Clever takes the prize in CETPA’s Single Sign-on Shootout

For Alexander Hamilton, it was the duel on the bank of the Hudson river. For Wyatt Earp, it was the OK Corral. And for the Chicago Cubs, it was a rainy November night in Cleveland.

“Shootouts” aren’t just an old west thing. The term can apply to really any head-to-head competition in which the contestants have one chance to outdo each other.

And so on Friday, the Sacramento Convention Center joined the list of great shootout venues in history (okay, maybe edtech history) as Clever and six other technology companies gathered for a winner-take-all competition around single sign-on (SSO) technology for today’s K-12 schools. 

The California Educational Technology Professionals Association (CETPA) hosted the “SSO Shootout” event at its annual gathering of California school district technology leaders. And those CTOs weren’t just there to watch the battle. CETPA’s audience members themselves served as the contest’s judges and jury.

Clever went head-to-head with SSO providers like Classlink, Encore, Identity Automation, Lenovo/Stoneware, OneLogin, and Tools4Ever—with each company setting its own spin on “the perfect SSO solution.”

For Clever, our co-founder Dan Carroll outlined a path to SSO’s “holy grail”—complete with hidden obstacles—and how Clever can address them with the industry’s most complete SSO solution:   

• Achieving “the one true login”
• Managing multiple device types with ease
• Keeping top privacy controls and system stability within large-scale deployments
• Centralizing the management of apps
• Making it all happen with a tight or shrinking budget

We also had a chance to demonstrate Clever Badges, which were a big hit among the audience and served to set us apart from the day’s other edtech gunslingers. And we shared a few other innovations that we’re excited to roll out more broadly later this month. Stay tuned for that.

In the end, when the smoke cleared and the dust settled, one company was left standing. And it was Clever! We’re so proud to have received this kind of user recognition and ever-grateful for our opportunity to earn it in the company of some solid competition. And the line to see how Clever Badges works with Chromebooks at the end of the event was the cherry on top of a really fun and positive experience.

If you haven’t had a chance to witness Clever Badges in action, don’t worry! Check out this video with Rocketship Brilliant Minds, or just drop us a line at info@clever.com.