Google Apps Partners: Cloud Sherpas Taps Okta for SSO Help
Cloud Sherpas, the Google Apps authorized reseller that continues to cut a swath through the cloud services market, has announced a partnership with Okta to bring single sign on (SSO) and identity access management (IAM) to the search giant’s cloud productivity suite.
The partnership has a simple value proposition: By pairing a Cloud Sherpas-provided Google Apps deployment with Okta’s management expertise, organizations can manage all of their SaaS applications from a single administration view — whether they run inside or outside the company firewall, and no matter the authentication method used, according to the press release. End users get a single username and password that logs them into the full range of applications.
In fact, Cloud Sherpas was so taken with Okta’s solution that it’s using it internally on top of its own in-house Google Apps deployment. According to the provider, Okta has made it a lot easier to manage all 50-or-so SaaS applications in use across the company, boosting efficiency and reducing IT administrative costs.
In a prepared statement, Eran Gil, founder and VP of business development of Cloud Sherpas, highlighted this partnership’s play at boosting cloud adoption by emphasizing simplicity:
“As more companies make the move to cloud, central application and access management is absolutely critical. Okta is the glue that holds it all together. This partnership enables us to provide increased customer value. Okta offers an innovative, native cloud approach to give IT more control around user management and provisioning, as well as make it super simple for all employees across a company to get access to all applications, Google Apps included.”
Cloud Sherpas is almost certainly the best known Google Apps service provider in the IT channel at the moment, judging by the 2011 Talkin’ Cloud 50. It’s clear Cloud Sherpas is expecting this Okta announcement to help build its arsenal of value-adds and keep its momentum going as it tries to capitalize on growing demand for Google Apps.
