NOTE: This is a work in progress design document draft for SAML plugin.
Currently CloudStack has its own authentication mechanism and LDAP integration. Many organization would want to use their existing authentication mechanism and have Single Sign On (SSO) and Single Log Out (SLO) to work on CloudStack UI and clients. SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) 2.0 is an old and widely used XML based authentication and authorization protocol supported by Salesforce, Google Apps and other public and private companies.
This feature will be useful for users who may want to re-use their existing SAML 2.0 IdP (Identity Provider) service which holds the responsibility of users management, authentication & authorization assertions.
Jira: