[Book Reviews] Solutions Architect’s Handbook (Second Edition)

Hello everyone, Thank you for being interested in my review book blog again. This is another blog from the series related to my recently completed read book called “Solutions Architect’s Handbook”. Based on the version I bought, this is the second edition.

First of all, I’m backend developer and I like to design and imagine some applications working on the background. Apart from that, I want to improve my skills to strive to the upper level which I am interested in Staff/Principal/Architect path. That’s why I want to read this book.

Solutions Architect’s Handbook: Kick-start your career as a solutions architect by learning architecture design principles and strategies

The book’s table of contents

The book has 19 chapters, I will provide a quick summary for each section later the section’s name.

1. The Meaning of Solution Architecture — Learned about the definition of solution architecture and how importance of the role. Solution architecture is building block in a complex organization to fill the gap between business requirements and technical solutions. So you need to understand the whole process and all stakeholders, functional/non-functional requirements, etc.
2. Solution Architects in Organization — There might be generalist solution architect who work with enterprise solution architect, cloud architect and apply broad knowledge to achieve the goals. Also specialist solution architect will dive deep into the required areas of the project but be efficient for the business such as network architect, data architect, security architect, etc. In any case, Solution architect need to wear many hats and work with many stakeholders.
3. Attributes of the Solution Architecture — While creating a solution design. Need to consider about scalability, elasticity, fault tolerance, etc. to be the most efficiency solution while minimizing the cost.
4. Principles of Solution Architecture Design — When considering designing something, Need to consider many factors and how well they will fit with our organization or business. The section itself contains the factors we need to consider before diving deep into some part of the problem.
5. Cloud Migration and Hybrid Cloud Architecture Design — Cloud computing is one of the biggest topics in this era. Organization need to take the benefit of the cloud computing to gain the most value for the company. There are strategies for this such as refactor, replatform, repurchase, rehost, relocate. Or somewhat for further consideration of the legacy system like retain and retire.
6. Solution Architecture Design Patterns — N-tier, multi-tenant, service-oriented , serverless, microservice, queue-based, event-driven, cache-based
7. Performance Considerations — You don’t want to use slow application, right? So design for reduce latency and improve throughput should be something to consider. Anyway, Concurrency might affect to the whole transaction so also aware of it and prevent the situation.
8. Security Considerations — Security should be the most important thing when working with enterprise-scale applications. Authentication & Authorization process should be setup and it might apply everywhere. Furthermore, Should have auditing everything (if needed) all the time. Security should applied at rest and in transit.
9. Architectural Reliability Considerations — Even if the application is fast but you also annoy when applications keeps failing, right? Has self-healing strategy for the system and monitoring them. In case of failure situations, Organization will able to react right away.
10. Operational Excellence Considerations — Human errors are still one of the cause of the issues. Automating manual tasks, keeping up to date with the documentation and software, and learning from mistakes will make the organization's situation better.
11. Cost Considerations — Continuous cost optimization, planning the budget, and forecasting how organization spent in the daily, monthly, yearly. Creating alert for the budget if needed.
12. DevOps and Solution Architecture Framework — Improve business situation already? Improve developer experience and automation internally also. CI/CD process, Infrastructure as Code, and Configuration management will make technical team’s life much easier.
13. Data Engineering for Solution Architecture — For big organization will need data team for efficiently storing the data. Not just for analytic purposes but for new requirements incoming in the future. The importance of data that if you already have the data. You will able to have the chance to create next opportunity for the business. Data Lake, Lakehouse, Data mesh might applied to organization internally.
14. Machine Learning Architecture — As of 2024, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are the topics that shake the world. Solution architect should understand how ML works (not too detailed if you’re not Machine Learning Architect) and how it can help businesses in some ways. Large Language Model (LLM ) not mentioned in the book but please in mind it’s already exists in this world.
15. The Internet of Things Architecture — Computer might not just Personal computer, Laptop, or mobile device (Smartphone). But it’s including Smart TV, Smartwatch, Autonomous car, and so on. All solution architect might not fully work with IoT sector but you will understand how importance of utilizing the data that came from around the globe and nature.
16. Quantum Computing — Quantum Computing has a lot of potential to solve complex problems. You will learn about some real-life use cases where it can be advantageous. Anyway, It’s still in research stage, and it might take some years before it gets commercially used. Anyway, This section thought me the surface concept of quantum computing for me.
17. Rearchitecting Legacy system — Dealing with legacy system is so challenging Understand the existing system, assessment, find the tradeoffs and defined the modernization process. You need to have clear benefits to make them modernize because we might end up stopping delivering value for the users.
18. Solution Architecture Document — SAD will provide end-to-end view of the application and helps everyone be on the same page. SAD should contain the overview, purposes, business context, conceptual context and solution implementation detail.
19. Learning Soft Skills to Become a Better Solution Architect — Communication and negotiation skills, Thinking Big, Continuous learning, becoming a technology evangelist and thought leader.

My review opinion

Rating: 5/5 — Recommended

From my opinion. This book contains massive useful information about the meaning of being a solution architect, how it’s important for an organization, and how you will have fun with the career if you are in the role. Furthermore, There are the architecture design patterns based on the why scenarios. Since it gives you the questions for your understanding and reflection but it contains the answer for you and why we have to do it (those patterns) on that way. Worth it to read for sure!

As the title of the book “Handbook”, It’s not about the design pattern of architecture. The factors for consideration on each organization's problems have been including e.g. performance, security, operational, and cost.

In the 3 last sections, I believe it’s unique. Teach you how to rearchitect legacy systems, how to write quality SAD (Solution Architecture Document), and how to be better solution architect with soft skills. Based on my reading, very useful for me who wants to be better in tech career, particularly on my decided future path.

I hope you enjoy my review so far. See you in the following review book blogs. Furthermore, You can reach me at the below links.

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