Efforts Made Through Cooperative Development Feature of Unicon’s Cooperative Support Program for CAS
Unicon, Inc., the leading provider of technical support and consulting services for Jasig's Central Authentication Service, today announced the ClearPass integration with the latest uPortal and CAS releases. ClearPass is a CAS and uPortal extension for securely conveying the end user's password from CAS to uPortal (or to other authorized applications). uPortal releases this password to authorized portlets to, for example, implement preview of email and calendar information from backing applications to which the portal authenticates using the end user's password. ClearPass was originally developed by Unicon on behalf of Sacramento State University, who released this extension as free and open source software. Learn more about ClearPass.
Progress was achieved under the Cooperative Development feature of the Cooperative Support for CAS program. CAS is a Web single sign-on platform providing a trusted way for users to authenticate to web applications. Unicon's Cooperative Support Program provides member institutions with a support solution for their use of uPortal, Sakai, and CAS, along with a dedicated team of expert development and technical support specialists for direct technical support and assistance. All development work and fixes performed by the team for individual institutions are contributed back to the CAS community.
When ClearPass was released, Scott Battaglia, lead CAS developer and now CAS steering committee chair, said of Unicon and Sacramento State University, "It's great to see that Sacramento State University and Unicon recognize the importance of open source software and the value in contributing back to the community. The long-term viability of projects such as CAS and uPortal depend on the contributions of their respective communities. These contributions are a great first step towards a more collaborative community, and we hope this will encourage other CAS deployers to contribute back their extensions."
The Cooperative Development program funded Scott Battaglia to perform this development and maintenance on Unicon's behalf, kick-starting the Cooperative Development feature of the support program with the applied attentions of a figure central to the Jasig Central Authentication Service project. Learn more about the specific progress achieved.
"This progress is an example of the Cooperative Development feature of the program doing what it's designed to do," said John C. Blakley, CEO of Unicon, Inc. "Cooperative Development is a way for Unicon and support subscribers to be part of the sustainability and maintenance model for the supported free and open source software."
Unicon has a full range of service offerings for institutions wishing to deploy Jasig's CAS. For more information on Unicon's complete services for CAS, visit: http://www.unicon.net/services/cas.
About CAS
The Jasig Central Authentication Service, originally developed by Yale University, provides secure user authentication and single sign-on for many client programs and platforms that have been "CASified" since CAS became available. Single sign-on allows a user to provide his or her credentials once in order to access multiple applications. More information about CAS is available at: http://www.jasig.org/cas.
About Unicon's Cooperative Support Program
Support program subscribers pay an annual subscription fee affording access to the support services and also funding a dedicated support and development team. Support issues are managed on a priority basis with guaranteed service level agreements and an escalation mechanism for top priority issues. All development work performed by the team is in direct participation with the open source Jasig CAS community. More information is available at: http://www.unicon.net/support/cooperative.
About Unicon
Unicon, Inc. is a leading provider of IT consulting services for the education market. Unicon works closely with colleges, universities, and corporations to find the best solutions to meet their business challenges. Unicon specializes in using open source technologies to deliver flexible and cost-effective systems in the areas of enterprise portals, learning management systems (LMS), identity management, calendaring, email, and collaboration. Unicon is a contributing member of the IMS Global Learning Consortium, Jasig partner and authorized Solution Provider for both CAS and uPortal, a Liferay Service Partner, a member of the Oracle Partner Network, and a Sakai Commercial Affiliate for the community source Collaboration and Learning Environment. For more information, visit: www.unicon.net.
Unicon is a Registered Trademark of Unicon, Inc. All other product or service names are the property of their respective owners.
Contacts:
Unicon, Inc.
Jim Layne, 480-558-2444
jlayne@unicon.net