Session persistence middleware for workforce apps

When an employee gets automatically logged out of an engagement or rewards app mid-session — especially on mobile — they rarely log back in that same day. They just stop. For a daily check-in tool or a rewards redemption flow, that lost session is a lost engagement event, and over time it's the difference between a tool that gets used and one that collects dust. The IT admin who manages the deployment sees SSO complaints as an IAM ticketing issue, not an engagement problem, and routes it to a backlog.

The specific failure described in the complaints — 'need to login multiple times on multiple pages like 3 to 4 times' and 'having to login every time after an update' — points to a very specific technical gap: these apps don't maintain a shared session token across subdomains or app versions, so every navigation or update forces a re-authentication. This is fixable at the network/proxy layer without touching the vendor's auth code at all.

An IT team managing dozens of workforce apps across a large enterprise has this problem with more than one tool. They want a single place to configure session timeout rules, enforce SSO policies, and get visibility into auth failure rates across their app portfolio — not per-app support tickets from frustrated employees. The enterprise IT buyer already pays for identity governance tools, but those tools operate at the IdP level and have no visibility into what happens after the token is issued: why did the session drop, which app is re-authenticating users most often, what's the mobile failure rate by OS version. That per-app session telemetry doesn't exist anywhere today.

This recurs every time an IT team onboards a new SaaS tool, every time an app ships an update that invalidates tokens, and every time a new device policy rolls out. The cost of not having it is measurable in IT helpdesk tickets — most enterprise orgs can pull that number directly.

What to build

Build a lightweight reverse-proxy agent that enterprise IT deploys in front of their workforce app portfolio to enforce unified session persistence rules, surface per-app auth failure rates by device type, and eliminate re-authentication loops caused by app updates or subdomain mismatches.

Where to start

Start with companies that already use a specific MDM provider (e.g., Jamf or Intune) and build a native integration there first — IT teams managing mobile devices through those tools already trust that surface for policy enforcement and will adopt session rules in the same workflow.

The hard part

Sitting in the network path of workforce apps requires IT security sign-off, which at mid-market and enterprise means a procurement process that can stretch to 9 months and will require SOC 2 compliance before a pilot even starts.

How it makes money

Annual license to the enterprise IT buyer, priced per number of connected apps (e.g., $500–$1,500 per app per year), with a minimum floor of 5 apps to keep deal size meaningful.