Dear IT admin: We’re thankful for you!

Thanksgiving is just around the corner so the holiday season has officially begun! Here at Okta we’re thankful for many things, like our employees, partners and customers. This year, we wanted to give extra thanks to one of our most favorite groups: IT admins. In the connected world, IT is the glue holding businesses together and much of what they do is unseen.

We recently spoke with several of our customers who had some notes of appreciation to share with their IT admins:

Broadcom Limited is thankful for… IT Manager Neeraj Malhotra and his dedication, specifically during the company’s migration to Okta. On the first day of the migration, more than 15,000 users were moved to Okta and another 7,000 were moved from Avagotech to the Broadcom domain. The sheer size of the migration provided many challenges, but Neeraj worked long days and longer nights with Okta and HCL to minimize the impact on day-to-day business operations. His knowledge, hard work, and positive attitude for end users were key to managing tough situations in order to avoid high-level escalations.

“Neeraj-- thank you for your passion, dedication, and commitment to keeping Broadcom’s applications secure and accessible at all times. It is truly a thankless job, but I would like to thank you for it. We are very lucky to have you as our Okta administrator; because of you I don’t lose sleep over our identity management architecture.” - Andy Nallappan, VP and CIO, Broadcom

Shire is thankful for… Security Architect John Wood’s responsiveness and willingness to problem-solve, even when there’s an issue outside of his area of expertise or on the other side of the integration. On one particular occasion, the Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) was experiencing issues during a project and John stepped in and took the extra time to work with vendors directly in order to pinpoint the issues in their systems’ configuration. The REMS would not have made their deadline and executed seamless deployment with him.

“John-- Thank you for the countless times we reached out to you and you responded so quickly. Thanks for not calling us out when we brought an issue to you, only to find out that the cause was on the other side of the integration. And, thanks for helping us meet timelines even though we often bring requests with little lead time.” - Matthias Reith, REMS Program Manager, Shire

Thoughtworks is thankful for… Identity Product Owner Kelsey van Haaster and her dedication to ensuring that the right people always have the appropriate level of access to the company’s IT services, no matter the time. As a team leader, Kelsey always goes above and beyond to provide support in a timely manner. For example, one evening Kelsey worked well into the night to help a UK-based colleague. It was only after her colleague’s issue was addressed that Kelsey signed off for the evening.

“Kelsey, thanks for everything you do. We’re very lucky to have you leading our identity team, your work has a huge impact!” - Phil Ibarrola, TechOps Head of Technology, Thoughtworks

TurnItIn is thankful for... IT Engineer Rocky Reyes and his commitment to always getting the job done. At the company’s last national sales meeting, the marketing team was experiencing technical issues and required a last-minute loaner laptop to support their presentation. There’s a protocol in place for when occasions such as this arise, but time was running out. Rocky expedited the process and got the marketing team a new laptop. If he had not been present, the presentation would not have started on time (if at all).

“Rocky-- You've always got our back and you keep things humming! You get the job done for us, and with such positive energy. Thank you!” - Jason Chu, Director of Marketing, TurnItIn

kCura is thankful for… System Administrator Chris Heinemann and his ability to solve big problems with expedience. For example, the network team needed to quickly enable read only access to a log server for the company’s security team. Chris immediately created SWA apps and deployed them to the required users within minutes. Since deploying Okta, Chris and his team have enabled more than 300 apps, which allows the network team to provide secure and flexible access to end users almost instantly.

“Thank you to Chris and all of our administrators for making Okta applications a painless process every time we need to add an app. Initially people didn’t want to use our corporate single sign-on (SSO), but then they quickly realized how simple and effective it is. Now, we have people begging to transfer their personal apps to the platform for added convenience.” - Chris Stolp, Network Team Lead, kCura

Carlisle Construction Materials (CCM) is thankful for... Cloud Solutions Architect Jeff Janovich and his proactive approach to improving day-to-day operations. The creative services department at CCM travels frequently and requires access to very large design files. In the past, the team used VPN while on the road even though it was slow and unreliable. Enter Jeff. He went to creative services with a solution based on his own observations of current workflow and accessibility. He proposed that the team leverage Okta and Box. Okta keeps data secure while simultaneously providing easy access to documents, and collaboration is made easy via their integration with Box for EMM using Okta Mobility Management. Jeff’s solution worked so well that the creative services department moved their entire 6TB server to Box.

“Jeff-- Thank you so much for being proactive and innovative. Okta’s easy accessibility makes us so much more efficient and enables us to collaborate much faster. Please keep up the great work and thank you for reaching out to our group with these great solutions.” - Jason Brownawell, Carlisle Construction Materials

As you prepare to leave the office and head home for the Thanksgiving holiday, remember to thank your IT team. Whether they’ve implemented solutions that allow you to work from anywhere this holiday season or they’re saving the day when the server fails in the middle of a major project, we would all be lost without them.

Thank you!