Many people might feel the Cloud Architect and DevOps Architect can play dual roles. As per my observation yes, many small and medium level organizations are utilizing the IT Professionals in the same manner. I wrote a blog for these roles segregation with their main Activities. I felt this might help to some of the practitioners.

With reference to my previous blog on Cloud Architect role comparison with DevOps, there were questions on DevOps architect role comparison.

https://vskumar.blog/2018/11/21/how-a-cloud-architect-is-different-from-devops-role/

Basically, A DevOps architect need to work on:

1. Identifying the Sprint cycles for different projects.
2. Identifying the different environments needs including the different test levels requirements.
3. Plan/design the environment specifications to build Infrastructure As A Code [IAC] and guide the DevOps Engineers.
4. At the same time he/she need to collaborate with the Cloud Architect to seek the permissions/approvals to utilize the cloud environment on these environmental requirements/setup.
5. Both these architects need to measure the cost of this Infrastructure to estimate and get approval from the management.
6. The DevOps Architect is also responsible to plan for different production deployments. He/She need to work together with the Cloud Architect to establish this setup.
7. In the current trend the containerization is accelerating with Cloud technology. Both these architects need to keep working on these areas to reduce the Virtual Machines cost by replacing with containers. At the same time these two people need to think on converting the applications into Microservices slowly with the Agile methods. This will have easy maintenance in future and also the further cost can be reduced in view of infrastructure and the man power. And their guidelines need to submit to management as a proposal. These two people are also responsible to upgrade their teams skills on the new trends in Cloud technology.
8. If you ask me the question who are the team members for these roles;
9. DevOps Engineers will report to DevOps Architect.
10. Cloud/system engineer reports to Cloud Architect.

So these architects need to manage their teams well in view of their skills augmentation and the tasks rolling as per the DevOps Speed/Velocity concepts.

What kind of IT Professionals can be converted into DevOps Architect ?

Basically, the DevOps activities are related to more on Practices and Culture. If your background is related to the below areas in the past, your profile might suit to convert by learning the above mentioned skills.

• You might have worked on Deployment areas
• Worked in release management
• Worked in Development processes implementation areas.
• You should be savvy in implementing the Agile/Scrum/Lean practices.
• You should have worked as a Servant leadership role also. [Even as a Scrum master]. In many cases this role is responsible to mentor the teams on different practices implementation by gearing up the teams to follow DevOps Velocity.
• You should have worked in Identifying the retrospective issues very well and implemented the improvements in different Sprint cycles.
• He/she should be savvy in learning new technology and transform the knowledge to the teams well. This knowledge should be very simple on the tools features related areas and how they can utilize them in their setup ? How they can reduce the efforts and cost to the company with a ROI Demonstration. They need to prove it to management with a POC.
• This person is responsible to show some ROI as Cloud Architect does it on DevOps New practices implementation.
• The DevOps Architect reports to the DevOps Practices head or CIO or CTO. Where as the Cloud Architect reports to CIO or CTO. Depends on the size of the organization, there can be Chief Cloud architect also, where all the Cloud architects report to this position.

https://vskumar.blog/2019/02/14/what-will-be-the-size-of-cloud-market-in-it-by-2022/

Note:

The DevOps Architect need not put his fingers into low level command scripts. It is the responsibility of the DevOps Engineers.

Hope this blog clarifies for many people.

Also read the below blog on how the Costly Cloud Defects are getting created:

https://vskumar.blog/2019/10/14/how-the-cloud-professionals-can-create-the-costly-defects-and-the-reasons/