OpenAthens LA 2.0 enables single sign-on to Google Apps

OpenAthens LA 2.0, a single-sign on product developed for UK universities and colleges, now includes support for Google Apps - the search giant's suite of hosted enterprise tools. This will enable institutions to allow their staff and students to use services such as Gmail and Google Docs with their existing logins.

Managing digital identities and access rights is a key challenge facing many academic institutions. Traditionally this has been to provide access to academic journals and other learning resources, but increasingly to managed online services such as virtual learning environments and online collaboration tools.

OpenAthens LA 2.0, one of Eduserv’s suite of access and identity management services, enables organisations - primarily in higher and further education - to use existing student and staff accounts to log in to multiple external and internal online resources.

Organisations can now use OpenAthens LA 2.0 to log in to Google Apps, which provides advert-free, domain-based versions of the popular Gmail, Calendar and Google Docs applications.

OpenAthens customers can achieve this integration very easily with just a few clicks in the web-based OpenAthens LA 2.0 administration console (right).

David Orrell, Senior Access and Identity Management Architect at Eduserv, says:

“With a growing number of organisations turning to Google and Microsoft for outsourced services such as email, calendars and online document collaboration, it’s vital that students can use their existing logins to access these services.”

OpenAthens LA 2.0 is released on 23 November 2009.

Find out more about our Access and Identity Management services.