Partnering with Box to Make App Development Easy and Secure

Building identity and access management into an app is hard. That’s why we launched APIs and a developer edition earlier this year, helping developers add authentication, authorization, and user management to a web or mobile app within minutes. And our team hasn’t slowed down since: our mission is to build an authentication and user management service that developers love and enterprises trust, and that means also connecting identity to the other services that comprise their applications.

Cloud content management is one of those core services, and it’s not easy to build, either: not only do you have to manage the complexity of a content infrastructure, but you need identity to provide user access to those resources. To simplify this process, we worked with the leader in cloud content management, Box, to build an API integration that makes it easy for developers to connect their users with the content they need.

Take architectural design firm Perkins+Will, for example. They’ve done incredible work designing modern architecture around the world, including the Shanghai Natural History Museum. But they also needed a way to make sure the new app they’d designed to help bring projects like the museum to life was equally impressive (or at least impressively easy to create and manage).

Perkins+Will started with an alternate identity solution, but found that by using integration APIs from Box and Okta, they could create a stronger, more secure backend solution. Today, their mobile app helps improve communications between project teams and their clients. Think everything from shared design files to moving into immersive experiences like VR – all built on top of a seamless, dev-friendly and trusted Okta and Box integration.

“Perkins+Will was founded on the belief that design has the power to transform lives – for our clients, our culture, and our communities, and we wanted to create an app that mirrored that philosophy,” said Murali Selvaraj, CIO at Perkins+Will. “In designing this app, our primary focus is on creating the best experience for our clients. For the technology stack, we initially used different authentication platforms for our identity layer, but opted to use Okta for its consistent employee and client authentication experience. In addition, when we use Okta in conjunction with the Box Platform, which serves as our content management layer, we don’t have to spend time on securing access management or managing complex content systems. Instead, our development team can orchestrate these best-in-class technologies to create the most engaging and collaborative experience to our client and project teams.”