Internet2 2003 Annual Report

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Developing Tools and Services to Facilitate Inter-institutional Collaboration

www.nmi-edit.org

In September 2003, Internet2 received funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for the second, three-year phase of the NSF Middleware Initiative Enterprise and Desktop Integration Technologies (NMIEDIT) partnership. Working with close to 100 academic institutions, individual partners, and organizations, the NMI-EDIT consortium has developed tools and services that facilitate inter-institutional collaboration. Working in partnership with EDUCAUSE, Internet2's coordination resulted in the development of a core middleware structure for the worldwide research and education community. More than 80 percent of the awarded funding has been directed to higher education institutions responsible for most of NMI-EDIT's efforts.

The NMI-EDIT consortium has built upon the momentum and achievements of the project's first three years, which also included Southern Universities Research Association as a coordinating test bed partner. The consortium has developed broad campus awareness and consistent enterprise deployments of core middleware services. Many parts of the project’s first phase efforts in areas such as security, interrealm collaborations, and middleware sustainability already have become widely accepted by corporate and government sectors. The project’s second phase is focusing on broad and consistent international security and directory infrastructures, and includes middleware diagnostics and authorization systems. NMI-EDIT collaborates with the Grid Research Integration Deployment and Support Center, the Open Grid Computing Environment team, and the Common Instrument Middleware Architecture team, as part of NSF's Middleware Initiative.