What is Software Deployment at Ohio State and Beyond?
College of Medicine Research Information Technology partners with research teams and institutional IT organizations to champion deployment of research software. RIT experts in software engineering provide a holistic approach spanning security assessments, cloud deployments, infrastructure acquisition and custom software updates to ongoing maintenance.
Purpose
Error-proof configuration
Automating as much configuration as possible reduces manual errors
Partnerships with external sites
RIT works with staff at sites for external deployment to build on their existing capabilities
Team-led
processes
Throughout deployment, both IT and research personnel are made aware of key processes
RIT's approach
Automated configurations
Each environment where software is deployed may require a slightly different configuration file. Rather than exposing these files to manual errors, RIT automates the configuration process to automate building and deploying the software, as well as updates.
Collaboration and communication
Knowing who RIT needs to work with is the first step when deploying software at external sites. RIT will collaborate with in-house IT and vendors, if necessary, in order to ensure every question is answered before deployment.
Leveraging existing capabilities
No two sites are alike in terms of staff or technology available. When deploying software developed at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center at another institution, RIT investigates how that institution's environment differs from our own. Understanding key differences allows us to make adjustments to software before deploying it elsewhere.