Go directly to documentation

An Identity Provider is an organization which provides information about the identity of a user that makes authentication of a user possible. Examples of Identity Providers are Universities and research institutions. These organizations deliver the identities for their students and employees.

Documentation for Identity Providers (Dutch)

 

 

                

 A Service Provider (SP) is an organization which delivers content and services that are available via the internet. For example: Web shops, video services and publishers but also educational institutions which offer online courses for students from other institutions. Examples are SURFspot, Google Apps for Education and Edugroepen.

Documentation for Service Providers (English)

 

 

What can you do with SURFconext?

SURFconext offers 'Single Sign On'-access to a large number of online services. Almost 120 Dutch organisations in the area of higher education and research are already using these. Amongst the most used services are: Google Apps for Education, SURFspot, Legal Intelligence and several library services.

What advantages does SURFconext offer for my organisation?

The group of almost 120 organisations in The Netherlands who use SURFconext, consists of universities, university hospitals and tertiary medical teaching hospitals, universities of applied sciences and research institutions. Together they represent a group of 1 million users. These users generate almost 2 milion logins per month, using more than 100 different cloud services.

SURFconext allows users to have access to services offered by multiple Service Providers using only 1 account. Besides, SURFconext facilitates online collaboration in the cloud, both between users within the same organisation as between users from different organisations.

If you connect your organisation to SURFconext, you will enjoy the following advantages:

  • By connecting to SURFconext only once, your users will have access to all available services.
  • You don't have to implement and maintain a custom made connection to each service or Service Provider seperately.
  • You can  regulate authorisation for entire groups of students and employees easily.
  • The number of available services is ever growing, since more and more organisations choose to use SURFconext.
  • You can integrate your internal authorization resources with SURFconext.
  • SURFconext offers more flexible and cheaper licences.
  • Easy integration of services thanks to open standards

Why should I connect to SURFconext?

The number of available cloud services is growing quickly. Most organisations consider to use these services combined with internally hosted services. Besides, organisations want to offer a secure environment where both internal and external services can be used side by side. Important elements for this are Single Sign-On, trusted identity and collaboration in groups and teams. Organisations are looking for possibilities to integrate these different kinds of applications. SURFconext offers starting points to realise this.