From Dave Kennedy (Duke Univ.), chair of the vendor subgroup:
On July 9, 2009, we sent out a message to 10 vendors. The message described what our group is, what we are trying to do, and what potential benefits would be for the vendor and the community. Also in the message, we asked them to respond to a survey of 5 questions. We have received some response from 6 of the 10 vendors, all within 24 hours of sending them a message. From our perspective, this was a good response.
The responses indicate a couple of things. Vendors are aware of some of the issues that we are hoping they will address, such as WAYFless urls and direct linking to resources. Although not all have implemented these features, all indicated that they are at least planned. And they all indicate that they also have plans to incorporate personalization features. We have been updating the registry with the responses, as well as with our individual testing of vendors' platforms. The responses to the survey questions are summarized below.
In addition, through our contact with vendors, two of the vendors we have contacted are now in the process of joining InCommon.
Survey questions/summary of responses:
1. What are the minimum attributes you require from an Identity Provider for basic Shibboleth authentication?
- There is really no concensus here among vendors
2. What additional services, if any, do you provide through Shibboleth beyond basic login, for example, personalization. If you do provide additional services, what is required to enable them?
- Most don't have additional services, but have plans to incorporate personalization features in future releases.
3. Do you support "WAYFless" access, that is, access that does not require a user to identify where they are from in order to reach his or her local authentication system?
- All vendors seemed to understand the question, which is a step in the right direction. Only two vendors say they support WAYFless access, all seem to be moving towards this in future releases.
4. Do you support direct Shibboleth-authenticated links to resources?
- Again, most of the vendors seemed to grasp what we were asking for here. Of the vendors we polled, and that responded, only two support this, but more are planning for this feature.
5. We also asked vendors about who to contact for support.
Vendors contacted with survey:
EBSCO, Elsevier, JSTOR, Proquest, Refworks, OCLC, Thomson Reuters, HW Wilson, Springer, Gale Cengage