Middleware

Context for EDUCAUSE Role

Press Release describing the NSF Middleware Initiative

As detailed in the press release above, on September 24, 2001, the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced the NSF Middleware Initiative (NMI), a cluster of awards totaling $12 million. As one of the awardees, EDUCAUSE will join several institutional research centers and Internet consortia in a cooperative agreement to develop network collaboration tools and infrastructure protocols to support the next generation of the Internet. The project goal is to integrate broad, powerful accessibility across enterprise (campus) networks, academic disciplines, and users' desktops.

As defined by and relating to activity already underway at EDUCAUSE, Internet2, and the Southeastern Universities Research Association (SURA), middleware is "a layer of software between the network and the applications…[providing] services such as identification, authentication, authorization, directories, and security." The promise of standardized middleware is for a single set of "credentials" for each user, giving access to all applications through common security services.

The particular role that EDUCAUSE will play is to participate on a team with SURA that Internet 2 has formed to develop an NMI architecture focusing on interrealm directories, security, and naming, as well as to provide broad dissemination of products and events detailing the efforts to make campus networks and desktop machines compatible with the middleware package. According to Ken Klingenstein, director of the Internet2 middleware initiative, what will soon evolve (and be posted on this Web site) are the project work plan, white papers, new directory and object class standards, best practices, NMI-related conference information, and links to other sites involved in the project.