For the last seven years, the Internet2 Middleware Initiative has sought to develop campus middleware infrastructure that supports research and education. The core vision of this effort has been to build consistent campus approaches to middleware and mechanisms for inter-institutional interactions, including a reference model and implementations for key campus components in that model. Given the role that policies and organizational issues play in middleware, a particular emphasis has been on business plans, as well as outreach and education through a close partnership with EDUCAUSE. Programmatic direction for the initiative is set by the Middleware Architecture Committee for Education (MACE), a group of leading higher education IT architects, interacting with federal government partners (NSF, GSA, NIH, etc.), and corporations.
Specifically, the Internet2 Middleware Initiative has focused on:
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Understanding and encouraging the creation of a campus middleware infrastructure with the institutional business drivers
- Building the beginnings of inter-institutional identity management and trust and managing the broadening impacts of federated approaches
- Establishing a set of community standards in both a rough architectural framework and several specific objectclass or policy document details
- Developing, or contributing to the development of, open source protocols and implementations such as SAML, Shibboleth, Signet, and Grouper
- Reaching out to specific applications communities such as Grid computing to encourage use of the emergent infrastructure
- Partnering with EDUCAUSE for effective outreach and dissemination to the broader networking community
During 2006, the Internet2 Middleware Initiative realized several important milestones.