Sequoia Capital Leads Series D Round, Okta Appoints Philip Turner As New GM For European Operations
London, UK – September 16, 2013 — Okta announced today that it closed a $27 million Series D funding round led by returning investor Sequoia Capital. Existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock Partners and Khosla Ventures all participated. Okta will use the funds to build on its significant momentum in North America and to expand internationally, led by the company’s first European general manager.
This latest investment comes on the heels of Okta’s $25 million Series C round in 2012, and serves as a strong endorsement of the company’s vision to securely connect the world’s people, applications and devices. As the industry’s leading cloud-based identity management platform, Okta helps IT leaders centrally manage and simplify end-user access across a rapidly increasing set of mobile, cloud-based and on-premises applications.
“Businesses are quickly recognising the opportunities afforded by cloud-based and mobile IT strategies. For most, the question is no longer why, but how they can securely and quickly adopt new and disruptive technologies,” said Doug Leone, partner at Sequoia Capital. “Okta has proven that cloud-based identity management is essential to helping businesses make this critical transition. Todd and his team have built a great product and company, and we’re excited to support their continued success.”
European GM to Lead International Expansion
This latest financing round will help fuel the company’s international expansion. Philip Turner joins Okta as the company’s first European general manager, bringing 20 years of experience building and scaling enterprise software businesses across the UK and mainland Europe.
“Most European organisations (more than 80 percent) already make use of some form of cloud-based services and are considering further deployment opportunities,” said Andrew Kellett, Principal Analyst with responsibility for security and identity at Ovum. “Simplifying user access to cloud systems using standards-based approaches that overcome legacy complexity issues is an attractive message, and one that is being promoted by Okta to offer users a seamless passage between on-premise and cloud-based applications.”
International expansion comes at an ideal time for Okta, as demand for the company’s enterprise identity management solution has grown significantly worldwide. Okta’s customer count increased well over 100 percent since this time last year, and includes the addition of global Fortune 500 companies like MGM Resorts International and European-based organisations like London Gatwick Airport.
“While no two technology environments are the same, and no two organisations share the same set of business priorities, businesses of all sizes are now adopting cloud and mobile solutions in their IT strategies. Legacy identity solutions are simply insufficient as these changes force a company’s security perimeter to be re-established outside of a company’s firewall,” said Todd McKinnon, CEO of Okta. “As we move more deeply into the European market with this financing round, we look forward to building on our success by helping IT leaders implement cloud and mobile strategies with the level of security, compliance and scale that they require.”
Innovation to Address Enterprises’ Diverse Identity Needs
Okta has proven its ability to scale and meet the needs of the global enterprise through continued product innovation and the launch of comprehensive new partner programs. Major milestones include:
New Functionality To Enable External Identity Management: Okta introduced several features — including restful APIs, in-product customisation options, and seamlessly federated access into B2B portals — to help enterprises manage and secure external identities. Okta also released its integration with SharePoint, which enables IT administrators to securely manage customer or partner access to SharePoint-based portals.
Okta Technology Alliance & Okta Solution Provider Partner Programs: Okta announced new partner programs designed to add to the more than 2,500 pre-integrated applications in the Okta Application Network — and to meet the increasing demand for Okta’s enterprise-grade identity service.
Comprehensive Cloud Security, Zero-Downtime Architecture: Okta’s service exceeds industry standards for cloud security, including completion of the SOC 2 Type II audit across all five trust principles. The company’s zero-downtime architecture is 100 percent multitenant, stateless and extremely redundant. Okta’s Amazon Web Services footprint spans eight availability zones and two geographic regions, and the service has maintained perfect availability for the past 16 months.
