1. OpenConext: Open for Collaboration
Niels van Dijk
Technical Product Manager

2. SURFnet: the Dutch NREN
• SURFnet is the Dutch National Research & Education
Network (NREN)
– Services, innovation, knowledge
– Not for profit
– Task organisation of Stichting SURF = ICT collaboration of higher
education & research
• A small operation serving a large community:
– 85 employees
– 160 connected institutions
– 1 million end-users
– Turnover 35 million Euro; 1/3 innovation subsidies
SURFnet - We make innovation work 1

3. OpenConext
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4. OpenConext Vision (2009)
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 Create a coherent infrastructure of loosely coupled
collaborative services, based on (emerging) Open
Standards and enabled by access federations

5. OpenConext Building blocks
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 Identity Federations, SAML and attributes
 Create and manage Groups
 OpenSocial (VOOT) API and oAuth
 A piece of middleware (a hub or proxy) that allows centrally managing
interconnects and facilitates application integration

6. OpenConext Use cases
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• Collaboration Platform
• Service Delivery Platform
• Identity Federation hub
United Kingdom – JISCconext (JISC)
A Collabortion platform around email groups, will support about 1
million endusers
Australia (AARnet)
A service delivery for AARnet services in Australia and New Zealand
The Netherlands – SURFconext (SURFnet)
The middleware platform for the national hub-n-spoke Identity
Federation

7. JISCconext
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https://tnc2014.terena.org/core/presentation/15

8. AARNet
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https://tnc2014.terena.org/core/presentation/15

9. SURFconext
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A next generation collaboration
infrastructure that creates new
opportunities to collaborate online
based on a combination of applications
from different providers.
Researchers, educators and students wish to select the tools that best
fit their online collaboration needs. Institutions and Collaborative
Organizations struggle with the integration of self-hosted services
with commercial cloud services. Service providers seek for ways to
make their services easily accessible for users in higher research
and education.
SURFconext is the platform to facilitate these needs.

10. Collaboration Platform
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• Federated Authentication
• Centralized Groups
• Portals
Federated Authentication
Leverages secure, trusted authentication and Single Sign on for
Campus and Cloud applications
Centralized groups
Used for Adhoc collaborations and institutional groups
Portals
Bring together distributed services to provide end-users with a
coherent set of services

11. Service Delivery Platform
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• Federated Authentication
• Attribute based Authorization
• National Procurement & Licencing
Create Trusted Services
By combining Identity Federation, privacy and data protection
regulations and license deal in one contract between Service
Provider and (all) Dutch institutions

12. Services Dashboard
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13. Commercial Services
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14. eScience Services
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15. Collaborative Organisations
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• Groups
• Distributes Services
• Attributes, roles and rights
Groups are core to collaboration
Any collaboration is based on groups. In R&E these groups are
dynamic and international;
Distributed Services
COs collaborate around distributes services. Managing and
maintaining many SP IdP interconnections is tough;
Attributes, roles and rights
Roles and rights are based on Attributes. COs need very different
attributes as compared to the attributes provided by the IdPs.

16. Example Cases
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• WeNMR
• Virtual Campus Hub
WeNMR
Bringing together research teams in the structural biology and life
science area. The project offers a platform integrating services and
streamlining the computational approaches necessary for data
analysis and structural modelling.
Virtual Campus Hub
Create a virtual education portal for a joint programme, consisting
of applications made available by the partners involved in that
programme, and to which all relevant users have seamless access.

17. WeNMR
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• Connect HPC to federation
• Federated Portal

18. WeNMR and eduGAIN
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19. Partners in Virtual Campus Hub

20. Concept: virtual education portal for joint
programs

21. Components of Virtual Campus Hub
1. Inventory of the most important ICT barriers for international
collaboration in education.
2. Demo platform to prove that some of these barriers can be removed:
 Easy access to partners’ applications (FIM)
 More efficient and more flexible setup of online activities or online
participation in regular activities (UC hub)
 Easier collaboration with industry (non-HE IdPs)
3. Vision on how to apply these insights and experiences in concrete
collaboration initiatives (e.g. international joint programs)

22. Demo portal (proof of concept)
Functionality:
• Access with your own account
to partners’ applications
• Create international groups
(virtual organizations)
• Single sign-on access through
simple website
(https://vch.tue.nl)
12-06-2013

23. IdPs connected to VCH
2204-10-2012

24. Enabling international collaboration:
National (NRENs) and European (Géant)
12-06-2013

25. Results
• Connections realized for several identity providers (IdPs)
and applications (SPs).
• Cloud service (DTU itslearning) connected to VCH
• Scalability of concept shown (by adding extra IdPs)
• Knowledge and experience with respect to using Géant-
eduGAIN
2412-06-2013

26. OpenConext Building blocks
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 Identity Federations, SAML and attributes
 Create and manage Groups
 OpenSocial (VOOT) API and Oauth
 A piece of middleware (a hub or proxy) that allows centrally managing
interconnects and facilitates application integration

27. Identity Federation
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28. Groups
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 Any collaboration involves groups, either ‘AdHoc’, or ‘Institutional’
 OpenConext facilitates the creation of groups of federated users
 Adhoc Groups are managed centrally (Teams)
 Any acceptable user can become a group 'admin‘
 Invite any other users
 Build groups from other groups
 Institutional Groups (Campus or VO) can be provided by external
sources
 Groups provide context for applications (but applications decide on
AuthZ!)
 Groups feature (only) 3 roles (admin, collabmin, member)
 Group + VO Registry -> VO IdP

29. Attributes
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 Attribute & Group information can be provided at logon
 Many scenarios require out of band exchange
 VOOT (http://openvoot.org/voot-2.0.html) REST API, based on OpenSocial
 oAuth2 & oAuth 1 (deprecated)
 Draft SCIM implementation expected in 2014
 SAML attribute query support on the way (both AA and client)

30. OpenConext – The platform (2009)
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 Do not start from Scratch
 Add (a lot of) Glue
SAML Groups Management
Shibboleth SP
(Shibboleth Consortium)
Grouper
(Internet2)
Janus
(WAYF)
SimpleSAMLphp SP
(Feide.no)
Shindig
(Apache)
Corto
(WAYF)
Teams

31. OpenConext – The platform (Q1 2014)
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 Do not start from Scratch
 Add (a lot of) Glue and even more Glue
SAML Groups Management
Shibboleth SP
(Shibboleth Consortium)
Grouper
(Internet2)
Janus
(SURFnet)
SimpleSAMLphp SP
(Feide.no)
Shindig
(Apache)
Group Proxy, API & APIS
Manage
Corto
(WAYF/SURFnet)
SSP libraries
Teams (v2) Log handling & Statistics
OpenConext VM

32. OpenConext – Overview
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33. OpenConext – Meshing a Hub
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Source: Neil Witheridge, AARNet

34. How OpenConext helps
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• Groups
• Distributed Services
• Attributes, roles and rights
Manage and share Groups
OpenConext provides a centralized group provider and allows
linking external group providers;
Centrally manage services and identity stores
SP and IdP connections can be manage centrally, including Access
and Attribute Release Policies;
Use Attributes, roles and rights for Authorization
Manage, transform and filter attributes and group (membership)
both at logon as well as when queried out-of-band.

35. OpenConext VM
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• Run your own OpenConext platform
• CentOS/Redhat, 10 min setup
• For demo, development and playing around
https://github.com/OpenConext/OpenConext-vm

36. More information
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• SURFconext
• OpenConext
SURFconext
 http://www.surf.nl/en/services-and-products/surfconext/index.html
OpenConext
 All of OpenConext is hosted at https://github.com/openconext
 OpenConext support tools and compatible services are available at
https://github.com/openconextapps
Community Website, including documentation
 https://www.openconext.org
Support
 Mailinglists: openconext-users@list.surfnet.nl and openconext-dev@list.surfnet.nl

37. niels.vandijk[at]surfnet.nl
@cdr80
cdr80
www.surfnet.nl
+31 30 2 305 305
Creative Commons “Attribution” license:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
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