More than 60 people attended the annual Cloud Architect of the Year award on 15th February. It was held in Dauphine in Amsterdam, the ‘theater’ of the Cloud Architect Alliance. At 7:00 pm the show was started, which was presented excellently by the host, Sophie van Hoytema!

At the start of the award show, the 5 nominees were known and they were all present on this evening. Some also had the necessary ‘supporters’.

Sophie, together with Bart M. Veldhuis, announced who had finally made it to the last 3 finalists. Sophie did a hymn of praise to the finalists in a musical manner and did so very nicely by recording a joke in her text. This also made it somewhat informal and especially fun.

Why is the cloud architect important?

A cloud architect fulfills an important role in organizations, he implements the digital strategy by accelerating innovation with cloud technology and creating distinctive character for the organization. He maintains and implements the cloud strategy that can facilitate the business with smart decision models when making the platform choices. The cloud architect forms the connection between the value streams and the complex technology of the cloud providers. He assists projects at an early stage to make the right choice for the landing platform and facilitates transparency on the financial and legal aspects of the cloud. The cloud architect is part of the Cloud Center of Expertise or even manages it. This is often the place where the contracts with the cloud suppliers are invested and from which the financial breakdown of the costs takes place.

Why this award?

This prize is awarded by the Cloud Architect Alliance Foundation, the cloud architecture group. This prize was created to make the work of the cloud architect more visible and to recognize and reward exceptional achievements. The Cloud Architect Alliance hands out this award to the cloud architect who has profiled itself in the past year as a progressive and visible cloud architect. The professional jury – consisting of Bart M. Veldhuis, Freek Beemster, Peter van de Bree and Cor Reinhard – these four-man board of the foundation Cloud Architect Alliance, all experienced professionals or branch experts, and an extensive selection procedure preceded.

Erik Janssens was declared the winner. The professional jury was unanimous in their opinion, because of the way in which Erik fulfills a key role within the Cloud Competence Center of NXP between the customers (business) and the cloud suppliers (the platforms of AWS and Azure). Erik has made an important contribution to the design of this competence center and the building up of relations with the business and the contracting of the major cloud providers for NXP. Erik ensures an optimal balance with his cloud expertise, but also the necessary financial knowledge, to make the complex payment models transparent for the buyers and legal experience to achieve good contracting.

Conclusion

An excellent evening with lots of positive reactions from the community of the Cloud Architect Alliance but also from her sponsors who were all represented. From the tight labor market for this specific profession, the Cloud Architect Alliance is more explicitly manifesting itself for this specific target group. Next year we can again expect an award show in January, of which we can expect the necessary results based on this show.