AWS Architecture and Azure Architecture sites provide a variety of resources for architects including reference architectures. With AWS you get a brief one page PDF diagram for each scenario. With Azure you get a more in-depth documentation style following the infographic. Here are two examples. The first is an AWS financial services grid computing architecture.

The second here is an Azure machine learning architecture.

The reference architectures and additional architectural helps provided by your cloud provider can be very valuable.

And here's the BUT.

But you should not simply copy and paste. Use these guidelines to provide you with ideas and help you to think of things that you are missing in your own cloud architecture solutions. Take the good ideas and use a skeptical eye to pick and choose what works best for your organization's use cases.

Think of it as if you're building a car. Do you look at how other cars are built? Or do you put on blinders and make the same mistakes as everyone else had to make before you came along?

I've been laid off and the reasons don't matter. It's just business. My last official day is tomorrow. My soon-to-be former employer has a product that enterprises need and good people to back it up. Happily the future is bright and there are opportunities in the world of technology for the taking.

I'm excited for the future and know that soon I'll be doing something new, interesting and challenging. The friends and colleagues I leave behind will do well in the technology economy no matter where they go.

It's a prosperous time to live if you have valued technical skills. I'm grateful for all of the experience I've had that has brought me to this point. I look forward to utilizing it to help other organizations solve their technology problems and advance their organizational goals.

I believe that whatever changes the future holds, I will continue to blog from time to time and work on my personal OSS projects. Stay tuned.