. So, thank you all so much for attending today. It's an honor to meet you. I always loved meeting people. It was an honor to be here with David and really share what we do as a company. Share what it takes to become an architect. Sure. Why? David and I have loved this career. For decades. And why is one of our favorites. Many of you have signed up, and if you did, please read the Welcome to go Cloud Careers email that you were sent, please

because that tells you where classes are, where your orientation is, what everything you need to do to be maximally successful. If you did sign up with us for any of our programs, we want you to stay on these programs until you're hired. There's no time limit on them, and if you haven't signed up, I hope you take advantage of this 60% off special time anniversary offer. And do sign up, because I'd love to meet you in class. Thank you all for attending and I'll see so many of you soon. Take care. Bye everybody.