Reach is the name of the game in the single sign-on market. Hot on the heels of a key competitor expanding to traditional corporate desktops, OneLogin Inc. is upping the ante and extending its namesake authentication service to backend infrastructure with the purchase of San Diego-based Cafésoft Inc. for an undisclosed amount.

The outfit originally launched in 1996 as an application development studio and shifted its attention to the web access management a few years later in an effort to loosen the grip of traditional vendors like Oracle Corp. on the market, which was then mostly limited to internally-hosted corporate sites. The competitive focus has since shifted to handling logins across the growing number of external cloud services that are finding use among enterprise workers, but Cafésoft still fills an important niche.

Its flagship Cams Web Access Manager is used by the likes of NASA to regulate who can access what on their private application servers. The built-in enforcement functionality enables administrators to set an authorization policy based on factors on such as the location of visitors, apply the rule to all the necessary web resources and then define an automated response to trigger the event of a violation. An international user who enters a retailer’s U.S. site, for instance, can thus be automatically redirected to their local branch in order to improve their shopping experience.

But where Cams Web Access Manager truly shines is protecting important internal workloads that require strict log-in mechanisms to maintain security. The software records every user session and makes it possible to set specific password requirements for new accounts, which can be created with the help of Cafésoft’s other product, the Cams Identity Manager. Incorporating the two offerings into its service will enable OneLogin to significantly strengthen its presence behind the firewall. 

The ability to manage both on- and off-premise workloads through the same interface can help simplify everyday administrative operations by a great deal for the large enterprises that make up the core of the startup’s client base. Removing the need to buy a separate access control solution solution for each also holds the potential to cut software expenses, which could help make OneLogins’ value proposition much more competitive against traditional rivals such as Oracle.

Image via Geralt