Rev. 8-Sep-2003
Contact: <info-shib@internet2.edu>

Shibboleth offers a compelling alternative for providers of services and content to higher ed, by eliminating the need to build extensive custom front-ends and interfaces to deal with the variety of systems customer sites use for controlling access to resources and services. Shibboleth is freely available open source software, available for Solaris, Linux, and Windows 2000/XP. Detailed information is available at http://shibboleth.internet2.edu/.The following is a brief high-level overview of some of the advantages Shibboleth offers:

Issue
Without Shibboleth
With Shibboleth
End User Authentication Most content and service providers, if they want to offer services to end users on campuses, generally have had only two options:
1. provide and manage individual accounts for each user, with the high level of support and insecurity this entails.
2. integrate with each customer campus SSO.		 Unified authentication mechanism from the vendor perspective, much more scalable, and much less integration work required to bring a new customer online.
Access Control Fine-grained access control impractical, usually defaults to access decisions based on IP address (or range of addresses), possibly combined with time of day. Ability to implement fine-grained access control (e.g. access by role), allowing customer sites to effectively control access by attributes and thus control usage costs, by not granting access unnecessarily – compelling marketing message for vendor.
Competitive Advantage: Leading Edge   Ability to market yourself as being at the forefront of compelling new technology adoption. E.g., as Shibboleth enables role based access control (RBAC); vendors are able to offer new service offerings.
ROI - Vendor Variable and potentially significant costs associated with bringing new customer sites online. Once the initial Shibboleth integration work has been completed on the vendor’s systems, the incremental cost of adding new customers is relatively minimal, in contrast.
ROI - Customer   Many campuses are already implementing Shibboleth as core infrastructure, to support inter-institutional applications, thus they would be leveraging something already in place. If your customers have Shibboleth implemented, it is a matter of managing attributes. For those who have not yet implemented Shibboleth, the installation is relatively easy.
Competitive Advantage: Joint Procurement (e.g. statewide university systems) Less feasible to offer joint procurement service opportunities in some cases. Opportunity to offer joint procurement services through federation membership, providing economies of scale for both vendor and customer.