A Marriage Made In Cloudy Heaven: Okta Australia Teams Up With First Channel Partner

Having spent the past 22 years working in distribution and channel marketing throughout Europe and Australia, I have learned a lot about what it takes to create great partnerships.

Bringing a partner on board is like any good marriage or relationship, you need to work as a team and partner with someone who you can work with to achieve a common goal. You want to have a specialised, focused partner who does the right thing by you and you by them.

This is particularly important in the IdaaS world. Identity management is a specialised field, so focused partners are integral and, if done right, have the ability to grow a company‘s operations substantially.

Okta Australia recently signed its first Australian channel partner - Identity Solutions. Having been around since 1999, the Melbourne-based reseller is a pioneer for identity management in Australia from a reseller perspective and stood out to us for its long track record as experts in the identity management sector.

To have an organisation that has the background, knowledge and customer base they do is a huge coup for Okta Australia. We recently sat down with Victoria Krol, Identity Solutions director, to find out her thoughts on our latest partner-vendor relationship.

What does Identity Solutions do, and how do they work with identity management?

Identity Solutions is a well-known and recognised IDAM solution provider in the Australia and New Zealand region. We help a large number of customers in various sectors such as finance, utilities, retail and government to streamline their identity management processes and to secure access to their corporate digital assets.

As a IDAM solution provider, we’re involved in all aspects of Identity Management for internal and external uses -- from strategic advice, through implementation, to on-going support of various IDAM solution implementations.

Having been around for 15 years, you’ve witnessed the shift to cloud-based solutions first-hand. How has the demand for cloud solutions changed in this time?

Big companies are no longer invincible, eating smaller competitors for breakfast. Today, the big no longer eat the small -- it's the fast that eat the slow! Companies who are powered by cloud-based solutions are the real winners of the race.

How does IdaaS benefit organisations that are looking to move from on-premises to cloud-based services?

Many companies are considering moving from on-premises to cloud based applications. On-premises repositories that traditionally keep information about users and their access will be unusable or hard to reach with this move. Without oversimplifying it – the repository of users need to move to the cloud to continue serving its purpose. IdaaS solutions are designed to accomplish this and are a critical success factor in any well-controlled cloud adoption program.

What challenges do you see customers facing in adopting cloud and mobile services, and how will identity management be central to that adoption?

Conventional wisdom tells us it is hard to find a balance between convenience and control. Fortunately, we see forward thinking vendors breaking this common wisdom by bringing solutions to the market that are capable of providing both. IDAM is becoming the hub for all things security, including mobile device management. Simply managing devices is not working very well. A link between devices to an identity is what is needed to create accountability and to provide necessary controls.

What does the future hold for your partnership with Okta?

With Okta’s intuitive, agile and scalable solution, we are able to empower mid-size businesses with capabilities that before were only available to large enterprises. This means we can acquire new customers, uncover new opportunities and grow our own business. Even more exciting though, is Okta’s approach to business. It’s the same from the front lines to the back office – simple, but great! No roadblocks, transparent rules of engagement, trust, correct level of delegation and great enablement opportunities for partners to create very positive and inspiring business relationships. We find Okta very refreshing.

Want to learn more about Identity Solutions and Okta Australia’s partnership? Check out Identity Solutions' resource page, which explains more of the nitty-gritty details of the marriage.