Oktane17: Identity for You

The pace of innovation today is relentless and accelerating, which makes staying up-to-date on the latest solutions that will help your employees be more productive, protect your business and increase your bottom line almost impossible. And that pace isn’t slowing down anytime soon. IDC predicts the cloud software market will be $152B by 2020 — almost double what it is today — and businesses need to be ready.

Our mission at Okta has always been to help you keep pace with the rate of innovation by enabling you to connect any user to any technology, anywhere. We’ve expanded our network to connect more people, applications and devices as resources and technologies have continued to proliferate rapidly — one of the many reasons we’ve continued to be a leader in identity and access management for years. Today at Oktane17, we’re taking that a step further, unveiling a broad set of announcements to enable any organisation to use any technology.

Managing and Securing the Extended Enterprise

That first set of enhancements will continue to help IT leaders connect people and technology within organisations, because a business’ ecosystem looks a lot different than it did when we started nine years ago.

Today the universe of people that IT needs to manage doesn’t just comprise employees: IT also needs to connect contractors, partners, suppliers, franchisees and more to company resources and tools. That could mean hundreds of times as many people as there are in a core business. At the same time, the number of apps has grown exponentially, as have the devices accessing them, which is why we’ve continuously innovated to provide tools to help IT manage and secure a user base that is dynamic and constantly changing, at scale.

Now, to further help IT and security teams manage this proliferation at scale, we’re announcing a set of advancements to the Okta Identity Cloud that directly support work across those responsible for technology and security within an organisation:

• For IT leaders: Our enhancements to the Okta Identity Cloud help IT teams manage and secure the modern, extended enterprise. That starts with simplifying complex infrastructure to connect employees to the full breadth of technology within a business — both new, cloud-based tools as well as existing on-premises applications. Our new Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) interface for the Okta Universal Directory will help you move beyond legacy infrastructure, acting as the bridge from the cloud to LDAP applications — eliminating one layer of directory complexity for large enterprises and helping new organisations go 100% cloud and mobile. We’ve also expanded our Okta Integration Network to reflect our richer technology ecosystem, and have automated access for customers and partners — extending the depth and breadth of our technology to match the types of people and applications you manage today. Find more details here.
• For security leaders: The proliferation of people, applications and devices means security teams have their work cut out for them to manage and secure company data. And in today’s perimeter-less world, identity is now the only way to control who has access to what information, and when. Identity-driven security is a crucial layer in any modern security stack, and to support security teams further we’ve raised the bar on our core solution, making basic two-factor authentication standard for all Single Sign-On customers. We’re also introducing features like dynamic IP blacklisting, compromised credential detection and an anomaly detection engine to improve security for everyone on our network – and also going broader on our AMFA solution to provide more support to organisations that need additional protection. Find more details here.

Transforming the Customer Experience

But connecting people and technology now extends beyond even this vast proliferation. As every company is becoming a technology company, organisations big or small and across all industries are building mobile, web, and API-driven applications, using technology to transform their customers’ experience. In order to do that effectively, business leaders and developers alike need to find new ways to delight and engage customers, while also keeping their information secure.

We started with API Access Management at Oktane16, and we joined forces with the Stormpath team earlier this year to continue this innovation — and the work we’ve done over the past year now unlocks the ability for any company to use Okta as the identity layer of their customer experience:

• For digital strategists: “Digital transformation” is a buzzy, vague term — but what it encapsulates is enormous. Imagine the challenge and potential for healthcare providers, retailers and new apps to use technology to rethink how they deliver patient services, how they take on Amazon in the commerce space, or how they bring a new idea to life. We’ve innovated in big ways to make this change possible. We’re today revealing more on how business leaders can use our customer identity products, ecosystem and new developer experience (more on that below) to build Okta’s industry-leading identity into their own innovations — enabling personalised, secure and engaging new experiences for their users. Head here for the full details on all of our customer identity product updates.
• For developers: With the Stormpath team now a part of Okta, we’ve made significant improvements to our developer offering. Now, the Okta Identity Cloud allows any developer to access the APIs and SDKs they need via our new self-service e-commerce to easily embed an identity layer into any piece of software. So whether you’re a developer inside a giant retailer building a new data application, or an entrepreneur building the next hot Apple watch app, you can easily build enterprise-grade security into the experience – ultimately advancing your customer experience and bringing your ideas to market faster. Check out developer.okta.com for more details.

With identity, we have the potential to power a vast transformation in technology — and today’s announcements are the next step in helping us realise our mission to connect any person to any technology, both inside and outside an organisation.

There’s a lot to catch on day one at Oktane, but don’t forget to check back in tomorrow for Frederic’s post on our announcements coming out of day two. For real-time updates, follow #Oktane17.