PwC and Okta: delivering cloud identity solutions

Okta is a cloud identity platform focussed on enabling organisations to use technology securely, as Paul Rooke, Managing Director - GSIs and Advisories, explains: “We promise to always protect the identities of our customers’ work force and their customers. We have 14 offices around the world, 2,700 employees, approaching 9,000 customers and six and a half thousand integrations with other technologies.”

As companies look at their digital transformation programmes, they don't want to get locked into legacy applications that take years to roll out, and they don't want to be locked into identity solutions that are stuck onto those applications as an afterthought. We take away the headache of identity, allowing PWC to focus on the business requirements of their clients.”

The partnership has afforded Okta the ability to get a broad view of client requirements, as Rooke explains. “PwC are authoring not just identity strategy, but across digital transformation as a whole. With PwC at the forefront of a client relationship, they work very strongly with our own professional services team, our own customer success organisation, and our engineering teams, to really get deep into our technology and make sure that our technology fits the requirements of those large programmes and customers.”

Rooke identifies legacy migration as one of the keys powering the relationship into the future. “We’re able to leverage Okta’s Access Gateway into legacy tools, whilst at the same time moving that organisation, as part of it’s transformation program, into the new world. That involves replacing on-premise apps with cloud apps, and at the same time, having Okta sitting on top of everything as a cloud technology that retains a gateway into legacy systems.” The company is further empowering users by putting its technology into the hands of developers. “Developers can actually build Okta into their own home-grown applications. That's something that PwC can offer as a service to clients, guiding and helping them strategise around that.”

Rooke remains confident in the strength of the partnership and its ability to withstand the COVID-19 pandemic and the challenges it has presented to clients. “The remote work piece has obviously developed at pace this year, and that’s something PwC and Okta can deliver solutions for. For example, a soft drinks organisation is now managing the relationship with suppliers and their distributors globally using Okta as the identity solution. That's something we’ve only seen accelerate this year.”