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Academic research has always been characterized by intense collaborations between people and groups from different institutions. Modern IT and especially IT networks have transformed the form of these collaborations: researchers can access and share data remotely, they can access online resources such as journals or scientific instruments.
In this context, Authentication and authorisation infrastructures Authorisation Infrastructures (AAI) have been developed to regulate who can gain access to which resources. Federated identity and eduGAIN go a long way to enabling such access policies for single users or research groups belonging to the same institutions. Thanks to single-sign-on they have built a scalable environment.
When they originate from researchers in different countries and institutions, research collaborations sometimes need additional specialised infrastructure so that they benefit from the same benefits in terms of AAI. eduTEAMS is being built on top of eduGAIN to address this need. eduTEAMS aims to simplify the management of group and authorisation information. It aims to enable the integration users from a wide range of environment, connecting them to specific services (such as instruments), and also to other generic services such as storage and compute provided by any eInfrastructure provider or even commercial entity. It is a key goal of eduTEAMS that it is possible to integrate with Just like Identity Federations and eduGAIN, eduTEAMS aims at scalability and give this possibility of integration for services provided by any eInfrastructure, Research Infrastructure or long tail simple collaboration.
In order to meet these needs, eduTEAMS is being designed and piloted by GÉANT in two variants to meet those needswhich will be deployed and evaluated in two successive phases:
Phases 1: Basic service:
- includes Membership management, Identity Hub for non eduGAIN users, Basic Groups, and Basic Provisioning
- allows end users of eduGAIN members to be able to login
- has infrastructure operation provided by GÉANT
- is offered to users at no additional cost
Phase 2: Advanced service:
- includes the same features as the basic offering, plus Advanced Groups, Attribute Management, Advanced (de-)Provisioning, SP proxy, Attribute Aggregation
- Is private to eScience community operators and end users authorised by them
- Includes operations and consultancy provided by GÉANT
- Is offered on the basis of a per community contract and cost
<Suggested graphic - something wooshy connecting groups of people to information>
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