Guest post by Nathan McBride, vice president, IT at AMAG Pharmaceuticals

It’s funny to think that just three years ago I gave a presentation to a large consulting firm on what they might encounter in enterprise IT in the next few years called “What is the Cloud?” Since then I have had the unique experience of being able to speak at conferences and gatherings across the country, but you won’t hear me giving that introductory “What is the Cloud?” talk anymore.

Based on the requests for types of presentations that I’ve received recently, it’s obvious that more and more companies have gotten past the “wet feet” stage of moving to the cloud and are now looking for strategies and information about the next steps in embracing a cloud service model within the enterprise.

To kick off my 2013, I’ll be speaking at Bio-IT World in Boston on Wednesday, April 10 at 11:00 am ET about several topics in a session titled “Pharma Disruptors: A Real-World Look Into How Cloud Computing Can Impact Your Business”. In the presentation, I’ll cover how my company, AMAG Pharmaceuticals, and our IT team of just four moved our department to the cloud by: Continue reading →

Big changes are affecting the enterprise as increased cloud and mobile adoption pushes businesses further beyond the firewall — and IT is right in the middle.

That’s why we’ve gathered senior IT leaders from Ralph Loura (CIO, Clorox), Carl Eberling (CIO, Encore Capital), Evan Trent (SVP, School of Rock) and Dan Willey (CIO, Wilbur-Ellis) for an intimate panel discussion with Okta CEO Todd McKinnon about how IT is responding to the massive changes across the modern enterprise.

Companies from education to financial services are using cloud and mobile technologies to enable employees, partners and customers to get work done. The cloud’s gone mainstream — from cornfields to classrooms, literally — and, in the process, has transformed the role and reputation of IT. Continue reading →

At Okta, we are fully committed to increasing the security and productivity of our users. In fact, it’s the driving force of our business. Today we are proud to announce our latest and most innovative feature in pursuit of this goal — App Roulette!

App Roulette will revolutionize the way you access your applications. Okta is already helping hundreds of thousands of people get into their applications without having to remember their username or password. However, we recognize that sometimes just getting started can be the hardest part of any task. That is why App Roulette allows you to access all of your apps with just one button and zero hassle

With App Roulette as your work buddy, your life will become easier and more productive! Gone are the days of stressing over which task to start your day on. Now you can ease into whichever one App Roulette chooses for you without guilt or regret. Continue reading →

Appirio is a 100 percent cloud-based company offering consulting services to businesses looking to adopt and manage cloud technologies. During a recent interview with Okta, Glenn Weinstein, Appirio’s Chief Technology Officer, discussed how his technical team partnered up with Okta to come up with a holistic solution to managing their cloud applications.

Why Okta? According to Glenn, working with Okta was a simple decision. “We chose Okta because it’s 100 percent cloud-based,” Glenn said. “We liked the idea that it wasn’t solely tied to the notion of Active Directory and on-premise systems; that cloud alone, Okta could provide a holistic solution.” In addition to Okta’s cloud appeal, Glenn recognized its ease of use. “To put it in simple terms,” Glenn said, “it works. It worked the first time, it was easy to understand and it didn’t cause a lot of user confusion.” Continue reading →

Since its introduction with Windows Server 2008, Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) 2.0 has been Microsoft’s answer to extending enterprise identity beyond the firewall. However, building an identity management solution with the AD FS toolkit has many hidden costs. While AD FS solves some identity challenges for Microsoft’s product family, as is typical from Microsoft, many more gaps exist when attempting to integrate with cloud or mobile applications from other vendors.

You might be considering implementing AD FS in your company, or maybe you already have. Continue reading →

Jeff Sutton, enterprise IT manager at Box, recently sat down with us to discuss all things Okta — from what first drove Box to looking for an identity management solution to his experience with customer support during implementation. To hear our full interview with Jeff, watch the video below or on our website.

What drove you to look for an identity management solution?

JS: When I started Box, there were 50 people, and identity management wasn’t a big problem at that point. Once we reached around 150 people, we started noticing a lot of problems. We had 10 new hires a week and adding each of these accounts every week was just taking a lot of time. People were coming up to me asking for their password resets a lot more because there were more people in the company. That’s what kind of drove my decision to look for an identity management system. Continue reading →

ServiceNow provides leading cloud-based services to enterprise IT operations, turning manual, reactive IT organizations into automated, task-oriented ones. With 80 percent of their applications sitting in the cloud, ServiceNow turned to Okta to manage the many identities in those apps.

Chris Asing, IT director at ServiceNow, recognized Okta as a strong partner right away. As he told us recently, the trust, confidence and credibility so important in partnerships was all there from the beginning. Okta’s easy implementation process and user’s abilities to easily adapt to it made Okta an easy choice for ServiceNow. Continue reading →

I recently had the pleasure of speaking at, “HR 2.0: Dealing with Fast Growth in Technology,” about how technology companies (and their HR departments) can more effectively attract and retain talent. The rapid growth in the technology industry is exciting and staggering and has only been seen a few times in history. As Okta’s director of people, navigating rapid growth is a topic that’s always on my mind — we’ve tripled headcount during the past 12 months alone — so I jumped at the opportunity to participate alongside other tech HR professionals dealing with exponential growth.

It became clear during the panel that companies are wrestling with how to foster a great culture while developing values that resonate with every employee. At Okta, recruiting and retaining top talent in this competitive environment forces us to think differently and find ways to better articulate our intrinsic value. We are finding that culture and core values can make all the difference. (Of course, as our CEO Todd McKinnon wrote recently in the Wall Street Journal, companies must have great products that customers love, or they’ll never get to the phase where culture matters.) Continue reading →

RSA can be intimidating for first-time attendees – and this year’s event was no different. Walking the exhibit floor (all 700,000 square feet of it) is nearly a full-day experience on its own. And when you consider the bright oversized logos and crowded aisles, loud conversations, booth crawls and tchotchkes galore, it can be overwhelming for the unprepared.

After this year’s event, first-timers (or even RSA veterans) are likely having trouble differentiating between the hundreds of companies exhibiting. And for good reason. Every company seemed to be saying the same thing, namely “BYOD and proliferation of mobile are changing the security game completely,” and the scary follow-on of, “Act now or your company is in danger.” Very few of them talked about exactly how they can help security professionals face these new challenges.

Isn’t that what RSA should be all about?

That wasn’t lost on Okta. It was a chaotic few days at our booth – even more so than last year. While the crowds may have had something to do with the awesome t-shirts we were giving away, I’d also bet that we were one of few companies talking openly about shifts we’re seeing in the enterprise, and how our product alleviates many of the resulting headaches. Continue reading →

Edmunds.com is the online resource for automotive consumers, enthusiasts and insiders. To keep up with their many users and the rapidly growing list of services and technologies Edmunds’ employees need to do their work, the company brought on a multitude of cloud-based applications last year.

It didn’t take long for Phil Potloff, CIO at Edmunds.com, to recognize the difficulty employees had trying to remember dozens of passwords from multiple devices. Phil and the Edmunds.com IT team realized the company needed an effective way to manage user accounts and service requests for these apps, so it turned to Okta.

“Okta has really made our employees’ job much simpler,” Phil said. “When you have dozens of cloud applications and dozens more on-premises custom-built tools, bridging those two worlds together for our employees in one seamless view really makes IT’s job easier.”

To check out more about how Okta has helped Edmunds.com drive business, watch the video below or on Okta’s website.