Service Provisioning Markup Language - An XML dialect designed to allow a standard, cross-platform way to provision user security and access among disparate systems and applications. Systems designed to work with SPML let companies automatically set up and deactivate user accounts across corporate networks and applications.

Currently provisioning systems use proprietary technology to talk to target systems on which they want to set up or deactivate accounts. This forces companies to use custom translators from each target system into their provisioning systems.

SPML responds to this need by defining a single document to instruct disparate systems about user access provisioning. In this way SPML 1.0 fosters platform interoperability and allows companies to focus on the business rules for provisioning user accounts and not on the technology needed to wire systems together.

Note: At this writing, Microsoft and IBM have express reservations about SPML because it is not complex enough. For example, they have said they will not support version 1.0 (ratification date Oct 31, 2003) because it does not yet interface to their own web-services frameworks and philosophies.