TOSCA, the Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications offers an OASIS-recognized, open standard domain-specific language (DSL) that enables portability and automated management of applications, services, and resources regardless of underlying cloud platform, software defined environment, or infrastructure. With a growing, interoperable eco-system of open source projects, solutions from leading cloud platform and service providers, and research, TOSCA empowers the definition and modeling of applications and their services (microservices or traditional services) across their entire lifecycle by describing their components, relationships, dependencies, requirements, and capabilities for orchestrating software in the context of associated operational policies. The authors introduce important TOSCA concepts and benefits in the context of commonly understood cloud use cases as a foundation to future discussions regarding advanced TOSCA concepts and additional breakthrough issues.