Supporting Research and Collaboration through Integrated Middleware

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The proposal focuses on designing and building the NSF Middleware Initiative (NMI), and will be one of two System Integrators as well as playing a Service Provider role. The NMI program will expedite the development of middleware functions and services to support the national research and scientific community, and will also accelerate the deployment and use of new and emerging applications across the Internet. The purpose of the NMI program is to enable members of the advanced networking community to collaborate in developing and assembling common network services and resources (middleware) to optimize the network for applications and to share limited resources for the common good of all users. UCAID, along with its EDUCAUSE and SURA partners, will help define, develop and deploy the NMI and will integrate across three different streams of developing middleware applications and initiatives; one stream is the middleware being developed and deployed by the GRIDS community and the GRIDS Center, another stream is the set of middleware initiative being worked on by the Internet2 community of research institutions and universities, and a third stream is middleware which is being developed by independent researchers and communities.This proposal focuses on the deployment and support of this middleware architecture, and in particular is a focused outreach to the larger academic communities. While the other two Cooperative Agreements primarily focus on GRID technologies and then work with the larger academic and research community, this proposal focuses on the campus infrastructure, discipline and desktop and then works with the GRID technologies, among others. In order for middleware to be successful to the broad education and research community, it must specifically address;a) Integration with campus infrastructure: core middleware services (such as identifiers, basic directory services, and first levels of authentication and authorization) are typical activities that will be supplied by the campus infrastructure.b) Integration with vertical discipline-oriented applications and middleware; such as workbenches and tool sets and application portals. c) Integration at the desktop (i.e., operating systems, user interface, personal production tools), d) coordinate its activities and efforts with the other two partners of the NMIe) Integrate with the components of the developing high performance and GRID technologies.