Sharing Our Customers’ Journeys at #Oktane15

Vice Chairman, Co-Founder and former Chief Operating Officer

November 10, 2015

Every business is on a journey to build connections between people and technology. Some are building world-class IT infrastructure, others are driving BYOD and many are driving digital businesses. To be successful, businesses need to work with the best technology and service partners, and we're honored that thousands of customers have put us in that category. Last week at Oktane15, our third annual customer conference at the Aria in Las Vegas, I had the honor of highlighting how our customers use Okta — including the exciting updates to our identity, mobility and platform offerings we announced — and wanted to share some highlights.

During my keynote on Wednesday, I chatted with John Swieringa, SVP and CIO at DISH, about his journey to the cloud, and MGM Resorts International’s CISO Scott Howitt and Chief Digital Officer John Bollen about their digital business initiatives, and how MGM started using Okta for SSO and is now building the Okta Platform into MGM’s M life rewards program. George Collins, CTO of Deloitte Digital, took the stage to talk about how IT leaders today have the opportunity to partner closely with executives and drive significant value with technology. And Matt Schvimmer, GM of ServiceNow Express shared how ServiceNow is enabling their customers to be more agile with a fast-to-deploy and simple-to-configure product which enables rapid time to value for our joint customers.

We also highlighted use cases for our Cloud Provisioning Connector SDK on stage. With the introduction of the SDK, we're enabling our customers to partner with the best technology vendors by giving them the tools they need to build deep provisioning integrations to Okta — while at the same time, adding to the 4,000 pre-integrated applications in the Okta Application Network, and 37,000 integrations total. I chatted with Okta customers James Woodwell from LinkedIn and Twitter's Johan Dowdy about how they’re seeing the benefit of our new Cloud Provisioning SDK. And executives from our partner ISVs — SmartRecruiters COO and president Brett Queener and Eventboard CTO and co-founder Zach Holmquist — joined us to discuss the provisioning integrations they've already built.

Last but certainly not least, Krista Anderson, Chief Customer Officer, closed out our keynote, discussing how Okta's customer success programs map to our customers' journeys. We're focused on making our customers successful every step of the way — from deployment to adoption to anywhere that your journey may take you. To wrap things up, we had the pleasure of welcoming the believers, builders, innovators, evangelists and IT pioneers who won our Customer Awards to the stage.

CS Ok sWUAAdTTj Believer: Franklin Rosado, Planned Parenthood Federation of America; Builder: Adobe; Innovator: Seton Hall University; Lightning: Jake White and Alan Aledia, AECOM; Atlas: Venkatesh Raman, FireEye; Evangelist: Bob Stephan, SMC; IT Pioneer: Jeff Janovich, Carlisle Construction.

Customer success is our number one company value, so hearing from those who joined me on stage — and the many other customers at Oktane15 — about how Okta's foundational to their businesses is always a highlight for me. I'm already looking forward to hearing many more success stories at Oktane16 next August.

Frederic Kerrest

Vice Chairman, Co-Founder and former Chief Operating Officer

Frederic Kerrest is the Vice Chairman and Co-Founder of Okta. He served as Okta’s Chief Operating Officer during his tenure where he was responsible for Okta's day-to-day operations and worked with employees, partners, and customers to deliver on the company's vision of freeing everyone to safely use any technology. As a key member of management, Frederic helped set corporate priorities to drive success for the company and its customers. He oversaw corporate strategy, corporate development, strategic partnerships, and Okta’s social impact arm, Okta for Good.

Prior to Okta, Frederic worked in sales and business development at Salesforce.com, and in venture capital at Hummer Winblad Venture Partners.

Frederic is the author of Zero to IPO, a WSJ Bestseller guidebook to building startups based on his own experiences and those of some of the world’s most successful and recognizable entrepreneurs. The book was an outgrowth of his award-winning podcast of the same name, which features Silicon Valley founders, investors, and entrepreneurs sharing insights from their experiences building businesses. He advises early-stage software companies and serves as a Member of the MIT Corporation Visiting Committee for the Sloan School of Management.

Frederic earned a B.S. in computer science from Stanford University, and an M.B.A. in Entrepreneurship & Innovation from the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he was the 2008 MIT Patrick J. McGovern, Jr. Entrepreneurship Award recipient.

Sharing Our Customers’ Journeys at #Oktane15

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