How Identity Orchestration Transforms Service Delivery and Automation

The world of service management faces more challenges than ever before. As business models, user behaviors, and underlying technologies break down and reconfigure, IT teams need smarter technologies to serve the needs of their modern user communities without slowing down the speed of business.

The foundation for transformation lies in moving to a fully automated service delivery platform, enabling IT to add value across business units, scale more effectively, and rapidly respond to changing requirements. User on-boarding should be seamless and automatic. Employees should be able to request real-time access to all applications they need to do their work. And these solutions should enable fewer IT resources to achieve, not require more to deploy and manage.

Delivering end-to-end service orchestration begins with understanding the real pain of modern businesses. With more applications handling more data across more work styles and physical locations, delivering on the promise of IT is more complex and difficult than ever before. Having platform solutions helps you do things differently: smarter, faster, and more efficiently.

Top 4 Management Pains in the Modern Enterprise

1. User Ecosystem Complexity

Historically, a business only had to think about direct customers and internal employees when thinking about IT fulfillment. Today, you collaborate with an ever increasing number of non-traditional users: your partners, your contractors, your temporary employees—all of whom need access to a wide range of applications on a wide range of devices from a wide range of insecure locations. Your IT team needs to be able to adapt and evolve as your user ecosystem extends its envelope.

2. App Explosion

As Okta’s Businesses at Work 2018 report shows, cloud app adoption is the linchpin for helping both new disruptive startups and incumbents players modernize and stay competitive. Our top three apps this year were Office 365, Salesforce, and Amazon Web Services—three businesses powering millions of other businesses. This proliferation of enterprise apps across all key areas of business can be difficult to manage.

Most Popular Apps by Category

3. Evolving Security Perimeter

The average user now has over three devices at work and many more at home. No longer can companies just focus on the domain-joined devices within the four walls of their corporate firewall. They must also ensure outside access from other devices is managed securely. A compromised device can override layers of security in an instant. The perimeter also continues to grow as businesses scale using channel partners, networks of agencies, or freelance contractors, all of whom bring new potential vulnerabilities into your world.

4. Unstructured Execution Patterns

As reports ranging from McKinsey to Gartner reinforce year after year, work continues to get more unstructured. Businesses continue to send emails, but also new productivity tools such as Slack, Asana, Google Suite, Dropbox, and other free and paid tools to create a spaghetti of new work patterns. How can IT ensure they manage and secure their environment, while supporting new ways their employees are doing work?

4 Pillars of Okta and ServiceNow-powered Service Orchestration

1. Identity and Access Management:

By combining two best of breed solutions you can integrate identity and service management for your business and enforce security across a global and mobile workforce. Together they provide full reach across both cloud and on-prem systems and a unified identity and security layer for all points of access. This gives leadership and IT a consolidated view of all users.

2. Real-Time App Fulfillment and Self-Service:

It is critical that users gain access to all the apps they need to stay productive, whether on-prem or in the cloud. Often, IT can be an unnecessary gatekeeper that slows down the deployment and adoption of new apps. Okta with ServiceNow has out-of-the-box integrations that offer self-service for end users to securely request access to the apps they need. This partnership automates those workflows, putting controls for applications, access, and security at your users’ fingertips without having to leave the service portal. Okta removes barriers between management, users, and their apps.

3. Fully Automated On-boarding & Off-boarding:

On Day Zero, managers want approvals to be done so new hires are immediately productive. From issuing a phone and laptop to setting up a desk, talent on-boarding still often remains manual. Cloud-based provisioning eliminates manual tasks and reduces the risk of information leakage outside trusted parties. Okta Lifecycle Management streamlines app access, replacing checklists with automation between HR, IT, Legal, Compliance, or any other business unit that requires input into the process. Workflow automation driven by business process minimizes human errors and increases efficiencies. Furthermore, the Okta Identity Cloud extends the power of those workflows to include the user, application, and security layers of the business.

4. Modern Security Incident Response:

Modern security is now about responsiveness and resilience rather than the number of incidents. As the workplace becomes digitally connected and global, more malicious software will arise. There will be more incidents of unauthorized access, phishing attacks, and policy violations. And of course, one of your sales reps will forget their iPhone X at an airport deli. Okta and ServiceNow enable a sophisticated response to incidents through API-layer control over MFA, application access features, and smart policy controls— integrated directly into the ServiceNow platform.

Next-Generation Service Success Summary

As modern IT enterprises fortify for the next decade of growth—in the era of smarter apps and devices— leaders must integrate their IT service management and identity management efforts. Companies can take advantage of Okta SSO, MFA, and Lifecycle Management, and Okta’s multi-device capabilities to navigate this new landscape. Fortune 1000 leaders that use Okta have meaningfully reduced IT administrative time, increased employee productivity, and improved security posture.