1. A method comprising: receiving, through a web-based interface at a front end logon manager interface of a gateway, a request from a user to access an application through a logon manager interface wherein the logon manager interface comprises an end-user application dashboard display that includes multiple application icons, such that each application icon shown in the dashboard display can represent a web application, a service, and/or a system that the user can access and such that each application icon can be associated with one or more policies and one or more credentials, such that a policy defines how an application can be accessed, and the credential provides information that can be used to authenticate the user to access the application; converting, by the front end logon manager interface, the request to an access protocol to generate a converted request, the converted request comprising a policy request and a credential request; forwarding, by the front end logon manager interface, the converted request to a back end logon manager interface; extracting, by the back end logon manager interface, the policy request and the credential request from the converted request; transmitting, by the back end logon manager interface, the policy request and the credential request to a single sign-on service; identifying, based on the policy request, a policy associated with the requested application, wherein the policy defines access requirements associated with the application; identifying, based on the credential request, user credentials based on the access requirements associated with the application; and automatically providing the user credentials to the requested application.