The US National Science Foundation Middleware Initiative (NMI) has issued its sixth release, NMI-R6, which offers several new components relating to end-user authorization services. The release, issued in December 2004, is designed to integrate with academic and research software and infrastructures such as Grids, and is available under open-source licences.
NMI, which began in late 2001, funds the design, development, testing and deployment of middleware, a key technology upon which customized applications are built. NMI is now part of the Shared Cyberinfrastructure (SCI) Division, which the National Science Foundation (NSF) established last year to bundle research and development in areas that enhance the computing infrastructure for scientific research and education.
The trigger for setting up the SCI was the report produced by a committee advising the NSF on infrastructure based on distributed computer, information and communication technology. The panel found that the progress in these technologies made a comprehensive "cyberinfrastructure" possible and that there was a need for distributed computing power and shared data-storage due to the increasing complexity, scope and scale of research challenges in different areas. It therefore recommended that the NSF should establish a programme to create, deploy and apply cyberinfrastructure.
The SCI supports the US national computation infrastructure for the academic research and education community. It also supports networks and networking technologies, from high-speed backbone networks to wireless networks that connect embedded sensor nodes in remote sites. The division also develops and supports software tools and services that hide implementation complexities and heterogeneity while offering clean logical interfaces to users.
To ensure interoperability between fragmented solutions already developed in certain areas, SCI supports initiatives to develop standards and programmes that make the sharing of data and resources as transparent as possible.
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Compiled by Hannelore Hämmerle and Nicole Crémel