IAM standards and Protocols for Cloud Services

Many of the identity and access management standards (IAM) services will help organizations to implement effective and efficient user access management practices and processes in the cloud. Some of the challenges  in user and access management faced by cloud users and the relevant specifications which can be used:

• How can I avoid duplication of identity, attributes, and credentials and provide a single sign-on user experience for my users ? SAML
• How can I automatically provision user accounts with cloud services and automate the process of provisioning and deprovisioning ? SPML
• How can I provision user accounts with appropriate privileges and manage entitlements for my users ? XACML
• How can I authorize cloud service X to access my data in cloud service Y without disclosing credentials ? OAuth