New Customers, Company Growth Validates Market Need for On-Demand Identity Management to Securely Scale Cloud Adoption in The Enterprise
San Francisco, CA – February 1, 2012 — Today, Okta, the leading on-demand identity and access management service, announced significant company and customer base expansions and the addition of two key executives, closing out an impressive year since it launched in January 2011. This swift growth is proof that businesses are increasingly looking to the cloud to run leaner and smarter, and in turn are finding the need for Okta’s cloud-native identity and access management to secure and manage the adoption of web-based applications, both in the cloud and behind the firewall.
In the second half of 2011, Okta tripled its customer base and grew user count on their service by a factor of six by onboarding new customers across multiple industries. New customers include: Nestlé Purina, SRS Real Estate Partners, ShoreTel, Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Informatica, LegalZoom, First American Equipment Finance, California Charter Schools Association, School of Rock, Point B Solutions Group, Ruckus Wireless, Pabst Brewing Company and Weil, Gotshal & Manges, among others. Across the board, Okta’s customers reported improved security, increased employee productivity, lower IT costs, enhanced compliance and better ability to manage the ROI of their SaaS investments.
In response to this tremendous customer traction and to further accelerate their ability to capitalize on this huge market opportunity, Okta also announced the addition of two new enterprise software and security veterans to their executive team. Adam Aarons joins as SVP of worldwide sales at Okta and Hector Aguilar as VP of engineering.
Aarons comes to Okta with more than 15 years of enterprise software sales experience in early-stage and market-leading companies. Prior to Okta, he served as area vice president of sales for BMC Software where he drove more than 300 percent revenue growth during his tenure and led the top producing team in terms of software as a service revenue. Aarons came to BMC Software through the acquisition of BladeLogic where he was a vice president of sales.
Aguilar brings more than 16 years of networking, security and software development experience to Okta and holds several US patents in networking, security and software architecture. Before joining Okta, Aguilar was CTO and VP of Software Development at ArcSight, an HP Company. He joined the engineering team at ArcSight shortly after its foundation and provided critical R&D leadership that helped fuel dramatic growth before the acquisition by HP.
“Our swift growth, fueled by the combination of an exploding market opportunity and our maniacal focus on customer success, drives home the need for Okta’s service. Enterprises everywhere need a robust, enterprise class on-demand identity and access management service to secure, manage and scale their adoption of the cloud,” said Todd McKinnon, CEO, Okta. “I am thrilled to have added so many great Okta customers and am equally excited to have such high caliber enterprise software leaders like Adam and Hector join the team and accelerate our ability to bring every enterprise to the cloud.”
Leveraging the power of a multitenant, on-demand service, Okta continued to deliver dramatic levels of innovation with more than 25 weekly feature releases in the second half of 2011. Some of the highlights from those releases include:
Desktop Single Sign-On: Okta seamlessly authenticates users to Okta that are already authenticated with their Windows domain. Both Mac and PC users can simply log into their corporate network once and access any cloud application with a single click. No additional usernames or passwords required, just like on-premises apps.
Okta Self Service: Okta brings the ease-of-use and familiarity of consumer and enterprise app stores to every organization. IT can easily publish custom application catalogs to their entire organization, making it even easier for end users to discover and instantly integrate the cloud applications they need access to on a daily basis, from any device. Self Service also provides visibility into app usage across an organization, ensuring businesses are getting the most value from their applications.
Multifactor Authentication: Okta offers the industry’s first fully integrated multifactor authentication (MFA) and single sign-on (SSO) service making it even easier for IT to manage and secure access to the thousands of applications, whether cloud or on-premises, on Okta’s platform.
Okta Directory Integration Edition: Okta extends the security and extensibility of the Okta platform to businesses with even just a single SaaS application.
“Okta’s been an invaluable asset to our IT department, allowing us to securely manage access to our applications while also providing employees with immediate access to all the web applications they need, whether in the cloud or behind our firewall, from any device, any time,” said Ben Doyle, Director of IT, Enterasys Networks. “Okta has now become a strategic platform for cloud application management within Enterasys’ IT environment and given Okta’s track record of delivery, their customer focus and bold product roadmap, I am excited about the additional value we will realize in 2012 and beyond.”
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