Distributed access management in multimedia IDCs

Businesses can use the Web-based e-enterprise model not only to offer their services to a diverse and distributed clientele from a single online location but also to simplify the administration of such services. An underlying Internet data center architecture supports the storage and delivery of the massive amounts of multimedia data from this single virtual location to a huge clientele. While using IDCs lets the original source provide services to its subscribers through a third-party infrastructure, this environment's dynamic nature raises serious concerns regarding the management of access-control policies across heterogeneous enterprise domains. The authors describe a prototype architecture that integrates access-management mechanisms into the design of multimedia IDCs for secure dissemination of information content in a distributed collaborative environment. The architecture also provides a service-driven, context-aware policy-design methodology that fits the host IDC's organizational needs.