Laying the foundations for great solution architecture

The advent of cloud-based solutions has brought forth the era of scalable, highly performant, and secure business applications. Planning, designing, and building great Power Platform solution architecture requires the consistent application of a set of principles. Each organization and solution is unique, and while a single solution design pattern does not exist, the following nine concepts will help you lay the foundations for a great Power Platform solution architecture:

Figure 1.1 – The pillars for great solution architecture

Now, let’s outline these nine key concepts for great Power Platform solution architecture.

The security concept

Data is the crown jewel of most organizations. The security concept encompasses every aspect of the implementation. You define the authentication strategies, identify network vulnerabilities, and management of secrets, certificates, and other credentials. These activities will result in effective perimeter control for your solution.

The definition of a solid security concept will do the following:

• Provide the client with confidence in their Power Platform investment.
• Expedite the implementation and configuration of the solution.
• Reduce the risk of data breaches in production environments.

Through access control, you will also define the level of access that the internal users will be granted. In the chapters that follow, you will learn how to define a security concept that ensures data is placed only in the hands of the right users.

Empowered users – the cloud citizen

The Power Platform provides a wealth of features, allowing users to extend the base implementation. A great architecture blueprint will be cognizant of these user-accessible features and plan for these to be used as part of the user’s daily activities. The Power Platform design will define guardrails to safely empower users to build their components, allowing them to achieve greater productivity through a synergy between the base implementation and user-created enhancements.

In the use case scenarios that follow, you will learn how to define Power Platform guardrails to safely empower users.

Compliance

Privacy and trust requirements vary greatly, depending on the industry, geographical location, scope, and nature of the implementation. Data retention policies and access request channels are defined to comply with local and international regulations.

In this book, you will explore the Microsoft Trust Center tools and capabilities to locate certifications for the components that make up the solution architecture.

Maintainability and supportability

Power Platform solution architects design solutions that leverage the inherent functionality available within each Microsoft component. Making use of the standard functionality within the various Power Apps, Dataverse, and the wider Microsoft ecosystem, configuring and customizing these components are the first implementation point of call. Custom development is considered only when all other options have been exhausted and implemented within the bounds of supported customizations.

Following the configure-first approach outlined and thorough documentation of the implementation build, a solution architect defines the implementation principles and best practices for the teams to follow.

Availability and recoverability

Organizations have expectations regarding the uptime and availability of their critical systems and business applications. As a part of the initial phases of the solution design, these requirements are identified and mapped to Power Platform product capabilities. Solution architects understand the availability and recoverability features within each component in the implementation, and design integrations with retry strategies and fallbacks to prevent the transient faults from impacting the solution.

In the following chapters, you will explore the features available within each Power Platform component, define recoverability strategies, and design integration patterns that benefit from a high level of fault tolerance.

Performant and scalable solutions

Users expect business applications and portals to respond within a specific amount of time. Successful Power Platform solutions take these expectations into account and are designed to perform within the customer’s requirements. Solution architects document these performance requirements and translate them into actionable implementation tasks. Considerations such as Dataverse capacity planning, integration response times, Power Automate throughput, and Power Apps portal user experience are considerations during the solution architecture process.

In addition to performance, the solution architect plans for the dynamic allocation of resources to scale with changing demands on the system. In the following chapters, you will work through the planning of efficient resource allocation to maximize performance while optimizing costs.

Implementation and operation efficiency

A solid monitoring architecture provides a platform for the detection of faults in the solution before they happen. Monitoring strategies also provide visibility over the usage of resources. Administrators can visualize how efficiently the solution is performing and make adjustments where needed.

In the upcoming chapters, you will learn how to plan effective monitoring solutions to facilitate the efficient operation of the Power Platform systems.

Cloud delegation

The Power Platform and the wider Microsoft cloud-based ecosystem present the opportunity to delegate the responsibility for the setup and maintenance of the management of the underlying platform. Solution architects have greater freedom to focus on the implementation architecture, compared to on-premises solutions, which require careful consideration of hardware and software capabilities, constraints, and ongoing administration overheads.

In the chapters that follow, you will learn how to shift the responsibilities to the service provider, leveraging the Microsoft support infrastructure.

Balanced design decisions

Applying the aforementioned key solution architecture concepts will result in the creation of a scalable, performant, and secure Power Platform implementation. Adhering to these pillars of architecture attracts a cost, be it financial, increased project implementation timescales, or operational agility.

Throughout this book, you will learn how to balance the cost of employing these key concepts versus the benefits to the organization using the systems. You will learn how to initiate discussions with key stakeholders to agree on the goals that are most important to the organization and balance these with the cost/benefits associated with each pillar for great solution architecture.

Note

Look out for the Applying the pillars for great architecture sections, as these are hands-on applications of each of the nine pillars discussed previously throughout the activities covered in the upcoming chapters.