The age of cloud computing presents the software architects with a unique set of opportunities as well as a unique set of challenges. Designing, building, and operating applications at cloud scale has changed the very nature of software architecture discipline to accommodate a much larger set of objectives and skills. Prior to the cloud era, software architecture was primarily about fulfilling functional requirements while maintaining code modularity and meeting a narrow set of non-functional requirements, such as performance. The cloud-era architect needs to accommodate not only functional requirements and customer-defined throughput and performance requirements, but also a large set of non-functional requirements related to cyber security, compliance, and most notably also the financial/cost characteristics, which at cloud scale can make or break a software-as-a-service company. The whole discipline of software architecture just became not only wider to accommodate all the above aspects, but also deeper as cloud-scale architecture spans all layers of software all the way down to operating system kernel tuning and in the case of private cloud also requires hardware know-how and hardware assembly design closely aligned with high-level application workload requirements to achieve reasonable performance and economics at cloud scale.

About speaker: Jaroslav Gergic is Software as a Service R&D executive with a strong R&D background and years of professional services experience. His focus is on innovation and operational excellence and best practices in project and knowledge management. He has 3+ years of general management practice as a country managing director of a company with 150+ employees. Currently he leads the Cognitive Intelligence unit of Cisco Security Business Group as a Director of Engineering while living in the confluence of cyber-security, machine learning, and cloud computing. Prior to joining Cisco, Jaroslav led R&D and Operations at GoodData and in a more distant past held various positions at Ariba and IBM Research. Besides his full-time job, Jaroslav is actively engaging in local startup communities as a mentor.