Scope

The intended audience for this document includes service owners, developers, architects, engineers and any other individuals or groups responsible for architecting, implementing, or delivering a cloud service at Virginia Tech. As such, the scope of this document includes the space of practical and technical concerns for those who endeavor to utilize the public cloud to deliver applications and services for users at Virginia Tech.

We note that prior art in this space includes documents that go further than is our aim here, moving beyond defining the general contours of best practice to explicitly mandating specific technologies, tools, and patterns. We recognize that within the parameters outlined here, different teams across the Division will identify tooling and workflows that work best for them as they operationalize the practices recommended in this document.

Strategic concerns typically addressed at the senior management level of the division are beyond the scope of this document. These include, but are not limited to, the development of financial models supportive of cloud computing, the design of uniform data governance practices, and the positioning of our current and future workforce to succeed in the context of an information technology landscape in which public cloud solutions figure prominently.