What a Year It’s Been!
This morning, we announced the results of our business over the past year. We have some incredible momentum. Reflecting on the numbers, it sunk in just how much we’ve accomplished since launching in January 2011. Our growth proves the hypothesis I set out with after leaving salesforce.com to start Okta: Businesses are catching on to the power and importance of the cloud to run leaner and meaner IT, and in doing so are realizing the need for a way to manage this cloud transition.
One of the areas that we’ve seen the most growth in is with our customers. In the second half of 2011, we tripled our customer base and grew our user count by a factor of six! That means happy customers, across a wide range of industries, that are getting the most value from their applications, whether in the cloud or behind the firewall.
Our innovation during the past year has played a big part in our success. We released more than 25 feature updates in the second half of 2011, benefitting IT departments and end users alike, making it easier than ever for IT to give employees managed, secure access to the applications they need to do their jobs. From releases such as Desktop Single Sign-On and Multifactor Authentication that shore up security, to Okta Self Service that brings the familiarity of consumer and enterprise app stores to every organization, we never stop innovating at Okta.
It’s exciting to consider how far we’ve come in just one year, a reflection of the incredible team we’ve built, and which we continue to grow. Our team is savvy and passionate, and it keeps getting bigger. We hired two cloud pros to help propel our company even further during 2012 and beyond. Adam Aarons joins as SVP of worldwide sales at Okta, and Hector Aguilar came aboard as VP of engineering. Welcome, Adam and Hector!
Adam brings more than 15 years of enterprise software sales experience, having served as area VP of sales for BMC Software before coming to Okta. He had a tremendous impact at BMC, driving more than 300 percent growth revenue during his time there. Hector brings an equally impressive set of accomplishments to Okta. Hector joins us with more than 16 years of networking, security and software development experience. He was CTO and VP of software development at ArcSight, and his leadership was critical in building the company into a juggernaut that HP acquired. (And did we mention that he holds several U.S. patents in networking, security and software architecture?) We’re thrilled to have both Adam and Hector on board as we continue to build out our product and bring every enterprise securely into the cloud.
It’s been an incredible year at Okta, and we’re looking forward to what’s in store for the future: more happy customers and employees, more innovations and more IT departments leading their organizations to the cloud.