ENGIE leads the world to a sustainable future. Okta plays a critical role.
With innovative solutions to energy and climate change more pressing than ever, ENGIE Deputy Group CIO Claude Pierre saw an opportunity to optimize customer energy consumption with renewable solutions. But first, ENGIE would need to work internally -- and transform the energy industry from the inside out.
To tackle this entry into a new energy world, ENGIE sought to develop infrastructure to transition the business from a hierarchical model to one that is flat and distributed across 24 geographically oriented business units. This was no easy task -- ENGIE needed to support regional units with consistent, reliable, global solutions, while giving them the freedom to adapt quickly at the local level.
Cloud brings flexible identity and access management Pierre and his team recognized the cloud as a key enabler of new technologies. In addition, a cloud-based identity and access management system would be necessary to truly connect all 24 business units at both a global and local level. “Our ambition was to set up a global solution covering all geographies and enabling all applications to be accessed from anywhere, from any device,” says Pierre.
When searching for a scalable solution to further the enterprise digital transformation, Pierre required a user-friendly service that was reliable, vendor neutral and adaptable to technological innovation. Okta was the flexible solution that openly worked with on-premise infrastructure rather than completely overhauling the wholesale process.
Addressing the challenge of scalability ENGIE initially deployed Okta to its 120,000 global employees, connecting them to important business apps including Yammer, Skype, Microsoft Exchange online. Within three months, they deployed the entire Office 365 portfolio and local IT teams stayed connected with corporate resources throughout. “This decentralized model of support and service is key for us,” says Youssef Tahani, ENGIE’s chief infrastructure officer. The speed and detail of this transition was a success -- local teams had connected to the Okta platform and business was underway.
Powered by Okta: Immediate effects With Okta in place it takes two weeks instead of two months to begin collaborating with a newly acquired domain. With all 100+ AD domains now connected to Okta’s platform, users are efficiently provisioned and consolidated across all domains, which greatly simplifies Office 365 synchronization.
Not only did ENGIE provide streamlined services for those in offices, they were able to bring 50,000 field workers online for the first time without additional licensing costs allowing for unprecedented collaboration.
To learn more about ENGIE’s journey with Okta watch the below video.