NSF Middleware Initiative

The National Science Foundation Middleware Initiative (NMI) addresses a critical need for software infrastructure to support scientific and engineering research. Begun in late 2001, NMI funds the design, development, testing, and deployment of middleware, a key enabling technology upon which customized applications are built. Specialized NMI teams are defining open-source, open-architecture standards that are creating important new avenues of on-line collaboration and resource sharing. In addition to the production-quality software and implementation standards created by those large systems-integration teams, NMI funds smaller projects that focus on experimental middleware applications.