"Enterprises everywhere are realizing the inherent benefits of running their core IT services in the cloud,” said Todd McKinnon, most recently VP of Engineering at Salesforce.com from 2003 to 2009, and now CEO of the on-demand identity and access management service, Okta.

"This shift fundamentally requires them to rethink their IT infrastructure and how their employees access it," McKinnon added. "Okta," he continued, "is the only enterprise class, on-demand service purpose built to help customer secure and manage their entire cloud services network and the people who need access to it, with no professional services required."

McKinnon was commenting on the day that he and his team launched a new on-demand service to accelerate the secure adoption of Cloud Apps.

Pandora, LiveOps, Enterasys, FusionStorm, and AMAG Pharmaceuticals are the first to roll out Okta identity management service, according to McKinnon. The service, he said, empowers IT to centrally secure and control access to applications.

"It also provides end users single sign-on for all of their web apps, and gives the business the insight it needs to maximize ROI while minimizing risk," said McKinnon.

“As businesses shift more critical applications to the cloud, they are challenged to maintain the same degree of control that they have with their on-premise applications,” said Daryl Plummer, managing vice president and Gartner fellow. He added:

"Cloud services brokers focusing on identity and access management who can secure, and integrate multiple cloud services will facilitate more secure, cross enterprise adoption of cloud based services – and that will convince a lot of enterprises to buy."

Okta is backed by premier angel and venture investors including Andreessen Horowitz, FLOODGATE and Ron Conway. The company has so far raised $11M.

Okta Application Network includes hundreds of pre-integrated business and consumer apps, including ADP, Concur, Salesforce.com, SuccessFactors, Google Apps, Cisco Webex, Citrix GoToMeeting, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook and is updated weekly.

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