Join as Federation Partner

Federation Partner - A Definition

A Federation Partner is an organization that offers one or more AAI-enabled resources to one or more Federation Members. The Federation Partner's resources get integrated into SWITCHaai and they may use the central AAI services required for a smooth operation within SWITCHaai.

A Federation Partner cannot act as a home organization, i.e. it cannot represent a user community and not be an identity provider within SWITCHaai.

Participation Requirements

The following entities and organizations may qualify to become Federation Partners:

Higher education and research organizations (both domestic and international) wishing to offer AAI-enabled resources to one or more Federation Members; and
Entities and organizations wishing to offer AAI-enabled, education and research-related services to the users, i.e. the registered members of one or more Home Organizations.

Already Participating Federation Partners

List all Federation Partners

Becoming a Federation Partner

A prospect Federation Partner has to sign two documents: the Federation Partner Application Form and the Federation Partner Agreement.

In addition, the prospect Federation Partner needs to be officially supported by a Federation Member (a.k.a. "Sponsor"), which also signs the Application Form.

The procedure to sign these two documents is as follows:

Federation Partner Application Form [PDF, 1 page, 22 kByte].

Requires signatures from:
- Authorized representative from the Federation Member
- Authorized representative from the Federation Partner
Prerequisites: A Federation Member that supports the cause of the prospect Federation Partner by signing the application form. In case of doubt, please contact the SWITCHaai team.

Procedure: The above application form has to be filled out and printed. The form can be filled out directly with the Acrobat Reader or a similar application.
The form has to be submitted to:
```
SWITCH
AAI
Werdstrasse 2
P.O. Box
CH-8021 Zurich
SWITZERLAND
```
after it was signed by an authorized representative from the Federation Member and the Federation Partner.
Federation Partner Agreement [PDF, 7 pages, 327 kB].

Requires signatures from:
- Authorized representative(s) from the Federation Partner
- Authorized representatives from SWITCH
Procedure: The form has to be filled out and signed by the Federation Partner. Two signed copies of the agreement then have to be submitted to:
```
SWITCH
AAI
Werdstrasse 2
P.O. Box
CH-8021 Zurich
SWITZERLAND
```
One copy will be signed by SWITCH and returned to the Federation Partner.

BTW: Section 5.5 of the agreement refers to fees. At the moment, there are no fees for becoming or being SWITCHaai Federation Partners.

SWITCH will then get in contact with the Federation Partner to sort out the technical details. Tests will be scheduled before the resource of a Federation Partner will be added to the production federation.

Exhibit 1: AAI Policy

This exhibit is identical to exhibit 3 of the service agreement that Federation Members sign.
It defines concepts related to the AAI federation and establishes a firm set of rules that all AAI participants are expected to follow. It also lays the groundwork for the exchange of attributes between organizations in accordance with data protection laws.
AAI Policy [PDF, 6 pages, 79 kB]

In case of any questions please contact the SWITCHaai team at aai@switch.ch.

Technical Information

In order to technically join the federation it is of course necessary to install and configure Shibboleth. For that purpose we provide installation instructions and How-To manuals for all major platforms.

More on the Federation Partner Service Provider deployment page