Okta, Inc. (NASDAQ:OKTA), the leading independent provider of identity for the enterprise, and Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), the global leader in CRM, today at Okta Showcase, announced a partnership and new integration between the Okta Identity Cloud and Salesforce Work.com designed to help organizations and communities build trust with their employees and customers.
Innovative, forward-looking organizations across every industry have long understood the importance of investing in technology to reduce costs, drive operational efficiency, and accelerate business growth, revenue, and profit. As COVID-19 forced companies around the world to rely on technology to work remotely and virtually connect with customers, the pandemic not only accelerated the digital transformation of every organization, but it has also showcased the importance of trust in technology.
To foster trust and resiliency across their customer bases, Okta will integrate the Okta Identity Cloud, its independent and neutral platform, with Salesforce Work.com, a set of solutions from Salesforce designed to help businesses and organizations around the world reopen safely, which includes shift management; manual contact tracing; emergency response management; and more. The Okta Identity Cloud will help leaders across HR, Workplace, and IT organizations to quickly and securely deploy Work.com while also providing security and protection for these solutions regardless of location.
“Okta is the identity company that stands for trust, and that has taken on new weight during the pandemic. We’ve helped organizations move to remote work and keep their people employed and productive, even when they can’t be in an office. We’re also giving organizations the solutions and tools to build secure, seamless customer experiences, empowering them to still generate revenue and drive growth,” said Todd McKinnon, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder, Okta. “We take our responsibility as a business enabler seriously, and so does Salesforce. We look forward to partnering closely to provide our customers with secure, delightful experiences so they can safely and effectively engage with their communities, now and into the future.”
“The new normal demands a new way to work, and as technology companies, it’s our job to reduce as much friction as possible for companies so they can treat their employees like valued customers,” said Sarah Franklin, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Platform, Trailhead and AppExchange, Salesforce. “We’re excited for Okta to integrate with Work.com to make reopening even easier for our customers and to help them with long-term business resilience and continuity. Together, we’ll increase IT productivity and provide employees with a seamless experience.”
By combining identity management from Okta with Salesforce’s solutions to meet new workplace challenges, the two companies will help to provide organizations with a secure, automated, and seamless experience. The partnership is designed to offer customers the ability to:
- Streamline the end user experience to increase productivity: Leveraging their existing identity providers or corporate directories such as Active Directory, Salesforce customers may enable employees to sign-in to Work.com with a single click. At a time when organizations are increasingly relying on contractors and partners, customers may offer this seamless experience to third parties by integrating with partner directories or storing identity information in Okta Universal Directory, which can increase productivity across their extended enterprise.
- Increase time to value and security with automated provisioning: With Okta Lifecycle Management, IT administrators may synchronize data from HR systems, such as Workday, to Work.com to automatically create users in Work.com, helping organizations to quickly and securely deploy Work.com while reducing the burden on IT teams. By leveraging Okta Workflows, IT administrators can take this automated provisioning a step further by assigning users in specific roles to Salesforce Permission Set Groups, introducing granular controls for which tasks and records those users can access within Work.com.
- Protect sensitive data by enforcing tighter controls: The integration between the Okta Identity Cloud and Work.com is designed to enable IT leaders to easily provision and deprovision users, establish fine-grained controls for permissions, and enforce multi-factor authentication for specific users or groups with potential access to sensitive data in Work.com while helping to provide security and protection for their organizations.
Organizations, such as CarMax, which leverage both the Okta Identity Cloud and Salesforce platform to deliver secure and seamless experiences for their people will benefit from the expanded partnership.
“As the nation’s largest retailer of used cars, we’ve revolutionized car buying by giving our customers an honest, high integrity and transparent experience that’s truly on their terms. We expect the same from our technology providers, and Okta and Salesforce are trusted partners. We leverage both the Okta Identity Cloud and the Salesforce platform to deliver a personalized, secure customer experience,” said Shamim Mohammad, Senior Vice President and Chief Information and Technology Officer, CarMax. “Salesforce is foundational for all of CarMax’s customer interactions and provides a 360-degree view of our customers so we can seamlessly integrate our store and online experiences, and Okta is the secure entry point for any customer engagement with CarMax. We look forward to seeing how they’ll work together to drive further innovations in the customer experience.”