Every company has to adapt to change, but ScreenCloud built adaptability into its business model early. ScreenCloud makes digital signage software that lets companies create and distribute content, providing unified messaging to customers and team members no matter where they are.

Since ScreenCloud’s inception in 2015, the company has evolved from its original SMB-focused product and customer base to landing deals with multinational enterprise customers like Amazon, Uber, and Dropbox.

Now, with the advent of COVID-19, ScreenCloud’s ability to connect distributed teams through centralized content management has become a vital tool. And ScreenCloud is prepared to handle this dramatic shift in focus, partly because they partnered with Auth0 for authentication solutions as adaptable as ScreenCloud itself.

Enterprise Customers Demand SSO and Security

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, companies with distributed workforces struggled to connect their teams through unified messaging, so ScreenCloud wanted to build on its existing platform to ensure it could provide a “remote-first” offering. But the company soon realized that these international customers had high authentication and access management expectations from their software providers. According to Brian Dewangga, one of ScreenCloud’s product managers, “Single Sign On (SSO) was one of the things that was always required from our enterprise customers. They want to use one credential to log into every provider they use.”

In choosing an identity partner, ScreenCloud had plenty of options but needed one that provided the best combination of versatility, security, and ease of implementation. “We have a wide variety of customers, and they all use different login methods, whether it's Google login, LinkedIn, or even through SSO,” Dewangga says. In addition, he says, “proper authentication is so important for our customers to keep sensitive organizational data, like real time dashboards, secure.”

Choosing Auth0 to Meet Customer Requests and Business Needs

ScreenCloud decided to work with Auth0 based on its ability to provide secure, frictionless authentication, without slowing down development. According to Dewangga, “Auth0 was an all-in-one solution, and it made it very easy for us to enable the secure features needed for our customers.” Dewangga describes the experience of using Auth0’s SSO as “seamless”: “If customers require a new social login, then it’s very easy for us to enable the option from the  admin panel on Auth0, and have it live almost instantly.”

ScreenCloud initially signed on with Auth0 for the Developer Pro plan, but as the company took on more enterprise customers, the demand for enterprise federation grew as well, so they upgraded to the Enterprise plan. Auth0’s out-of-the-box SSO solutions gave ScreenCloud curb appeal for potential customers and thereby provided an immediate ROI. The investment is also paying off in the form of peace of mind and saved developer time.

“It’s not just the big investment of time to build the solution,” Dewangga says, “but also the long-term maintenance of the system.” By outsourcing identity to Auth0, ScreenCloud also saves significant resources on maintaining and updating identity. “Managing authentication could require a full-time dedicated person,” explains Dewangga. “That’s probably what would cost the most for us, and we see the value of using Auth0 for that.”

ScreenCloud Prepared for ‘Exponential’ Login Increase

ScreenCloud had already used Auth0 to support its enterprise customers, and now that partnership is helping ScreenCloud easily build resiliency. Over the next year, Dewangga says, “the world will change, and we’ll add to our business model to enable a “new normal” where remote work is built into every company’s DNA. Deskless and remote workers shouldn’t miss out on key company information or data and we are building ScreenCloud to enable secure access, without needing to be in the physical presence of a company-owned screen.”

That shift toward remote teams will have profound implications for authentication. In the past, most companies were controlling the login to secure, shared screens. But now, Dewangga anticipates that “logins will increase exponentially,” with a need for individual access to happen, from home, using the remote workers’ own TV, phone, or web browser. Now, the solutions ScreenCloud developed with Auth0 will be even more important to allow distributed teams to log on easily, without exposing sensitive company information.

For most companies, absorbing a vast increase in logins over a whole host of new devices could pose security and scalability challenges, but ScreenCloud is confident in its ability to build the security needed for peace of mind. “We feel we’re in good hands when we use Auth0.”