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The original idea of an IdP as a service was born in the last GÉANT phase based on a community survey which indicated the desire for such a service. During the first half of the incubator cycle, a lot of effort was invested in analyzing the needs of the community on the one hand and technical possibilities on the other. After these results were presented to the community and discussed with representatives, it turned out that these former assumptions were no longer true. The initial idea was to deliver a fully fledged IdP as a Service solution to organisations by creating a platform hosted by either GÉANT or NRENS. During the course of this activity However, it turned out that this does not match the demand of the R&E community. Although there is a potential market for an IdP as a Service offering, especially for small and medium sized institutions, this solution should be very lightweight in a way that is is really easy to use, to deploy and support supports basic functionality only.

There is also no real demand for a GÉANT hosted service or supported product, because especially since the time to market is considered a critical aspect by the community. There is also . For this reason, some NRENS and organizations have already started working on their own approaches to create an IdP as a Service offer. There is a high interest in combining such offers that are based on locally hosted software with commercial and NREN offerings, which requires a highly modular software designto allow the combination of existing products and enable offerings from cloud service providers.

Assessment

It is clear there is a need for a hosted IdP solution, especially for smaller institutions who have no means of operating and managing an IdP themselves. Operating in this case is not just the technical operations of the IdP itself, but the whole enterprise of running an IdP, including managing IdM, dealing with (custom) attribute release, software updates and maintenance etc. Therefore, the solution provided by this activity should no longer try to provide a fully fledged service, but a lightweight software that enables NRENS and other organisations to create such an offer on their own. To achieve this goal, this activity should work on the following two tasks:

IdP as a Service Software Design

Creation of a software design package for a software solution that includes a specification and reference architecture. The specification will define the features and requirements needed according to a minimal viable product of an IdP as a Service platform in the context of Research and Education. Based on this specification a technical reference architecture will be designed, which supports these requirements and fits seamlessly into existing R&E software. This package will be validated by the eduGAIN community to make it the official reference design to be used in IdP as a Service offerings.

This way we offer value as we set the baseline for any requirements and potential procurement by NRENs or federations.

Creation of a Reference implementation

Based on the formerly created design, a reference software will be implemented. This reference implementation provides a simple, easily deploy-able solution that includes all specified features using the reference architecture. This solution will be provided to the community as a publicly available open source software including technical documentation. This software is intended to be used by NRENS to create their own IdP as a Service offering for institutions in their country.

Decision

Based on the described reasons, the Incubator activity will change it's course of action drastically. There won't be any official product, service or software support provided by GÉANT. The further development of this reference design and software is up to the community. The usage of these resources won't be restricted, so everyone and every organization is free to build their own solution on top. This applies to non-profit organizations as well as commercial vendors, which may offer similar products. The The individual decisions and implications of this decision choice are listed below.

Dont's

• There won't be a service or product provided by GÉANTThere
• The created software won't be a owned software owned or supported by GÉANT
• There won't be a business plan regarding the provided solution
• There won't be any further work on The development of the Campus IdP prototype developed implemented during GN4-2 will be stopped
• After delivering a design and software solution, the activity ends properly and there won't be any further actions for the Incubator

Do's

• Creation of a specifcation and design for a software that can be used to support an IdP as a Service offering
• Development of a simple software that implements the specification, which will be provided as open source software in GitHub
• The provided solution will enhance the already existing open source software samlidp.io
• The results of this activity will be provided completely to the community for further support and development
• The community will be informed about the availability of this open source software during the runtime of this activity

In order to reflect this major change, the activity will be transferred from IdP as a Service Business case to IdP as a Service Software Solution.