The Problem with Shibboleth Support
Shibboleth (Learn more >) is the world’s most widely deployed federated identity solution, connecting users to applications both within and between organizations. Shibboleth provides Single Sign-On capabilities and allows sites to make informed authorization decisions for individual access of protected online resources in a privacy-preserving manner. For the Single Sign-On source of your Identity Management solution Shibboleth is a superb choice, especially in a mixed environment. However the case for using it is by no means cut and dried, even if it is only a few niggling worries that remain. With proprietary directory servers there is a clear, and often big, proprietary company standing behind it, but with Shibboleth apparently no such equivalent. Perhaps you don't have enough, or the right kinds of, expertise in your organization. There may be legal, contractual or organizational requirements to have formal external support in place. It may be that you simply want reassurance if and when the worst happens. In any case you are looking for professional Shibboleth support to cover your investment in Shibboleth.
Why hasn't the problem been solved?
There is no single obvious organization standing behind the Open Source Shibboleth project. And even if there were, companies that develop Shibboleth are staffed by developers, and they do a great job at writing and packaging Open Source code into products. But you need support for the enterprise workloads you run in their real-world setting, not abstract issues of source code bug-fixing. In fact communities do as good or better at source code fixing, but cannot be pinned down to the Service Level Agreements you need.
In short, there is a mismatch between the kind of support you need, and the kind that is on offer.
Shibboleth Support designed for the real world
You can get enterprise-savvy, real-world support, whichever platforms and operating systems that you use. Support that focuses on the practicalities of running Shibboleth in your organization, as well as providing code fixes if you really need them.
What's different now?
The real trick is understanding that Open Source is a service, not a product, and that Shibboleth is there to be used, not merely admired and developed as code. SiriUS has designed, built, supported and managed Shibboleth systems since 1998, for Schools to SAP, London Financial Institutions to Local Governments. We understand Shibboleth at the source code level yes, but more importantly we understand how it is used by organizations in the real world, and in its various workloads. We have built and run thousands of machines responsible for millions of dollars of business value. We know how to support Shibboleth in the way you need and want it to be supported.
Case Study
Learn how SiriUS helped
- SAP implement OpenLDAP for thousands of their staff, and provide 24/7/365 support for the solution.
- ABN AMRO implement OpenLDAP for DevOps for thousands users, and provide ongoing expert support.
- Bradford College implement Shibboleth on Linux, and provide ongoing expert support
- Local Government in Wales, UK, implement Single Sign On in Schools with Shibboleth
Next steps...
Explore SiriUS' Pricing Learn more >
Explore SiriUS' Support SLAs Learn more >
Read about Shibboleth Learn more >
We would love to hear about how you are using Shibboleth, and we are sure you would find value in an expert, free and no-obligation discussion of your support needs. Simply have us reach out to you or call us on (509) 254-5005.
