Patent ID: 8769644

Claim:
A method of facilitating management of cloud-based service instances, the method comprising: establishing, by a cloud management service configured to communicate with a multi-tenant computing cloud, a cloud-based service instance hosted in the multi-tenant computing cloud and an access entity with permissions to access the established cloud-based service instance; receiving, by the cloud management service, a request for the cloud-based service instance, the request authenticated as originating from a requestor, wherein the request is a request for direct access, by the requestor, to the cloud-based service instance; consulting, by the cloud management service, a set of access controls associated with the cloud-based service instance; determining, by the cloud management service, responsive to the consulting, if the request is allowable by the requestor; and enabling, by the cloud management service responsive to determining that the request is allowable by the requestor, the requestor to complete the request using an access credential associated with the access entity by returning, to the requestor, the access credential associated with the access entity.