News for and about the Internet2 community

["Lauren B. Kallens" <>]

NSF Middleware Initiative Release 7 Progresses Towards Shared
Cyberinfrastructure 

Grid and federated identity management tools and software ease the use of
and development for the advancement of science and engineering
 
June 1, 2005 - Developed for the academic science and engineering community,
the seventh release of the National Science Foundation Middleware Initiative
(NMI-R7) builds on previous work to offer coherent development and access
management technologies while concealing the complex management and security
required in a heterogeneous cyberinfrastructure. NMI-R7 is available for
downloading under open-source licenses to the public at
http://www.nsf-middleware.org.

"Providing robust distributed systems and development platforms, shared R&E
cyber-trust and services, and mechanisms to diagnose problems with accessing
resources are critical to building cyber infrastructure," said Kevin
Thompson, NSF Program Director for NMI. "The new NMI-R7 components make
progress toward this vision by easing the development and support of Grids,
offering a model for problem resolution for distributed systems, and
enabling access to shared services through Shibboleth." 

In September 2001, the first NMI systems integrator teams, GRIDS Center and
NMI-EDIT, began work along with a number of smaller targeted awards.
Along with the continued funding of its original teams, the OGCE, the Common
Instrument Middleware Architecture (CIMA) team, and the new experimental
projects were added in 2003. After seven releases of software, tools, and
practices, NMI is at the leading edge of the growing cyberinfrastructure
established to support next generation science and engineering.

For the full release, refer to
http://www.nsf-middleware.org/Lists/NMIR7/pressrelease.aspx.


###


For more information:

GRIDS Center:  http://www.grids-center.org
NMI-EDIT Consortium:  http://www.nmi-edit.org
OGCE Team:  http://www.collab-ogce.org/nmi/index.jsp
CIMA Team: http://www.instrumentmiddleware.org/

Media Contact:
Ann West (906-487-1726, 
)
NMI-EDIT