As with most things, simplicity is a virtue when it comes to computing environments. How you establish your systems architecture in Azure is a structural foundation you’ll continue to build on for years. Keep it simple!

As I discussed in the last post, don’t fall into the trap of thinking your existing, legacy architectural approach should be approximated in the cloud. Instead, take the opportunity to eliminate unnecessary complexities. Look hard at what’s disjointed and frustrating for you and your users now.

Doing so takes time, but what you’ll find is that addressing those problems points you in the direction of a simpler architecture that will help minimize pain points both now and in the future.

Then, having stepped back to figure out what you really need, you can evaluate architectural options based on your actual business needs. Check out this architectural “style guide” from Microsoft for a quick snapshot of common basic architectures for various types of workloads, including:

• N-tier application
• Web-queue-worker
• Microservices
• CQRS
• Event-driven
• Big data
• Big compute

These can be helpful templates to get you started. As you dig into any one of them, take care not to overcomplicate things! Ultimately, a simple architecture is the right architecture.