Okta Showcase 2020: The Economy Runs on Identity

We’re excited to bring to you our second Okta Showcase, our annual fall event where we give you an inside look at how we’re innovating at Okta. Constant change means that we’re all constantly adapting, and so we wanted to bring you something new today: Okta Showcase as a news show. We hope the format is enjoyable (especially since it took us two film shoots to get it right).

Like everything this year, we’ve changed how and where we work, shop, interact with doctors and teachers, and communicate with our family and friends. And as a result, we’ve had to adapt how we run our businesses. Many of these changes have been driven by the pandemic, but notable adaptations we’ve made to our lives are likely to persist for the foreseeable future.

“The digital economy” is now just “the economy.” For almost every action in our personal and professional lives, who we are is far more important than where we are. Identity and access power our workforces, and our ability to harness identity drives how we build and maintain relationships with customers.

That’s why today at Okta Showcase, we announced new product innovations specifically intended to help organizations thrive in this identity-driven economy.

Scaling Identity-Driven Infrastructure through Advanced Server Access

That starts at the infrastructure level. Today’s DevOps teams are under massive pressure to continuously and rapidly deliver new digital experiences to customers without compromising on security and compliance requirements. Identity plays a key role in solving this challenge, and we’ve introduced a series of new updates to Advanced Server Access that give DevOps teams the identity control they need to rapidly scale the modern cloud infrastructure their businesses rely on.

Okta customers building in the cloud can now integrate with providers like Terraform to scale identity-driven infrastructure as code, and they can build no-code automation tied to server access through Okta Workflows. This represents a strong platform proofpoint, taking advantage of the Okta Workflows Platform Service to make server access and downstream actions programmable. 

Customizing Secure User Authentication through Device SDK’s

Next, let's talk about developers. Developers building cutting edge digital products must tailor their services to meet the security and usability expectations of customers from around the globe. To enable this, we’re extending Okta Devices Platform Service capabilities to developers through the Okta Devices SDK.

We’re investing heavily in developer experience, and this new SDK puts power in the hands of developers everywhere. Using the Devices SDK, developers can enable passwordless authentication through push notifications with biometric capabilities, minimizing friction for end-users, and increasing security posture—all with the highly customizable look and feel of their own brands.

Automating Complex Developer Processes with Customer Identity Workflows

Part of what frees developers up to build cutting-edge functionality is simplifying back-end automation script-writing. That requires a way to deliver automation across systems without involving code so non-technical teams can program automation themselves. It also means providing a runtime for any custom logic when needed, empowering developers to plug custom logic into an automation flow, rather than having to host it themselves. 

Our new Okta Customer Identity Workflows helps developers and IT professionals streamline complex identity processes through no-code automation, minimizing the time and effort required to execute on digital transformation initiatives. Non-technical teammates can rely on drag-and-drop tooling to build flows, while developers can use Customer Identity Workflows as a runtime for Okta Hooks, inserting custom logic into flows to create the exact “if this, do this, then that” automation their businesses rely on.

There’s no limit to the potential for Customer Identity Workflows, and we’re already addressing common use cases through Workflow Connectors to Salesforce, Marketo, and OneTrust. These connectors simplify programming relationship management, marketing, and privacy and consent identity automation.

Now product creators have more control over the user authentication experience, can easily automate complex, resource-intensive tasks to scale their operations, and are ultimately better empowered to stay competitive in this identity-driven economy.

The past six months have presented some serious challenges, but as you’re on the journey to grow and innovate, we are here to help.