Okta on Okta: On a mission to enable, evolve, and showcase Okta

Hello there. I’m Jon Lehtinen, Senior Director of the Okta on Okta team at Okta. As an Identity advocate in large enterprises for nearly 20 years, I understand and appreciate the satisfaction of swapping war stories with fellow practitioners. So, I love leading the Okta on Okta team. But, despite the allure of constantly repeating our company name, it doesn’t clarify enough what our team provides for our customers and Okta’s workforce. 

With that in mind, we’re re-launching a blog series formerly known as The Dogfooding Chronicles. As concise as that title was, we’re deep into our adolescent years, and you can’t stay punk forever. In today’s Okta on Okta blog series, we’ll talk shop and describe our internal goals and accomplishments in a way we hope will resonate with other Okta “doers”— corporate admins, small shop practitioners, and every Okta customer and prospect, worldwide.

Why do we exist?

Sometimes, an unfortunate by-product of broad growth is rising complexity, but that need not impede understanding and progress. The Okta on Okta team was created to ensure that growth and innovation will never trump ease of use and productivity. We’re working towards a best-in-class experience for our employees and customers. How do we do that? That’s what this first post is all about. Okta on Okta has  three complementary missions:

• Enable the business
• Evolve the platform
• Showcase the platform

Enable the business

As the owners of Okta Workforce and Customer Identity implementations, the Okta on Okta team represents the voice of Okta practitioners everywhere. Consider us the “connective Identity tissue” enabling Okta as a business. As significant as that mission is, offering IAM services is table stakes for all companies using the platform. When taken in conjunction with our other two missions, this responsibility magnifies the impact of providing Identity-centric security for Okta itself.

Evolve the platform

We partner with our internal product and engineering teams to position Okta as its own best, and first, customer. We file down the rough edges of new capabilities and influence the product roadmap to improve our platform and match the needs of our growing business. This naturally improves the product for a better downstream customer experience.

Showcase the platform 

And, the mission closest to my heart, we make ourselves available to customers to share and receive stories of Okta use and innovation. Given that we’re part of a company selling Identity security services, we may wear “team colors,” but when speaking to customers, we share our honest perspectives as practitioners. We bring our experiences and business impact while also welcoming your stories and feedback.   

Moving forward, I look forward to digging deep for you with details and stories of how Okta secures and implements the Okta platform. 

But there’s one more thing: Join me and my team for Oktane on October 3-5! Come to Okta Experience Hub and say hello, swap stories, and learn something new.