Building the Regional Middleware Infrastructure Across the Great Plains

Funding for the Extending the Reach (ETR) project is provided by Educause on behalf of the NMI-EDIT Consortium of Internet2, Educause, and SURA, and with several statewide university systems and regional networks. The project explores campus middleware delivery and support models that demonstrate new approaches to electronic resource sharing and link to the emerging national and global trust fabrics. ETR participants include the California State University System, the University of Texas System, the University of Alaska System, and the Great Plains Network (GPN) Consortium. You can learn more about NMI-EDIT and the ETR program here.

GPN is a regional consortium of state networks and universities in the mid-west. GPN is partnering with its predecessor, MIDnet, to develop a region-wide collaboration environment through the development of middleware services to bridge the geograhical boundaries among member institutions. The long-term goal of this project is to build a regional middleware infrastructure to share resources across the region.

Shibboleth is the chosen middleware tool for web-based electronic resource sharing. A key component of the ETR project is the deployment of Shibboleth at participating campuses.