>
> Has anyone who already uses Athens-DA moved over to Shibboleth yet?
> Here at Birmingham we've been Athens-DA for several years so don't have
> the driver of saving staff time in maintaining classic accounts etc.
Yes, we're in the same boat. There is the 'stick' being waved, though, that we will be charged per user from July 2008 for Athens.
>
> Probably a silly question but I'm trying to get this all straight in my
> head! What does it mean in practical terms for the end user when
> resources aren't yet gateway-compliant? Anything? Nothing? Do they have
> to use a separate username/password? Does something have to be done
> technically to enable access in the meantime?
>
I wouldn't have thought it was a silly question at all! This is the important kind of thing, there is the worry that by deploying Shibboleth we actually end up making things worse for the people out there. It doesn't matter how technically elegant a solution Shibboleth may (or may not?) be, but if it makes things worse for people on a day to day basis there isn't an awful lot of kudos for us in deploying it!
There may even end up being a good case to keep Athens DA, ok we have to pay for it but if I understand correctly what our library people were telling me you only actually end up paying for unique people who actually use it. Although we have about 26000 directory users there have been only 7938 unique users since the DA service went live in July, so at 50p per person that's only £4K which may be less than the cost of deploying Shibboleth. Of course - at a bigger site your Athens costs may be much greater :-(
> -----Original Message-----
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jon Warbrick
> Jon.
>
> p.s. Sorry, it seems to be my day for asking questions - I'll try to
> shut up for a while.
Please don't! I for one am finding the discussion useful! It's also useful to see who else is thinking of deploying.
Cheers
Andy
|