We moved to Shibboleth from Athens DA before it became OpenAthens, (i.e. an offsite hosted SAML Identity Provider).
But I think I can comment on some of the advantages of doing things in-house:
Your IdP will be authenticating against your current local user directory so you will not have to upload users in batch style (if you do it that way)
By having your own IdP, it is very easy for you to provide Shibboleth authentication for local resources such as EZProxy (as stated by Sue Gold) and other local resources (as done by David Perry).
It's very easy to customise attribute release to resources - we have just worked with a unit of Thomson Reuters to provide Shibboleth authentication for a resource called Solcara which is not generally available through the Federation yet, it required certain custom attributes which were no trouble for us to produce and release.
There is very little (nearly no) ongoing support required for it, it just runs.
There is no annual cost or subscription involved.
Cheers
Andy Swiffin
Dundee
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From: Discussion list for Shibboleth developments [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Cara Clarke [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 03 January 2013 17:50
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Shibboleth versus Athens
Hi folks, I'm wondering if anyeone can help me out please.
I work in a college library and we use Athens to authenticate off-site access to our subscription services. I know very little about it, but I believe Shibboleth offers the same service.
Does anyone have experience of moving from Athens to Shibboleth? Is it worthwhile?
Any hints and tips would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
Cara.
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