Okta Platform

We had a bunch of Active Directory servers, Windows Active Directory servers on-premises. We did an Okta Platform  agent installation on those servers to synchronize the identities from Active Directory to Okta Platform . We then leveraged that integration and configured it as an Identity and Access Management  and SSO  solution.

I used Okta Platform as Identity and Access Management , which served as the source of truth for every single application entitlement and role-based access. Role-based access was a particularly important feature. Multi-Factor Authentication was essential, and I am using and consuming a lot of those even today for a couple of applications, though I am not managing that particular Okta Platform instance as it is managed by a third party. Identity and Access Management, Multi-Factor Authentication, role-based access, and SSO  were all critical components, serving as the source of truth for the entire application footprint. I also used Okta Platform for Zero Trust Network Access  on the consumer side, which was a Palo Alto engine that I integrated with Okta Platform.

Okta Platform is a SaaS service, not something which you have to host yourself on-premises. Of course, you need agents to synchronize if you are already moving from a traditional on-premises identity-based architecture. Okta Platform is SaaS-based. While there are competitors such as Ping Identity, which used to be a great one but has since been acquired, and Microsoft Entra, which does all of it as well, Okta Platform has a lot of advantages. Okta Platform has very rich integration capabilities with a lot of other vendors, including deep integration capabilities with Zscaler, CrowdStrike, most of the ZTNA  vendors, and CASB  vendors. The number of applications that you can natively integrate with it out of the box is quite huge. Another advantage is the risk-based authentication capability, where Okta Platform gives you the capability to have step-up authentication based upon superhuman activity or unusual login detections. MFA is fairly seamless, and while it is not something that Okta Platform is doing alone as others are doing it as well, Okta Platform is stable with no issues with downtime or maintenance. I never had any challenges with that. The rich integrations are a significant advantage.

Context-awareness is more about not just the username or service principals, but also depends upon where and how that particular user is accessing things from. If a particular user changes the endpoint from which they are trying to log in or changes location quite abruptly within a span of few minutes, which is superhuman activity, then that additional context gets captured. You get a true risk-based authentication wherein you have to satisfy more authentication parameters or factors before you can actually get access to the resource.

At the same time, you can also do a lot of conditional access things where if there is a certain level of risk associated with that particular authenticated session, then you can actually restrict the level of access that that particular user can have so that you do not penalize the user just because some session is potentially risky. You can let the user have the ability to do at least the basic work or remediate things. Okta Platform is a full-blown Identity and Access Management solution, so it does send out attributes which can be passed from the identity to the service principle, which is your application. Depending upon that, you can let the application know that this particular user, because it is risky, is not going to be able to access the usual things, but maybe restrict the access. This is completely based upon the context of that particular user's authentication session.

Okta Platform does what it promises that it does. It is certainly all cloud-based as a SaaS solution. For enterprises which really prefer to have their own identity within their own perimeter, Okta Platform might not be the solution they might look for. Of course, there are ways you can get your dedicated tenant, especially for governments and federal agencies and all of those things. I have not tried those use cases. I think Okta Platform is the best of the class and appears consistently at the top of the Gartner report and other research.

Based on the use cases I had, I was fairly happy with it. The PAM capabilities and attribute-based access controls, ABAC, represent a new paradigm. How practical that is for enterprises to deploy largely depends upon the use cases. There is always room for improvement, and it is not just for Okta Platform but typically for every single customer identity provider. There are a lot of other things the biometric and FIDO and all of those which can certainly be improved. However, that is more of a technological constraint rather than the vendor itself.

I have experience working on Okta Platform Identity and Access Management and Secure Server Access. The earliest I remember was back in 2019.

Okta Platform is stable with no issues with downtime or maintenance. I never had any challenges with stability.

Scalability is handled because Okta Platform is a SaaS solution, so it is infinitely scalable. I have account managers that get assigned to the account who make sure that the underlying infrastructure is there to support the need for a lot of user identities that will be getting deployed. I never had any outages. I would rate it like eight or nine.

Support is great. You get in-line support by just logging into it. I never faced a lot of challenges. There were one or two instances where the MFA was a bit slow, but they took care of it very quickly.

The earliest I remember was back in 2019 when I first worked on Okta Platform doing integrations with Zscaler Private Access and Zscaler Internet Access . We had a bunch of Active Directory servers, Windows Active Directory servers on-premises, and we did an Okta Platform agent installation on those servers to synchronize the identities from Active Directory to Okta Platform. I then leveraged that integration and configured it as an Identity and Access Management and SSO solution.

Right now I am not using Okta Platform. I am currently using Entra ID, but I was a customer of Okta Platform until six or seven months ago.

The initial setup is really straightforward. You get a tenant and you get in-line help. The documentation is very feature-rich. It is really straightforward. It takes time depending upon the number of identity providers that you need to integrate with, especially if you are doing a brownfield deployment. For a greenfield deployment, you just get a tenant assigned and start configuring it. It does not take a lot of time.

I have not been asked about implementation teams. I am not even sure if that is a standard practice because Okta Platform sits in its own tenant and I do not think there is anything there.

The reason why I purchased Okta Platform was primarily to centralize Identity and Access Management because it was all scattered. From the identity and access governance standpoint, it made sense to not rely on scattered identity providers but to actually have a single centralized IDP . The ROI comes not from Okta Platform itself, of course, the platform enables it, but the thought process that goes into having all of the identities stored in one single tool, which eases a lot of your entitlements. You do not have to go into different places and give people entitlements. The identity and access governance timeline shortens drastically. Okta Platform has its own IAG as well, which is in-built. If you are a small or mid-sized company, you do not need to have a dedicated IAG and all of those things. Okta Platform can work alone. You can eliminate a lot of inconsistencies and sprawls with your existing tool stack if you move into this. Of course, it is true for Entra ID as well, but with Okta Platform, I think it is one solution that can take care of most of your identity and access related needs.

You get a real value for your money. Whatever amount you spend, you get a bang for it. Okta Platform is decently priced. It is certainly not cheap, but the features that you get, the functionality that you get, and whatever use cases that you have, it definitely satisfies those. There are no hidden things there. Once you have deployed it, they do not ask you for buying other things for integration or just to take care of your use cases. I think they are selling whatever is worth it if you are putting it in.

The primary competitors I would think are Azure  Entra ID. Azure  Entra ID is one of the closest competitors. Both cater to different use cases. Based upon the use cases that I had, there were not a lot where one could do and the other could not. Both are in the same realm.

Based on the use cases I had, I was fairly happy with it. The IAG, Identity and Access Governance , is one of the best features. You can use that for taking care of a lot of your entitlements. If there are people who are getting onboarded, such as bulk users getting onboarded which is true for most of the IT services industries where there are hundreds of people joining every week, and people getting offboarded, those automated lifecycle policies automate the entire thing. It not just removes or suspends your identities, but it also conveys it to the downstream applications. It is one of the best things that they introduced a couple of years ago. I would give Okta Platform an overall rating of nine out of ten.

It is for Single Sign-on and Multi-Factor Authentication.

It is very easy to log in to all my various corporate accounts through Okta Platform . This helps me because I do not need to have any password. I just simply log into Okta Platform  which has a single sign-on capability.

This helps us whenever our employees, our new employees come into the company. On first login, when they come into the company, they have access to all our corporate accounts already once they have their corporate account. They can log into their various productivity and corporate applications. This helps ease the burden from our IT support team to have to onboard someone manually. When someone leaves the company, having an IT team have to remove their access one by one is a very difficult process. Okta Platform Lifecycle Management helps us offboard those employees who have left the company more easily.

It would be great if there were a way to save even my social media passwords and other passwords through Okta Platform and single sign-on through Okta Platform in the future. I do not think they have this capability just yet.

I have been using this for six years.

There were some alternatives like JumpCloud  and Ping Identity that we were evaluating. However, since we are a partner, we prefer Okta Platform. There is a bias towards Okta Platform.

I would say the setup difficulty was in the middle, depending on circumstances. For us, it was quite simple because we had everything in place. We just needed to integrate the Single Sign-on and the directory with our Google Workspace  or our current IDP . It was pretty straightforward and took a couple of days.

Regarding pricing, as mentioned, we are a partner, so we do get a special big discount as a partner versus other customers.

There were some alternatives like JumpCloud  and Ping Identity that we were evaluating.

Okta Platform is a great product and one of the best. We are a partner and have been using it for six years. We have four engineers on our team. We do not use the PAM and do not need it. I would rate this product nine out of ten.