Body
Purpose
The Cloud Practice is an Enterprise Architecture practice that helps the University of Arkansas adopt, operate, and evolve cloud technologies through shared knowledge, documented patterns, and reusable architecture guidance.
The Cloud Practice exists to help the university learn from cloud implementations and apply those lessons broadly rather than repeatedly solving the same problems.
Mission
Provide practical architecture guidance that helps university units consume cloud services in a secure, supportable, cost-conscious, and sustainable manner.
The practice supports cloud adoption by documenting standards, patterns, decisions, lessons learned, and reference architectures.
Why the Cloud Practice Exists
Cloud technologies are no longer a specialized capability.
Faculty, staff, researchers, students, vendors, and university units can rapidly acquire or create cloud-hosted solutions. Enterprise systems may also be hosted on university-owned infrastructure or cloud service provider infrastructure. Data obligations follow the data regardless of where it is stored, processed, or hosted.
The challenge is not whether cloud technologies will be used.
The challenge is ensuring that the university can:
- Reuse successful approaches
- Avoid unnecessary duplication
- Understand operational responsibilities
- Manage costs
- Protect university data
- Support solutions over time
What the Practice Does
Practices serve three functions: curate, connect, and accelerate.
Curate
Maintain reusable cloud knowledge, including:
- Standards
- Patterns
- Reference Architectures
- Architectural Decision Records (ADRs)
- Lessons Learned
- Roadmaps
Connect
Connect cloud consumers with:
- Existing services
- Subject matter experts
- Architecture guidance
- Institutional requirements
Accelerate
Help teams move from idea to implementation by providing:
- Proven approaches
- Reusable patterns
- Architecture guidance
- Cloud adoption recommendations
The goal is to reduce friction and improve consistency.
Scope
The Cloud Practice focuses on architecture and guidance related to:
- Cloud hosting models
- Landing zones
- Subscription strategies
- Resource organization
- Cost management
- Identity integration
- Monitoring and observability
- Backup and recovery approaches
- Cloud platform architecture
- Cloud service patterns
Out of Scope
The Cloud Practice does not:
- Operate all cloud services
- Approve cloud purchases
- Approve projects
- Own business priorities
- Replace procurement processes
- Replace security governance processes
The practice provides guidance and stewardship.
Operational ownership remains with the appropriate teams and service owners.
Deliverables
Standards
Examples:
- Cloud hosting standards
- Resource tagging standards
- Backup standards
- Logging standards
Patterns
Examples:
- Standard web application pattern
- Landing zone pattern
- SaaS integration pattern
- Research workload pattern
Reference Architectures
Examples:
- Azure hosting architecture
- Standard application architecture
- Hybrid cloud architecture
Architecture Decision Records
Examples:
- Hosting decisions
- Platform decisions
- Identity integration approaches
- Cost allocation approaches
Roadmaps
Examples:
- Platform evolution
- Service maturity
- Strategic cloud capabilities
Relationship to Services
The Cloud Practice and cloud services are related but distinct.
The Cloud Practice stewards architecture knowledge.
Services provide operational capabilities.
| Cloud Practice |
Cloud Service |
| Hosting patterns |
Azure Hosting |
| Landing zone standards |
Landing Zone Service |
| Identity guidance |
Identity Services |
| Cost allocation guidance |
Cost Reporting Services |
| Backup patterns |
Backup Services |
A practice may inform one or more services.
A service may be influenced by multiple practices.
The same individual may participate in both.
Stewardship
The Cloud Practice is maintained through the Enterprise Architecture stewardship model.
The practice may include:
- A Practice Steward
- Practice Contributors
The practice may be active, emerging, or unassigned depending on organizational need.
Participation does not require a dedicated team or full-time role.
Success Measures
The Cloud Practice is successful when:
- Cloud decisions become easier to make.
- Reusable patterns reduce repeated effort.
- Cloud implementations are easier to support.
- Teams engage earlier.
- Lessons learned are documented and reused.
- Cloud adoption becomes more consistent across the university.