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Breaking News - Operating Systems & Middleware:

Middleware Partnership Looks To Strengthen ID Mgmt On Campuses

How can middleware tools help higher education institutions strengthen and standardize identity and access management? Extending the Reach (ETR) -- a partnership of the NMI-EDIT Consortium of Internet2, EDUCAUSE, and the Southeastern Universities Research Association (SURA) with several statewide university systems and regional networks -- will explore campus middleware delivery and support models that demonstrate new approaches to electronic resource sharing and link to the emerging national and global trust fabrics.

ETR will promote support models for identity and access management services and will develop effective practices for regional and state-based middleware infrastructure coordination. The effort will use existing technology components and higher education-based practices developed through the NSF Middleware Initiative.

Core middleware services include electronic identification, authentication and authorization, all involved in identity and access management. In today's Internet world, individual applications usually provide these services themselves. However, by promoting standardization and interoperability, middleware will make advanced, interorganizational network applications in the higher education environment much easier to deploy, use and manage. Currently, most institutions deploy their own infrastructure independently, a very staff-intensive activity.

The ETR program, managed by EDUCAUSE, is exploring the requirements and viability of offering outsourced services for core middleware and developing and piloting diverse business models, services, and products for middleware training, consulting, and deployment. ETR participants include the California State University System, the University of Texas System, the University of Alaska System, and the Great Plains Network Consortium.

"Our colleagues across the Great Plains currently have implemented core middleware services differently," said Amy Apon, professor at the University of Arkansas and principle investigator of the Great Plains Network Consortium. "Leveraging the state and regional network providers' existing outreach and collaboration activities, we are working with NMI-EDIT to establish a cohesive middleware infrastructure for sharing electronic resources regionally. This has the potential of impacting not only K-20 education and research centers in the plains, but also libraries, hospitals, and other public and private entities in the central part of the country."

Speaking for the California State University System, Mark Crase, with the Office of the Chancellor, said, "One of the objectives of our system-wide secure identity management infrastructure project is to avoid deploying unique, stand-alone middleware services at each CSU campus. NMI-EDIT has a solid base of components that we can use to address this technologically. Working with them through the ETR program will allow us to create a model where system campuses can provide these critical services to resource-limited schools and, while doing so, identify the costs and benefits and technological, procedural, and policy challenges associated with delivering middleware services."

To put the ETR outreach initiative in context, EDUCAUSE Vice President Mark Luker said, "The operative word is scaling. Just like the original Internet backbone, middleware-enabled applications will have similar performance and interoperability issues at the state, regional, national and international levels. The ETR program is the first step toward a broad support infrastructure for identity and access management that is so critical to maintaining computer and network security."