Ready, Set, Go Celebrate! Announcing Our Oktane Award Finalists
Part of what makes Oktane so special is that we get to highlight the groundbreaking people and companies in our industry. And we are very lucky that many of those innovators happen to be our fabulous customers.
The Oktane Awards recognize our inspiring and forward-thinking customers that are achieving ground-breaking results with Okta. These IT pros are simply ready to take the enterprise to the next level, set new standards in security, IT and beyond and we know will only GO up from here. Join us in celebrating our finalists, and see you at the award ceremony at Oktane16!
IT Pioneer: Our Pioneer customers push Okta to blaze new trails. They challenge the status quo and drive great technological advancements for their companies -- and for Okta. We’ve got quite a few true pioneers this year: Aaron Zander of Massdrop was our first customer ever to use Bamboo as a Master, while Neeraj of Broadcom deployed Office Mobility Management with Google Apps.
- Aaron Zander – Massdrop
- Dirk White – American Express
- Jarin Dykstra and Chris Dodds – Seventy Seven Energy
- Neeraj Malhotra – Broadcom
Evangelist: Going above and beyond when it comes to being an Okta fan doesn’t begin to describe these finalists. These individuals take advocacy to a new level. Whether it’s speaking at an event, participating in User Groups or socially sharing their love for Okta, we know we’re lucky to have these customers in our camp.
- Kimberly Fuhrer – Forest City
- Matt Egan – Varian Medical Systems
- Phil Ibarrola – Thoughtworks
Atlas: Atlas is known for carrying the earth and the heavens on his shoulders. This category is for the customers who are effectively extending Okta and “doing it all” to cover both internal and external identity management.
- Craig Guinasso – Genomic Health
- Merv Lally – Experian
- Taylor Higley – AFGE
Lightning: We support swift changes here at Okta and many of our customers have succeeded in rolling out Okta to hundreds of employees and users in a matter of weeks - or even days. For example, David Levin and Mike Bartholomy of Western Union led a successful rollout of Jive to 10,000 users in one single weekend, while Jason Silvera of Informatica replaced RSA tokens with Okta Verify with Push, saving the company thousands of dollars. Fast deployments are no easy feat and we want to celebrate IT’s speed and agility to make a big organizational change.
- Chad Doty – Ecolab
- David Levin and Mike Bartholomy – Western Union
- Jason Silvera – Informatica
- Walther Ardon – Jabil Circuit
Innovators: The Okta Innovators Award is inspired by the companiescustomers who have been around for more than 100 years, yet evolve rapidly by driving modern approaches to IT with cloud and mobile technologies. This year’s finalists , which inhabit spaces such aslike beverage/alcohol, commerce and food supply – and have an average company age of 136 years – take on massive challenges by championing innovation and cloud technology to their legacy IT environments. Let’s raise a toast to them!
- Elias Oxendine – Brown-Forman
- Kenn Bryant – Pitney Bowes
- Trever Scott – Dole Foods
Builder: This award recognizes the developers who are using Okta as the identity layer for their products and applications. Customers in this category are using the Okta identity platform to handle identity and access management so they can focus on building the features their customers care about most.
- Greg McClellan – Advent
- Matt Rosenberg – MGM Resorts
- Raj Nagalingam – LinkedIn
Believer: This award recognizes a very loyal customer and true believer in the company, the solution and the future of Okta. If you have brought the power of Okta with you to a new company and have been successful with more than one deployment of Okta, then this Aaward is for you.
- Alex Lopez – St. Joseph’s Health
- Rick Pollak – Gogo
- Veejay Leswal – Oportun
There’s still time to register for the conference! Ensure you don’t miss a moment and start building your agenda today!