e2Campus integrates the Shibboleth platform

I saw this news article from Reuters newservice, and wanted to pass it along...

DENVER, Nov. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- From the show floor of EDUCAUSE 2009, Omnilert®
LLC today announced the release of e2Campus® version 3.1, the leading unified
emergency notification system for education. Most notably, the latest release
of the service integrates the Shibboleth® single sign-on platform. This
technology, combined with Omnilert's participation in the InCommon®
Federation, means that existing Shibboleth-enabled organizations will
immediately benefit from e2Campus' enhanced user management and single sign-on
convenience without additional integration.

Single sign-on capabilities enable users to leverage their home institution's
login credentials to jump from one secure online application to another
without having to set up and then remember multiple passwords for each
resource they use.

InCommon is a trust federation in which members like Omnilert agree to use a
standards-based authentication protocol (like that provided by Shibboleth) for
their interactions. InCommon participants agree on a set of shared policies,
processes, and technology standards. This greatly streamlines collaboration
among multiple organizations because federation members agree on shared
policies and processes once, rather than each time they sign a contract with a
new partner.

By the end of June, 2009, Penn State University and University of Maryland
Baltimore County (UMBC) finished collaborating with e2Campus on the initial
development of the InCommon interface. Today, UMBC, University of Maryland
Baltimore, and Lafayette College are among the first to take advantage of this
convenient single sign-on integration for use with the e2Campus service.

"We are extremely pleased with the Shibboleth implementation in e2Campus which
allows us much greater flexibility in the way we provide our critical
emergency notifications to our faculty, students and staff through the
InCommon Federation," said Mike Carlin, assistant vice president of
infrastructure and support at UMBC.

"For instance, we are now able to set up dynamic groups based on student
attributes enabling us to better target our emergency alerts to affected
groups on campus. As an example, if a certain dormitory is impacted by an
emergency event, we now have the ability to alert just the impacted students
and staff in that residence or other specific groups as is appropriate to the
issue."

Carlin added, "We are most excited about the dynamic real-time updates to stay
on top of user churn. When students, faculty or staff leave the university, we
can automatically remove them from e2Campus. In addition, we can focus
internal marketing to the select people that still need to opt-in to e2Campus,
without bothering those that have already subscribed."

Kevin Morooney, the incoming chair of the InCommon Steering Committee and
chief information officer and vice provost for information technology at Penn
State University, explained, "One of the primary goals of federations like
InCommon is to allow universities to provide access to a wide range of
off-campus resources while still protecting the security and privacy of their
students, faculty, and staff. We who are involved with InCommon are pleased
that this new release of e2Campus takes advantage of the benefits of the
federation."

Nick Gustavsson, Omnilert's chief technology officer, said, "We are very proud
to be part of InCommon Federation. With more and more schools upgrading to
e2Campus, Shibboleth integration is a major decision point for new customers.
There is no easier way to integrate your existing school data with any ENS
system than with Shibboleth and e2Campus."

Additional upgrades in e2Campus 3.1 include many new administration functions
such as: enhanced user management to include adding single users and viewing
user details; enhanced session timeout functionality; and the ability to
configure password strength for admin accounts.

http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS191815+05-Nov-2009+PRN20091105