Maximising your digital audience in universities and colleges whilst minimising costs

Nikki Green and Phil LeahyDecember 2009

About Eduserv

• Realise the benefits of technology for learning and research

• Serving universities, colleges and the public sector

• Not-for-profit

What we do

• Access and identity management

• Web development and web hosting

• Software and data licence negotiation

Issues facing universities and collegesRecession, redundancy and restructuring

• Budget cuts

• Exchange rates

• Demographics

• Competition

Potential solutions for universities and colleges

• Partnering

• Growth

• Determine Demand

• Reduce duplication and waste

• Collaborate

Do much more with much less

Maximise your audienceGreater exposure

• Listen to needs

• Be inclusive

• Be flexible

• Build brand loyalty

Maximise your audience

“After just six months of working with Eduserv our market in the UK academic sector increased tenfold. Our licensing terms didn’t really suit this market and though we could have done it on our own it would probably have taken us three years to get to where we are now.”

Steven Tweedie, Content Online, UK Agent for ASTM International

Greater exposure

Minimise your costsMore for less

• Work with consortia

• Be consistent

• Be patient

Maximising your audience through access and identity management

Phil Leahy

Eduserv’s AIM pedigree

• De facto standard in UK access management for ten years

• Complementary AIM products

• Tracking changes in technology

• Interoperability with Dutch and French federations

• Members of Kantara Initiative

A mixed technology economy

• Athens was the UK standard for ten years, but...

– IP authentication

– Publisher username/passwords

– Proxied services

– Referral URLs

• and now...?

We still have a mixed economy

• All the previous technologies plus...

– Shibboleth/SAML

– OpenID

– Microsoft CardSpace

• How do publishers deal

with these?

The challenges for publishers

• How many of these technologies must I implement?

• How many of them are supported products?

• Will these standards change?

• Will other new technologies emerge?

• What’s in it for me?

• I didn’t ask for more choice

Break down the walls, reduce costs

• Support multiple AIM technologies in a single platform

• Reduce implementation and support costs

• Recognise that your content is just part of a user’s choice of sources

• Fragmented islands of AIM technologies being linked

• Support your core business first

Implementation case study: Mintel

• Began investigating Shibboleth adoption in 2007

– Significant compatibility problems

– Documentation looked incomplete

– Lack of development and perceived quality of the Shibboleth

software at that time

• Realised benefits of supported third party software

Minimising costs with third party software

“Access management is an area where Mintel cannot take risks and

Eduserv’s support, coupled with the flexible nature of OpenAthens SP,

enabled us to first upgrade our Athens support and then add

Shibboleth and UK Federation support simply by adding an additional

module.”

Ameet Shah, Senior Software Developer, Mintel

Kantara Initiative

• Bridging the enterprise, mobile, government and web communities

• Clear path for moving interoperable identity systems forward

• Key issues

– Privacy - Education and outreach

– Ownership and liability - Market Research

– UX and usability - Use cases and requirements

– Cross-community coordination and collaboration

Conclusion

• You may need to support multiple technologies/federations

• Opportunity to reduce implementation and support costs

• Someone must track the technology as it changes/matures

• Allow your products/services to be part of a more granular web

• You support your core business

Any questions?

Phil Leahy

Publisher Relationship Manager

01225 474302

phil.leahy@eduserv.org.uk

Nikki Green

Business Development Manager

01225 470420

nikki.green@eduserv.org.uk

www.eduserv.org.uk

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