A look back at the move from Athens

On 1 August 2008, the majority of EDINA services stopped using Athens as a mode of authentication. The changeover was largely successful, and most institutions (especially those who considered the issues in good time) made a smooth transition.

In March of this year, JISC stated that JISC services should not have any reason to continue to operate Athens interfaces beyond the end of July 2008. EDINA, as a JISC-funded service provider, made an early decision to comply with this requirement, and informed its user organisations, universities and colleges across the UK accordingly.

Now that the 1 August deadline has passed, how did it all go?

Organisations were strongly advised that they should join the UK federation, and over 550 members have heeded this advice.

The other main decision that universities and colleges have had to make was whether to deploy their own Identity Provider (IdP) software or outsource to a third party. For this first year, many chose to outsource to Eduserv Open-Athens as that enabled them to continue to gain access, from within the UK federation, to services which were accessible only via Athens, as well as to Shibboleth-accessible services. At the time of writing, more than half of the 380 IdPs in the UK federation are OpenAthens IdPs.

The switch-over to the UK federation has meant that many local service presentation and local support arrangements have changed for the end-users, the researchers and students who use our services. The EDINA helpdesk will continue to give support and advice on access management questions for as long as necessary.