Okta’s Directory Integration Edition Seamlessly Integrates Leading SaaS Applications with Active Directory for just $1/user/month.
SAN FRANCISCO — August 25, 2011 — Today, Okta, the leading on-demand identity and access management service, announced a new product, Okta Directory Integration Edition, to make the secure, integrated adoption of even just a single SaaS application possible for all enterprises. The new product provides an extremely low cost, easy to use option that helps enterprise IT address the two significant barriers faced with first time cloud application deployments: integration into their corporate directory and secure, widespread adoption by their end users.
Developed with leading SaaS ISVs, including Salesforce.com, Workday, Box.net and Google Apps, Okta’s Directory Integration Edition takes full advantage of these vendors’ robust APIs, providing a complete turnkey solution that enables customers to securely accelerate adoption of these applications across their organizations.
With the introduction of Directory Integration Edition, Okta now provides the industry’s most comprehensive and flexible set of offerings, enabling customers to securely adopt cloud services — whether they have one app or an entire cloud services network.
Seamless Active Directory Integration to the Cloud
Most enterprises rely on Microsoft’s Active Directory (AD) to control access to on-premise applications, so cloud applications — with their own user directories outside of the firewall — present a unique challenge. To integrate a cloud application with Active Directory, IT organizations typically have to build their own solution, investing a lot of time and resources to maintain it as the highly available service necessary to control access to their cloud applications.
Okta’s Directory Integration Edition provides an extremely low cost, highly available, purpose-built solution to address this challenge for just $1/user/month. The offering seamlessly integrates cloud applications back to Active Directory, providing automated user management and provisioning, a highly available architecture, and enabling end users to securely access their cloud applications with just one click.
No Additional Passwords Required — PC or Mac
Traditionally enterprises have integrated authentication to their on-premise apps with Active Directory so that users could gain seamless access they were logged into their Windows PC. Until now, this kind of Active Directory integration with cloud applications has not been possible and users have had to struggle with multiple URLs, usernames and passwords, making broad adoption challenging as cloud applications are deployed. Users want access to their cloud applications to be as easy as accessing their on-premise applications - whether they are on a PC or a Mac.
With Okta’s Desktop SSO capability, available across Okta’s entire product line, both Mac and PC users can simply log into their corporate network once and access any cloud application with a single click. No additional URLs, usernames or passwords required, just like with on-premises apps.
Comments on the News
“All of Okta’s products are built on the same secure, scalable, and reliable, on-demand Cloud Services Platform,” said Todd McKinnon, CEO, Okta. “From the initial deployment of the first cloud application to the realization of a Cloud First IT Services strategy customers can start small and grow with Okta — no upgrades, migrations or cutovers required. Okta makes the transition to the cloud seamless and secure.”
“A cloud services broker is in business to deliver added value on top of an original cloud service and will be more diligent with keeping current regarding changes, problems or peculiarities associated with that service,” said Daryl Plummer, Managing VP and Gartner Fellow, “In this way, it builds expertise over time in dealing with original cloud service providers that would be difficult to build in a consumer organization without significant expenditures of time and money.” (Defining Cloud Services Brokerage: Taking Intermediation to the Next Level October, 2010, Daryl C. Plummer, Benjoit J. Lheureus, Frances Karamouzis) .
“As our customer base has grown steadily beyond just the early cloud adopters, it has become critical to seamlessly solve the identity and access management challenges that we see our customers facing. “ said Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO, Box. “We are very excited about our collaboration with Okta and the real problem that their Directory Integration Edition addresses — providing our joint customers with a turnkey, on-demand solution that both accelerates the secure deployment of Box and scales with their broader cloud application management needs.”
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