NSF MIDDLEWARE INITIATIVE RELEASE 4.0 FEATURES THE LATEST IN GRID SERVICES AND IDENTITY MANAGEMENT COMPONENTS

Systems integration teams contribute leading software, white papers and best practices

December 16, 2003 -- Today's fourth release by the National Science Foundation Middleware Initiative (NMI) includes a wide range of software, services, documents and recommendations for the effective use of information technology in research and education.  NMI-R4 emphasizes open-source solutions to issues critical to collaboration across multiple organizations that may be separated by  geography and by divergent local computing architectures.

The release, available for free to the public at http://www.nsf-middleware.org, is designed to facilitate sharing of on-line resources.  NMI-R4 includes a robust collection of tools and services for organizations to build their security and identity management infrastructure.  New and updated components in NMI-R4 include several that emphasize Grid services, a new type of capability that uses open-source, open-architecture tools to build on popular Web service standards.  Grid services make it much simpler for developers to create easy-to-use applications for accessing massive databases, computing  power, networks and instrumentation across the Internet.

The release also features a rich variety of tools contributed by the NMI-EDIT Consortium of Internet2, EDUCAUSE and SURA. From deployment guides and testing packages for enterprise directories to an architecture for groups management, the portfolio reflects and accommodates the varying requirements across the R&E community.

Review the full release at: http://www.nsf-middleware.org/Outreach/news_12-16-03.asp.

Media Contacts:

Tom Garritano   (630-252-7641, garritano@mcs.anl.gov)
Ann West                (906-487-1726, awest@educause.edu)

For more information:

NMI Fact Sheet:  http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/news/03/fs03_nmi.htm
GRIDS Center:  http://www.grids-center.org
NMI-EDIT Consortium:  http://www.nmi-edit.org
OGCE Team:  http://www.ogce.org