Celebrating You: Announcing this Year’s Okta Customer Award Finalists
Our name may be in the title, but Oktane is really all about celebrating our customers. Our agenda is jampacked with customers sharing their IT success stories and best practices. We value their input to help secure a lineup of fun and inspirational speakers we think they’ll enjoy. Our customers are always the focal point of the conference – and this year is no exception, particularly as we gear up for our third annual Okta Customer Awards.
Although we recognize our customers all year long, we like to take time during Oktane to show off a few of our most outstanding customers and celebrate the work they do, the passion they bring to their company and their continued partnership with Okta.
So this year, give a round of applause to our finalists...
Believer Award This award recognizes our most loyal customers, those who truly believe in our mission and see the value our services can bring to their company. Lisa, John and Franklin are some of Okta’s biggest advocates at their respective companies. Lisa has overseen the successful use of Okta at both GoPro and Informatica. Meanwhile, John is a committed Okta champion who's sought Okta as his go-to IDaaS solution throughout several M&A deals, and Franklin has gone above and beyond to drive adoption of Okta at PPFA.
- Lisa Moorhead, GoPro
- John Schmid, Allergan
- Franklin Rosado, Planned Parenthood Federation of America
Builder Award
This award recognizes developers using the Okta Platform as the identity layer for their products and applications. These finalists use Okta to provide identity infrastructure for their digital initiatives and to handle all of their IDaaS challenges, boost security, enable seamless user experiences and help companies deliver new applications to customers faster.
Innovator Award This award is inspired by organizations that have been around for nearly a century and have adopted modern approaches into their IT strategy. So although these companies have been in operation since before the Civil War, their IT strategies are anything but antiquated. Western Union has continued to build a cloud-forward approach to IT across its thousands of employees worldwide, Campbell's Soup leveraged Okta’s identity platform to increase security and improve the end user experience. Seton Hall University is able to stay true to its mission of building a technologically advanced learning environment for students and professors alike, while Del Monte Foods built its IT infrastructure from scratch, choosing Okta Mobility Management to enable its very mobile workforce to get stuff done on-the-go.
Evangelist Award Going above and beyond when it comes to being an Okta fan doesn’t begin to describe these finalists. Bob is a highly active Okta Community member who’s helped spread the IDaaS gospel throughout the Indianapolis area and beyond. Jarin led the way for Seventy Seven Energy to move into the cloud two years ago and they haven’t looked back.
- Bob Stephan, SMC
- Jarin Dykstra, Seventy Seven Energy
Atlas Award Much like this award’s namesake, these customers are “doing it all” to extend Okta’s reach to secure employees, customers, partners and other external identities. Matt and Jason have continuously pushed the envelope, provided product feedback and found new ways to increase the value of their investment in Okta across the leading medical technology company. Venkatesh has found more ways Okta can help FireEye, which leverages our identity service for its 2,500+ employees worldwide, as well as the numerous customer and partner portals it leverages in protecting enterprises and governments worldwide against the next generation of cyber attacks.
- Matt Egan and Jason Schlagel, Varian Medical Services
- Venkatesh Raman, FireEye
IT Pioneer Award These IT pioneers push Okta to blaze new trails, challenge the status quo and drive great technological advancements for their companies. Jonathan at Tarmac has worked closely with Okta to ensure our products remain user-centric. Mark and Johan and their company’s business needs inspired Okta to design new roadmap products. Jeff has continuously helped test and improve both the end user and admin experience of Okta and Okta Mobility Management.
- Jonathan Winn, Tarmac
- Mark Brungardt and Johan Dowdy, Twitter
- Jeff Janovich, Carlisle Construction Materials
We’ll announce our winners the morning of Wednesday, November 4 at Oktane15 in Las Vegas. If you haven’t already, make sure to register to attend and cheer on your fellow customers and coworkers – or follow along on Twitter at #Oktane15.
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