Startup company Okta is making a bold entry into the cloud computing arena today with the introduction of its enterprise platform for cloud application identity and access management. The platform is aimed at medium-sized businesses running third-party cloud applications like Salesforce, Google (News - Alert) applications and even Twitter and Facebook.

Okta's service provides a centralized dashboard that enables IT departments to deploy and manage cloud applications, seats and access reporting. End users of the platform benefit from a single sign-on across all supported applications.

"The center of gravity is shifting outside the firewall," said Todd McKinnon, co-founder of Okta and Salesforce veteran. He explained that this shift is exactly why IT departments need a new network to tie third-party services together.

"Every app category is going to be rewritten in the cloud," said Ben Horowitz, an Okta board member and partner in lead Okta investor Andreessen Horowitz. He envisions Okta rising to the top of the enterprise cloud application management category.

Okta's application network features built-in integration for hundreds of enterprise applications like Outlook, Salesforce and WebEx, as well as consumer applications like a la box, Drop.io and Dropbox. Customers include LiveOps (News - Alert), Pandora, AMAG Pharmaceuticals and FusionStorm.

Eric Wilson, VP of Operations at FusionStorm, said the company is using Okta's people sync technology to maintain an accurate employee database while seamlessly adding and removing users across Okta-managed applications.

Okta has raised $11 million in funding through seed and Series A rounds. Based in San Francisco, the company has 29 employees and is hiring additional team members.