About This Course
Most cloud training teaches you a provider’s console. This course teaches the judgment that sits above it — where a workload belongs, what lock-in actually costs, and why the elasticity you’re paying for never showed up. Real services get named throughout as examples, but no lesson is built around any single vendor’s offering, so the reasoning stays useful as the platforms keep changing.
This is the second course in the Architecting Scalable Systems Like Meta, Google, and Amazon specialization, following Scalable Availability in Software Architecture. The two work in sequence, but this one stands on its own if the cloud decisions are already on your desk.
What You’ll Learn
- Placing any workload on the cloud deployment spectrum, from fully public to fully private — and defending where you put it
- Telling a deliberate multi-cloud strategy from a multi-cloud accident
- Buy vs. build for managed services, with lock-in priced instead of feared
- Running infrastructure as versioned, reviewable code
- Designing cloud-native services that actually deliver what you’re paying the cloud for
- Reading a cloud bill closely enough to put cost on an architecture diagram
- Planning and sequencing an incremental migration nobody notices
Who This Is For
Architects, senior engineers, and the engineering leaders who sign off on their decisions. The course assumes you have something to apply it to — a workload portfolio, a bill with your name on it, a migration somebody is asking you to sequence. It doesn’t assume hands-on platform expertise or a certification.
Course Structure
Five modules covering cloud architecture models, infrastructure as code and automation, cloud-native application design, the economics of the cloud, and migrating to the cloud — 16 video lessons plus readings, discussion prompts, and assignments.
Level: Advanced • Platform: Coursera • Certificate: Shareable