As a cloud consultant, learning every new client’s cloud infrastructure is difficult, but to effectively consult, you need to understand the programs a client uses, their cloud provider, their existing architecture, changes they’re planning to make, and more.
Visualizing your client’s existing architecture is the easiest way to get up to speed and understand their cloud environment. However, spending hours creating diagrams of your new client’s architecture isn’t sustainable. As soon as they change something, you’ll have to adjust your diagram or start all over. Automating and improving this process could save you dozens of hours on each engagement and ensure accuracy.
The Lucid Visual Collaboration Suite can help with cloud consulting work—from cloud migration consulting to cloud strategy consulting to everything in between—from start to finish.
Auto-generate an accurate, dynamic model of your client’s current cloud architecture in Lucidscale. Brainstorm what changes need to be made in Lucidspark. Then, in Lucidchart, map out an improved future state. Finally, go back to Lucidscale to verify implementation.
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How to use the Lucid Visual Collaboration Suite to understand your client’s cloud architecture and plan new builds
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Import your architecture into the Lucidscale Data Hub
Navigate to the left-side panel in Lucidscale and select “Import Data'' to pull in cloud provider metadata and get an accurate picture of your client’s current state. Lucidscale works with AWS, Azure, and GCP. For more detailed instructions, check out our Help Center on importing data.
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Create a new model in Lucidscale
Auto-generate a model from your client’s imported data. You’ll be able to apply filters, customize views, show connected resources, and more.
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Create custom views in Lucidscale
Add filters, lines, and conditional formatting rules to create custom views to get to know your client’s cloud environment.
Use filters to focus on specific resources and resource groups. Toggle lines on and off to verify that resources are connected the way they should be. When you create a new conditional formatting rule, Lucidscale will automatically evaluate all of the resources in your model to see if they match your conditional formatting criteria.
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Access key data in Lucidscale
Access key data through the Lucidscale data panel to avoid going back and forth between the model and your client’s cloud provider console.
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Brainstorm cloud architecture changes in Lucidspark
Export the cloud model into Lucidspark and brainstorm changes that need to be made to the architecture. Lucidspark offers an infinite, digital canvas for exploring your best ideas.
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Plan an improved future state in Lucidchart
Export the Lucidspark board into Lucidchart, convert the information into shapes, and map out your client’s new cloud architecture in a future-state diagram. Pass this diagram onto your client’s build team.
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Verify new architecture in Lucidscale
Once the new build is live, refresh the Lucidscale cloud model and verify everything was built and implemented correctly.
Example from a cloud consulting firm
Before a cloud consulting firm can make recommendations to its customers, they need insight into its existing cloud architecture. But digging through what’s been built over several years (and even decades for some customers) is a challenge. It requires diving into many different pieces of the cloud environment including infrastructure, network, and anything else that’s connected.
Because of the complexity of researching someone’s cloud architecture, up-to-date diagrams are essential to understanding a customer’s current state and planning for their future state. But according to one solutions architect associate, 9 times out of 10, customers don’t have an accurate cloud diagram. When they do have diagrams, they often don’t reflect the changes that have been made to the architecture.
This lack of updated documentation leads to another challenge: efficiency. In cloud consulting, time is of the essence. The more time it takes cloud consulting firms to gain insight, the more their clients have to pay for their work.
That’s where the Lucid Visual Collaboration Suite comes in. A cloud consulting firm used Lucidscale and Lucidchart together to gain insight into their customers’ AWS, GCP, or Azure cloud architecture and design new, future-state plans—ultimately shortening the time it takes to deliver results to their customers.
The solutions architect used to spend anywhere between four to seven hours on a diagram for a customer, whereas now they can just pull it and make some tweaks, maybe change certain views, and send it over in less than 15 minutes”.
The firm uses Lucidchart to diagram future state plans and align with its customers. Those diagrams are also used as implementation guides. They use Lucidscale, on the other hand, to verify that the new build was done according to plan. If it wasn’t, they drill down into the most important information and repeat the process again until they’ve helped their clients achieve the desired results.
The Lucid Visual Collaboration Suite can help you create a seamless collaboration experience as a cloud consultant, too. You’ll save yourself time getting up to speed on your clients’ cloud architecture, increase communication, and be able to deliver exactly what your clients are looking for.