Okta Is Hot Property! – Leading Australian Real Estate Advertising Group Chooses Okta

REA Group (ASX:REA) is an ASX listed enterprise that owns and operates the leading real estate and commercial property advertising sites in Australia, realestate.com.au and realcommercial.com.au. With over 800 employees globally, REA Group also has property websites in Italy, Luxembourg and China, and strategic investments in property sites in Asia and North America. The Group aims to make property simple, efficient and stress-free for real estate agents and consumers, whether they are buying or renting or researching the market.

In 2011, REA Group started the move from on-premises to cloud technology. The REA team was proactive about adopting new technologies to support their staff and sourcing a range of tools and apps to make their jobs easy. However, by the start of 2013, employees became frustrated at the need to remember all the different passwords and URLs to access apps and services in the cloud. REA Group decided it needed to build or find a tool to make it easy for staff to have access to apps from anywhere.

Enter Okta!

When REA Group began researching single sign-on solutions, Head of Technology - Enterprise, Damian Fasciani, said that Okta stood out right away as “the experts”. REA Group began implementing the Okta identity management and mobility solutions from mid-2013, and by November 2013 had rolled out Okta to each employee in the organisation.

Damian believes that using Okta allows the REA Group IT department to act more as a consulting team instead of just a technology team, and has allowed employees to access all of their core systems from any device. "Our employees really value being able to access applications whenever they want from any device, whether it’s their own personal device or a work one, and giving people this freedom has improved productivity," he said.

Okta has also allowed REA Group to enhance its security model. “With cloud systems and the threat of new types of attacks, we have been able to implement two-factor authentication," Damian said. As a core pillar of REA Group's IT system, the company does not adopt any applications that are not compatible with Okta. It has also integrated Okta with its HR system, Workday, so that new employees can access to applications automatically.