The GN4-2 project developed a solution to offer an IdP as a Service solution for hosted IdPs. This incubator investigates the business case of this solution to investigate how this solution could be made into a sustainable service offering.
When the incubator is finished, a business model for the provisioning of the GEANT IdP-a-a-S IdPaaS platform will be made available, defined in its fundamental parts. The business model will define for the IdP-a-a-s IdPaaS platform the following key points:

1. Added value of the IdP-a-a-S IdPaaS platform with respect to the current provisioninig model for Identity providers in eduGAIN / GEANT community
2. What will be the provided product: Deployment model and service provisioning scenario, after identification of the service target users
3. Key benefits for : a) End Users b) Individual Home Institutions IdP managers c) Federation operators
4. Product Service deployment requirements and service lifecycle management
5. Raugh estimate of the costs to provide the service

In addition to the business model, the Incubator IdP-a-a-S IdPaaS task will work to consolidate the current provided GN4-2 platform, with the aim ofto:

1. Add a set of minimal required functionaliy functionality to make the product consistent and attractve attractive for target users, like:
   1. Add to the current "spawn new IdP" functionality also the "IdP management/Configuration updates" functionality.
   2. Make the platform to be an eduGAIN Service Provider accessible via federated credentials.
   3. Add the necessary hooks to onboard Home Organization IdP admins ( without federated credentials available initially).
2. Consolidate the product in terms of robustness, testing, stress testing , and scalability.
3. Package the product to ease the deployment.
4. Integrate the platform with the required additional services to support a reasonable and concrete deployment scenario.
5. Document the service for
   1. End Users
   2. Service Providers
   3. Service Maintainers

Also, given the option to adopt a full fledged developed solution made available by the SAMLIDP.IO company, this task will assess the possibility to endorse this platform, further developing it where/if needed, and bless it as the provided solution as an alternative to the GN4-2 Campus IdP platform.

This activity is successfully finished when:

• Minimal viable product definition for the IdP as a service offering is created
• The MVP has been discussed and validated with the community
• An analysis is made and reported around the business case for delivering a solution for IdP as a Service
• A working prototype is made available for installation by an NREN

Please describe here the set of criteria that the product must meet in order to be considered finished.

The aim of the incubator is to come up with a deployable solution or a provisionable service to be endorsed by eduGAIN service (task 1)deploy-able solution for NRENs
The software product(s) may be further developed with a community of NRENs using the product, potentially with support of the GEANT project

The activity as defined in this project description was redesigned to reflect fundamental changes to the initial goals and requirements.

The initial idea was to deliver a fully fledged IdP as a Service solution to organisations by creating a platform hosted by either GÉANT or NRENS. During the course of this activity it turned out that this does not match the demand of the R&E community. Although there is a potential market for an IdP as a Service offering, especially for small and medium sized institutions, this solution should be very lightweight in a way that is is really easy to use, deploy and support basic functionality only. There is also no real demand for a GÉANT hosted service or supported product, because the time to market is considered a critical aspect by the community. There is also a high interest in combining locally hosted software with commercial and NREN offerings, which requires a highly modular software design.

Considering the reasons stated above, it was decided that a major change of the activities direction is required to match the community needs, which is documented in the IdP as a Service RfC. Therefore, the activity described will be changed and the effort to create a IdP as a Service solution will be continued under the new name IdP as a Service Software Solution with a different mission statement.