Act Now: Okta Fiscal Year End is January 2023

Your Virtual Bouncer, Now Larger and Stronger and (Soon) Profitable 

But how secure is Okta, really? 

From 2021 to 2022 Okta grew from $835 million to $1.3 billion in top line revenue, a 55.63% increase, indicating strong market acceptance. However, the company is still losing money, and losses accelerated by 218.55% in 2022 to -$848M. 

If you need security from the occasional undesirable intruder in your enterprise and need to convey strength in the way you control access to the information you hold most dear by restricting access to unwelcomed guests and bouncing them from your cloud, you may very well need to learn more about Okta. 

However, Okta has also recently been struck by several security incidents that may cause enterprises to reconsider their purchases.

  • In 2022, the  Lapsus$ hacker group took over the account of a customer support engineer at one of Okta’s third-party service providers and posted screenshots of Okta’s apps and systems. 
  • Okta was hacked again in August this year after another hacking campaign breached over 100 organizations, including Twilio Inc (NYSE: TWLO) and DoorDash, Inc (NYSE: DASH). 
  • And most recently, in December 2022, Okta  confirmed that a hacker accessed it’s source code by breaching Okta’s repositories on GitHub (a Microsoft subsidiary).   

In 2021, we named Okta as the #3 technology supplier to watch - largely based on its growth in the enterprise space as a Single-Sign-On platform. In March 2021, Okta acquired Auth0, and by doing so, moved from a cloud-based identity and access management company that provides single-sign-on access for employees for a variety of cloud services, to an enterprise solution provider that also helps developers build easy, out-of-the-box identity and access management controls with just a couple lines of code, helping customers to securely authenticate the users of their applications. Besides Single-sign-on support, feature sets common in this Identity & Access Management (IAM) application space include Access Control, Multi-Factor Authentication, Password Management and Account Provisioning and De-provisioning to name a few. 

Okta’s growth has been fueled by its ability to connect different populations and geographies without the need to set up Active Directory Trusts, modify firewall policies, or invest in more infrastructure to connect them all together. 

Okta is currently ranked as the #3 or #4 IAM provider (depending on who you believe), and faces stiff competition from the likes of Broadcom (Symantec), Centrify, CyberArk, Duo Security, ForgeRock, IBM, JumpCloud, OneLogin, Oracle, Ping Identity, RSA, SailPoint Identity Platform, and many others, but Microsoft is seemingly its most stiff competition, as the Okta solution set offers admin and user-friendly tools that offer broad integration across the entire Microsoft technology stack: 

In head-to-head client run-offs, we have found that Duo Security stacks up well against Otka, ranking higher in ease of use, quality of support, user experience, MFA, SSO, and Administration among other areas. 

From its own employees, Okta has a Glassdoor rating of 3.7 out of 5, with a 62% recommend to a friend score, and employees openly criticize the company's growing pains because of its hyper growth. When you filter the ratings for full time software engineers, Okta’s rating drops to 2.3. Further investigation starts to reveal that the chief complaint is that the architecture is quite monolithic and difficult, which makes us wonder if Okta will be able to keep pace with a rapidly changing environment.

Okta’s stock has gone from a high of $291.78 as of Feb 12, 2021, to around $60, at or near its lowest value since 2018.  

As mentioned above, Okta’s FYE is January, and given the backdrop of the other information provided herein, it makes this January a particularly great time to claim value if you have a proposal, an agreement, or a renewal on the table. 

Pricing 

Okta Workforce Identity Cloud pricing is as follows: 

Single Sign-on:

  • SSO $2/user/month 
  • Adaptive SSO $5/user/month 

Multi-Factor Authentication: 

  • MFA $3/user/month 
  • Adaptive MFA $6/user/month 

Universal Directory: 

  • $2/user/month 

Lifecycle Management: 

  • $4/user/month 

API Access Management:  

  • $2/user/month 

Advanced Server Access: 

  • $15/server/month 

Access Gateway: 

  • $3/user/month 

Workflow pricing: 

  • 5 workflows at no cost 
  • $4/user/month for up to 50 workflows 
  • $5/user/month for up to 150 workflows 
  • $6/user/month for unlimited workflows 

Identity Governance: 

  • Light: $9/user/month for up to 50 workflows 
  • Medium: $10/user/month for up to 150 workflows 
  • Unlimited $11/user/month for unlimited workflows 

Okta Customer Identity Cloud pricing is as follows: 

B2C Plans: 
  • Essentials $23/month 
  • Professional $240/month 
B2B Plans: 
  • Essential $130/month 
  • Professional $800/month 

Negotiated discounts can be obtained, depending on the composition of the bill of materials, the term, the volumes, and other specifics. Pricing discounts of more than 90% from the published list pricing are achievable for exceptionally large deployments. 

https://www.okta.com/pricing/ 

Okta has enjoyed a significant amount of market acceptance and momentum, capturing more market share in recent years and now (as a publicly traded company) there are added pressures to continue to grow and perform. Customers are starting to see some added sales pressures from Okta in recent months to add on additional functionality.  

Because most of the offerings are presented ala carte, this of course increases Okta revenues, but is also seen as somewhat transactional, as customers have not been getting optimized market treatment based on their volumes, product mixes, and terms – unless they have made larger, more strategic purchases up front. As a result, customers who have grown with Okta over time are increasingly ‘out of market’ when looking at their total costs. From an entry cost of $2/user/month, adding functionality can easily push up costs by 10x or more. 

In extreme cases, customers that stack add-on user functionality over time and progress transactionally can end up paying $50/user/month, which puts them at the highest end of the bell curve in terms of over-payment on value, and this doesn’t even include all the additional costs for user and device management as well as costs for authentication systems for other protocols.

How to Save 

First step; everyone should benchmark their Okta proposal and/or agreement. With just a few pieces of information, NET(net) can benchmark your deal (in as little as 1 business day) and show you how much you can save. 

The Commercial Arrangement 

  • Evaluate the bill of materials carefully to build the feature set you need to achieve your goals and review the Okta solutions to determine how much it would cost with a minimal deployment and feature-set. 
  • To maximize your discounts, you want to maximize your volume, so you should consider maximizing your existing user and other counts (servers, flows, et al). 
  • If deploying multiple titles to a single user, press for bundled pricing discounts in addition to the tiered price consideration. Incentive discounts should be given for each new title added. 

The Contractual Agreement 

  • Agreement Type. IAM applications like Okta are also good candidates for an enterprise licensing agreement structure depending on your growth projections, suite of applications required and volume requirements. The ELA can be very complicated and work against you if not structured properly, so best to seek the advice of a trusted partner before entering an ELA.

Summary 

NET(net) can help you maximize your savings on Okta, and with January’s Fiscal Year-End fast approaching, there is no better time to capture value, soAct Now. 

Call to Action 

Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you save 32-60% on all your SaaS investments, including those with Okta or Sign up now for a Savings Cloud subscription on Okta, and we will get started right away helping you minimize costs and risks, and maximize the realization of value and benefit. 

About NET(net) 

Founded in 2002, NET(net) is the world’s leading IT Investment Optimization firm, helping clients find, get, and keep more economic and strategic value in their technology supply chains. With over 2,500 clients around the world in nearly all industries and geographies, and with the experience of over 25,000 field engagements with over 250 technology suppliers in XaaS, Cloud, Hardware, Software, Services, Healthcare, Outsourcing, Infrastructure, Telecommunications, and other areas of IT spend, NET(net) has the expertise you need, the experience you want, and delivers the performance you demand, resulting in incremental client captured value in excess of $250 billion since 2002. Contact us today at info@netnetweb.com, visit us online at www.netnetweb.com, or call us at +1-616-546-3100 to see if we can help you capture more value in your IT investments, agreements, and relationships. 

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