Okta Identity Platform [Private Offer Only]

I usually used Okta Platform for managing user identities and ensuring secure access to our applications.

Okta Platform helped me secure access to cloud infrastructure, APIs, containerized workloads, and AI/GenAI services in my architecture, enhancing our security posture significantly.

Okta Platform protected non-human identities in my environment, such as service accounts and machine-to-machine access.

The features or capabilities of Okta Platform that I have found the most valuable include its single sign-on and multi-factor authentication.

The positive impact and benefits I have seen from using Okta Platform involve enhanced security and streamlined user access.

Specific industry and regulatory requirements that Okta Platform helped me address in my cloud environment were critical for compliance.

Since implementing Okta Platform, I have noticed measurable security and operational improvements in my cloud-based workloads.

Okta Platform could be improved or enhanced by adding more integration options for third-party applications.

I have been working with Okta Platform for a considerable time now, which has provided me with great insights into its functionalities.

Okta Platform's stability and reliability are impressive, which is crucial for our operations.

My experience with the technical support of Okta Platform and their customer service was positive, as they were responsive to my inquiries.

I would rate the technical support from one to ten as an eight, appreciating their effectiveness though there is always room for improvement.

I changed the previous solution and decided to switch from Adaxes to something else because we needed more robust features, and with large companies offering solutions such as Okta Platform, it became inevitable.

I participated in the initial setup of Okta Platform, which allowed me to understand its configuration better.

I found everything straightforward during the initial setup; however, I did encounter some challenges with integration.

I have experienced a notable ROI from Okta Platform, which has justified our investment in it.

I last engaged with Okta Platform around this time of the year.

I was a customer of Okta Platform and found the solution to meet our requirements effectively.

The last time I used Okta Platform was relatively recently, and it still remains quite effective for our needs.

I did not participate in the decision-making process for Okta Platform purchasing, as that was handled by our procurement team.

I would rate this review an eight out of ten.

Most of what I appreciate about Okta Platform are the no-code features that I have found excellent, as you have a very low requirement to code. Even if a new teammate comes in and tries to get familiar with it, after some basic training, they will be able to perform some minimal tasks that are repeated processes for us. It is quite easy to learn from my perspective if you have basic IAM knowledge. If you understand the concept, a new person can come in and get up to speed very quickly. You don't have to do very extensive training as you might have to do for some other tools to handle advanced tasks. With five to six months of experience, we can put a person on policy creations.

For me, learning to use Okta Platform was quite easy because I have been in this space for around seven-plus years. I had previous knowledge of ForgeRock and SailPoint, so it was easy for me to transition to Okta Platform because I had knowledge of the concepts.

The major problem we face with Okta Platform is pricing because most of our clientele move away from Okta Platform because of the pricing. If someone is looking for on-premises solutions, they usually don't choose Okta Platform.

They predominantly try to go for Ping rather than Okta Platform because Ping provides a very wide variety of concepts and tools and details their tool on a very specific level, particularly their on-premises tools. Anyone who invests has to pay a higher price, and if with the same kind of structure they can get some other enterprise-grade tool that caters to all those things, they will definitely choose Ping rather than Okta Platform.

I have approximately three to four years of experience working with Okta Platform, from the time I started working and even before that.

The only issue I faced was once at the start. I have worked with around 50,000 users. Right now, the recent client has more than that, but on average, around 50,000 in a typical scenario. I have never seen drops in Okta Platform systems.

I have contacted technical support or customer support multiple times, but not through standard channels. We are a technical partner with Okta Platform, so we have a channel open all the time. I have been in contact with them for different types of RFPs, and even right now, I am still in communication with Okta Platform support.

I think the quality and speed of support for Okta Platform are among the best. The way they respond and the quickness in terms of when you raise an issue through technical channels such as creating a support ticket, they respond back within the SLA they have provided, which might depend on the kind of service the client has signed an MOU for. It can either be 24 hours or 48 hours based on severity. They do respond within that time, whichever they have agreed on.

I give them a score of eight because I have seen them respond in detail, and you usually don't have to follow up on that. Sometimes, with those kinds of detailed scenarios, there might be misinterpretation at the level where you misunderstand something in the question, and that follow-up can be tricky.

For me, the initial deployment of Okta Platform was already completed for most of the clients because you get built-in support from Okta Platform, so that is majorly the case. For the current client, the tool itself is not decided, so I have not worked on an Okta Platform deployment.

I am majorly on the development and implementation side. For Okta Platform, I have not seen much maintenance happening. There was only once I faced an issue, and that was at the start of my career, but I have never faced that kind of issue in Okta Platform since.

Pricing-wise, Okta Platform is higher compared to the other tools, and my current client actually moved away from Okta Platform because of that reason alone.

Right now, we don't have a tool selected on our client's side, and we are mostly targeting Ping because that caters to all their requirements, and the costing is lower than Okta Platform.

I think the score I give to Okta Platform overall will completely depend on the use cases each client has because it might vary. From my personal opinion, I would rate it around eight because I think there are many things Okta Platform has that are best in terms of IAM solutions. However, there are still many things that other platforms are doing that are missing in Okta Platform. From my perspective, Okta Platform is currently trying to move towards IGA as well, but there are still some areas for improvement.

Okta Platform has primarily acted as an identity provider across my organizations. The key component is that even though people have HR systems nowadays, they do not have all the sorts of automations which we require on a daily basis for what we need for the users. For example, in my previous organization, there was no lifecycle automation management. In that order, we used Okta Platform Workflows in automating the CRUD operations, such as creating user accounts, updating whenever a user gets promoted or demoted, and deletion once the user has been leaving from the company. These were the major use cases where we handled identities across the organization and provided access through the SSO or OIDC access through Okta Platform Workflow portal.

We have approached many clients. They were using some native Oracle-based IAM systems, which was too hard for them to maintain and manage for the users. When the client approached my organization, the major request for them was that it should be highly reliable and have a promising uptime value.

It also was for a project requirement. Basically, my organization is heavily relying on Microsoft, but we exactly took Okta Platform for a client requirement. We got a US-based client, and it was a very big project for us, and their all native system was running on Okta Platform. In order to have that sort of running, and they did not have a test tenant. That was where we moved forward and thought to bring up the tenant in Okta Platform and try our sandbox environment, spinning up all the resources and checking how exactly it goes. That was the point where we adapted to Okta Platform and understood the scope and how exactly it has been working.

One thing which makes Okta Platform different from everything is the feasibility of the integration it provides. It almost has all sorts of integrations required for SSO. Okta Platform does not give any cloud platform an upper hand or bias. It has all sorts of integration available. Plus, it is user-friendly and the UI is very promising for the people who work on automations, especially in the workflows. It works in a card-based system, essentially low-code, no-code.

Okta Platform allows troubleshooting of any sort of blocker from the platform and implementing the requirement. The documentation on Okta Platform is extensive and less confusing compared to other identity providers.

Okta Platform is highly reliable and does not have any sort of downtime. Okta Platform also offers customer-managed support for each account. Okta Platform has regular client meetups to educate us on new launches or features such as FIDO.

Okta Platform has a wide variety of API requirements. For example, not all native SSO applications have SCIM requirements, but Okta APIs can help automate even where SCIM is not present. Okta Platform also integrates with AI practices for automation.

Okta Platform provides scalability options with minimal latency. Okta Platform is very scalable, allowing user addition without immediate payment during the current cycle. These scalability attributes cater to larger organizations as well as small businesses.

Okta Platform Application Network is very helpful for identifying integration possibilities. All details that a developer needs would be available in one place.

Okta Platform facilitates SSO capabilities without cloud platform bias and has a user-friendly, card-based automation system. Okta offers focused and efficient customer support, which is highly appreciated.

Whenever we have any sort of technical issues or configuration issues, they have a solution. Customer support is very responsive and effective.

The one thing which can be improved in Okta Platform would be the certifications which they provide. It is crucial for people to get recognized in the industry. Also, some of their documents have outdated images or screenshots, leading to confusion. Keeping the knowledge base updated quarterly is advisable.

In my environment, I have not specifically used some concepts like device management and Okta Platform's OAuth in the CISM platform. I would like to have further implementation progress on them.

I have been working with Okta Platform for almost three plus years.

There were not any downtimes whenever I worked with Okta Platform, but there was a scenario where applications were not visible inside the dashboard. It was fixed within 45 minutes to an hour. Users did have access to the applications in the directories, but they were not visible at the endpoint during this time.

Scalability in Okta Platform is notable for its minimal latency. For my organization, which had only been licensed for Okta Platform up to 50 identities, scaling up was not an issue even when our HR team onboarded more people. This feature makes Okta Platform applicable for larger organizations or small startups.

Whenever there is a need to add users, it is possible, and during the next cycle of payment, we only need to pay them up. This is an immense advantage over platforms such as Google Workspace, which require licenses at most instances.

All the people, especially those who work in Okta Platform, are highly educated. The customer support team has resolutions for the issues or does not make us wait too long. They efficiently access their vast knowledge base and return quickly with solutions. For Okta Platform, the customer service is seamless, and I am very satisfied with their assistance compared to other channels such as Microsoft's, which usually takes longer to resolve issues.

Whenever we create a ticket, Okta Platform usually sorts everything via Zoom calls. Positive experiences every time have led to my satisfaction with their customer support services.

Active Directory is always comfortable in working with Entra because it is a Microsoft product. When starting a company new to technology, Okta Platform is beneficial. Microsoft is a go-to for organizations with legacy identities utilizing Microsoft tools. For Jamf-reliant and MacBook major users, Okta Platform is optimal.

We also use Okta Platform under a client requirement. Since all native systems were on Okta, a test tenant was not available, and hence, understanding the benefits of working on Okta was necessary.

I am not able to recall the price structure of Okta Platform. It all would be looking into the financial end, so I am not very familiar with it. I do not know the current rate of purchasing, but it is always based on per seat. Okta has a straightforward purchase system compared to Microsoft's separate licenses for cloud.

If a particular organization is too old or with a legacy system, they would continue favoring Microsoft due to familiarity. Okta Platform serves new startups or ventures seeking technological change well. Engage with CSM providers to have an Okta Platform walkthrough.

When only needing application management, Okta Platform suffices, but if requiring identity, device, and email automation handling, assess needs before adoption.

I would rate Okta Platform as an eight.

I did not work on any health industry projects, but I worked with a food industry known as Flashfood. It is one of the global chains in the US and Canada. They opted for Okta Platform.

The one thing is I am a big fan of where people keep things very minimal in the UI. When I go for other solutions, apart from Google, I keep the Google Workspace identity aside because Google is also one of my favorites whenever I am working with identities.

For all the non-service accounts, the realms inside Okta Platform allow for stringent policy implementation, such as IP or geographical restrictions, ensuring uncompromised service accounts. My overall rating for this review is eight out of ten.

An example of how I use Okta Platform in my day-to-day work includes the integration of new applications, reviewing security-related matters, or making decisions on how to secure identity. I also perform automation with the help of AI to improve identity management. We are using Okta Platform with AI.

The best feature Okta Platform offers is availability; it has high availability, which is very hard to find, and I have been working with Okta Platform for more than six years.

Availability stands out for me because the identity platform is core; if people cannot sign in, they cannot work, so it has to be available at any point in time. In six years, I have never seen it going down.

Okta Platform has positively impacted my organization by doing a lot of cleanup, simplifying operations, improving visibility, governance, and security across the board.

I would say that sourcing every user via different sources into Okta Platform gives a single pane of view of the organization, where you can track login activity and see who is active and who is inactive. Cleanup of those inactives improves both security and cost.

The only improvement point I would suggest for Okta Platform is that it needs to redesign the feature request system because there are many important features that are not taken into consideration.

I do not want to go into specific details, but you can visit Okta Ideas and see many ideas that have been shared. Many of them are prioritized, but the fact that a user wants it or that a metric exists does not help. Okta Platform needs to redesign or repurpose the entire concept of how it wants to handle feature requests.

I have been using Okta Platform for more than six years.

Okta Platform's customer support is good. I would rate the customer support a 10 because it is consistent.

I rate Okta Platform a 10. The reason for my rating is its reliability, availability, and simplicity. I advise others looking into using Okta Platform to evaluate it; if you are not going to use it, at least evaluate it alongside your current platform to see the difference, as a lot of things can be done through Okta Platform, with availability and reliability being the most important factors.

I use Okta Platform for single sign-on and managing the authentication process. I have used all of the geofencing features for security purposes. In the current field of cybersecurity, I have been working for seven years specifically.

My favorite aspect of Okta Platform is that it is really user-friendly. The admin configuration UI is user-friendly when you view it.

I have worked on Okta Platform's IGA features, and they were not great or up to the mark. While they were trying to get new features, it was not working as expected at that time when it was in beta. There are some features, especially on the customization side, that cannot be customized, and there are a few things that would be nice to customize as well.

I would like Okta Platform to protect non-human identities in the environment, such as service accounts.

In terms of industry or regulatory requirements, it depends on the person implementing Okta Platform. All necessary protocols need to be followed, but I don't think Okta Platform has set any templates to ensure these protocols are being followed. It would be a nice-to-have feature where they could set some templates and provide guidance on what can be implemented.

I have been working with Okta Platform for five to six years overall.

Okta Platform is stable with very few instability issues.

Okta Platform is 100% scalable.

I have had to contact technical support for Okta Platform many times.

The speed and quality of their answers depend on the nature of the issue. Sometimes it was an easy fix, and sometimes I had to do a lot of back and forth. Speed is good initially, but depending on the problem nature, it becomes a little stagnant. However, I have no complaints as I think they have been super helpful. Even if they are not able to help, it goes to another team member, but they generally try to help.

I would give the support for Okta Platform a score of seven out of ten.

I have used alternatives to Okta Platform.

I was definitely there for the initial deployment of Okta Platform, and I would rate it as medium.

A team is required for Okta Platform. I don't believe we should be dependent on one person, and there should be people from many different teams involved. Even if there is not a lot of work, in all of my projects, Okta Platform has indicated that we need people. In one or two instances, Okta Platform professionals were not there to help, but I highly recommend someone from Okta to be there to guide us through the whole process.

Okta Platform requires maintenance on my end as a customer. It is 100% the customer's responsibility to maintain all features. Even if someone is going out of the company, there needs to be deactivation, so everything needs to be maintained by customers of Okta Platform. With respect to features and patches, sometimes they release a few patches that we will have to update ourselves, but in other cases, they try to do some silent pushes. However, it totally depends on how Okta Platform chooses to do it.

Overall, regarding the pricing of Okta Platform, I think it is a little expensive.

The biggest differences that come to mind are that, positively, Okta Platform is more user-friendly, but negatively, Okta Platform is way more expensive than a few other products in the market.

I have used Ontra, Ontra ID, PingID, SiteMinder, SailPoint, and Saviant, which are not exactly competitors to Okta Platform but somewhat similar.

How long it took to finish projects with Okta Platform from start to finish depends on multiple factors. I have done many projects with Okta Platform, starting from overnight to even a week, so it depends on the customer as well, on what is being implemented, and what the go-live date is for the particular time. The deployment depends on a client-to-client basis. My overall review rating for Okta Platform is eight out of ten.

I use Okta Platform as an administrator to set up new SAML and SSO apps. We also use the governance module as well. We also use the automation functions with workflows. We use it mainly as our main identity platform. I have been using it at all my past companies.

What I appreciate about Okta Platform is that it is most of the time a very good no-code platform. It allows us to set up new SSO integrations quite easily, even if the app doesn't really support SSO natively. It is pretty easy to configure on Okta Platform.

Okta Platform has impacted my organization positively by providing convenience, first of all. There are no more different passwords for many different apps, since SSO doesn't really require password storing. Security has also improved because we eliminate a very big weak point that passwords represent. Additionally, we maintain control to ensure we only give access to the necessary apps to the necessary people.

I would definitely see improvements in the governance module of Okta Platform. The way we do certification of accesses, certification campaigns, and access requests could be improved. A better way for users to actually request an instance in Okta Platform, for example, an app, without having to use a third-party integration for ServiceNow or Jira Service Management, would be valuable. Having something built in to Okta Platform would be beneficial.

From the features perspective, functionality-wise, I would see recent features included in Okta Platform. Our company works on a hub-and-spoke model, and Okta Platform did introduce a way to have more of a federated level. What they call claim sharing, and we really would appreciate a bit more improvement on that functionality, since that functionality helps us to have a single identity on a hub and pass that identity to the other spokes and have seamless login between all of them. Claim sharing helps with that, but the function is still not the best, especially related to authentication policies. There are still some issues, especially when we have some mismatch between the authentication policies on different spokes. I definitely would appreciate some more improvements. Additionally, I would appreciate a bit more improvements on the logging features of Okta Platform, which still are not the best.

I have been working with Okta Platform for more than five years at this point.

Regarding the Okta Platform, it has been stable. We do have different cells in different countries since we work on a hub-spoke model. On our EMEA cell, it has been quite stable. We did have some problems before on our US cells in these past few months, but nothing too serious. Most of the time, issues happen after hours on the US market. On our EMEA side, there have been no issues in these past few months.

I find Okta Platform scalable and have not hit any limitations or scalability issues with it. We do have a good contract with our vendor that allows us to set up new users at any time and they basically review the contract a year after if we need to have more users. We really don't have scalability issues.

If I would evaluate customer service and technical support of Okta Platform from one to ten, I would say a very good nine. We do have a very good relationship with our customer support representative, customer support manager in this case, or CSM. We also have a dedicated Okta Platform tech that we go to with more high-level questions. The level one support with the normal ticketing system from Okta Platform works pretty well most of the time. I never faced any issues, and if we need to escalate it for more complex issues, we can go to our dedicated tech manager support or our customer success manager and they are pretty quick to respond.

I have mainly used Okta Platform. I did use a bit of Ping Identity, but it was so long ago that I really don't remember a lot of the platform at this point.

When it comes to the deployment process of the initial setup with Okta Platform, we definitely faced some complexities, especially related to the way users authenticate. Sometimes authentication policies are a bit buggy in the sense that sometimes they really don't detect the correct browser that the user is using or there are issues related to the location of the user. The part of security authentication sometimes really doesn't work as well as it could. We did experience some problems in that sense.

The deployment of Okta Platform was implemented fully in-house.

We did look at other solutions as well, such as One Identity and Ping Identity, before choosing Okta Platform. We decided to go with Okta Platform since it was the more complete option on the market at the time, with all the necessary functions that we had, especially related to authentication policies. It also had a better catalog of pre-built apps as well, so it was a bit more simple. We also started looking a few years ago to maybe replace Okta Platform with Entra ID, because we also did have Azure products, but we decided to keep Okta Platform because Okta Platform still has much more documentation and much more time in the market. Their solution is a bit better in that sense.

My best piece of advice for others who are looking into implementing Okta Platform would be related to the knowledge base. I would make sure people read through the main knowledge base from Okta Platform, so the main steps of integrations. One of the good advantages of Okta Platform is that most applications and authentication are all the same, since it uses base protocols such as SAML or OIDC. If you are able to build one, the other ones are pretty easy to build. Go through the knowledge base that Okta Platform has, which is very rich for understanding if it is actually a good solution for your problems. If it is, Okta Platform would be a good solution to use.

The AWS services that are integrated or secured through Okta Platform mainly include AWS Cloud directly for cloud computing purposes.

Okta Platform does protect non-human identities in our environments, such as service accounts. We have the perspective that we can monitor the access, so who actually accesses the accounts and who is the manager of those accounts. We maintain password rotation and password policies for those types of accounts, which are different from a normal user account. Okta Platform helps us with that.

Related to the financial market, Okta Platform helps our company address specific regulatory requirements because we need to be SOX compliant, since we are a public traded company. Okta Platform helped us with being SOX compliant.

I have noticed measurable security and operational improvements in our cloud-based workloads since implementing Okta Platform. One of the main ones is access to AWS cloud environments. Thanks to Okta Platform, we can set up push groups to the AWS IAM module. We can actually give access to specific AWS spaces to specific teams in this case. For example, if we have a cloud team that works on a specific region, we can give access to an Okta Platform group to that specific team, and they will have access to that AWS cloud space. We have a lot of that, and it helped us a lot.

I would rate this review a nine overall.

Use cases include onboarding SAML applications, onboarding OIDC applications, onboarding third-party vendors for accessing these applications, enabling single sign-on across internal and external applications, enabling multi-factor authentication, and enabling adaptive authentication that triggers based on risk score.

Okta Platform is among the market leaders in this space. They have numerous integrations available out of the box, and some of the functionality beyond access management is also there, such as IGA capabilities and PAM capabilities. Overall, I have had a good experience.

Okta Platform has been in the industry for a while, so they have become quite mature in terms of product. The product is robust and does not have many bugs in it. They offer a range of out-of-the-box connectors, so you can quickly onboard target applications without custom integration. The ease of integration with multiple other applications is a key point I would highlight.

The main benefit is single sign-on. All access management solutions, including Okta Platform, provide single sign-on capability and multi-factor authentication capability. These are the two core functions any organization should implement. Beyond that, they also offer advanced capabilities such as passwordless authentication, so you can integrate your FIDO2 equivalent devices and enable passwordless authentication to your applications. These features are basically why they are quite famous in the market.

Okta Platform secures access to cloud infrastructure, APIs, containerized workloads, and AI and GenAI services in a similar way to how they do SAML and OIDC. Recently, they have rolled out some capabilities in the GenAI or Agentic AI area, where they can secure AI agents and manage the provisioning and deprovisioning of their identity and access parts. Regarding web APIs and everything, they have solutions to secure API accounts, ensuring access is provided only to required users based on access control.

Okta Platform does have PAM capabilities, and there they onboard non-human identities and manage and govern them. They definitely have some of the latest capabilities, such as OpenID and OIDC connections that you can utilize for your cloud workload and manage access to your cloud provider. They also have some fine-grained access available, enabling segregation of duties. These improvements bring operational efficiencies as well.

Okta Platform is quite mature, but I would like to see more integration. While they have a vast range of integrations out of the box available, if their PAM and IGA capabilities were more mature, then Okta Platform could be the single solution for everything, covering access management, privilege access management, and governance of identity. This would mean one would not need to take multiple products for specific identity needs in each area.

I have been using Okta Platform for seven to eight years now.

I find Okta Platform to be stable.

I believe Okta Platform is scalable. You can deploy it for 10,000 identities to 5 million identities. They have good elasticity and resiliency, so I find it quite scalable.

Both the tech support team and customer service team are good.

I have used OneLogin in my past with one of my employers, and we were using OneLogin for single sign-on, MFA, and passwordless journey.

The pros are that both Ping and Okta Platform have been in the market for a while, and they were among the first to provide single sign-on and MFA capabilities. They have become quite mature with multiple capabilities available, which is advantageous. They are enterprise-grade solutions and mature enough for any kind of organization to deploy. On the other hand, with OneLogin, there were some bugs I encountered, and I always needed to work with the product and R&D teams to get them fixed, so the product was not as mature or stable then. The pricing point for OneLogin is appealing, which draws customers in, but in terms of capabilities and features, both Ping and Okta Platform have a slight advantage.

Okta Platform is much easier to deploy.

I am using the SaaS deployment model.

Okta Platform has delivered ROI in two ways. First, it improves the security authentication and authorization processes across the organization, securing applications with single sign-on and MFA. Second, it helps cover compliance requirements, whether following SOCS compliance or any similar compliance. It assists in reducing user friction and the manual work of managing multiple applications independently while improving security.

I would not say Okta Platform is a cost-effective solution. It is an enterprise-grade solution, so it is comparatively on the higher side in terms of cost. It is not as cheap as you may find with other single sign-on products.

The main key feature Okta Platform is currently working on and has launched recently is Agentic AI for securing those Agentic AI identities. That is the one I would highlight as compelling at this moment, given that everyone is talking about Agentic AI.

My advice is to understand your requirements and decide your product based on that. Okta Platform could be good for enterprise customers because it serves multiple use cases and offers various capabilities, similar to Ping. If your requirement is very specific, then conduct an assessment and POC, identify your real use cases and future growth areas, and then make the investment to achieve real ROI.

Most likely, Agentic AI and healthcare are the two key industries. I would say everyone else as well, whether retail, pharmaceutical, or manufacturing. Everyone who wants to utilize single sign-on or multi-factor authentication tends to use either Okta Platform, Ping, or OneLogin, depending on the situation. I have not seen OneLogin in many customer environments. I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

As part of Identity and Access Management solutions, or IAM, that many organizations use, Okta Platform is a mature cloud-first IAM platform that uses many single sign-on methods. This is one use case for applications, along with MFA and federation across SaaS and custom applications.

Okta Platform helps to secure access to cloud environments, APIs, containerized workloads, and AI/GenAI services in my architecture by allowing me to create the application in Okta Platform and assign it to the right users and groups, then start configuring the authentication. The first step is multi-factor authentication, which helps secure that only the approved users and groups are allowed to use that application, whether it's an AI application or an on-premise organization application. Another important measure to avoid attackers from gaining users' credentials, such as passwords, involves single sign-on. Additionally, Okta Platform has an adaptive access policy, meaning the user, or employee in this case, does not need to remember the password. Once the administrator configures SSO, the user does not need to go through password authentication; if they are authenticated using MFA, it works directly.

The use of Okta Platform to protect non-human identities in my environment, such as service accounts, machine-to-machine access, or AI agents, is limited since in the organization I work for at Deloitte, we use Microsoft for that. Okta Platform is a great IAM solution, but it is not an IGA solution, short for Identity Governance. The first thing an organization needs to look at is to understand their use case: do they need IAM or IGA or do they only need IAM? Because if it's only IAM, Okta Platform is good, but if they also need IGA to govern non-human identities and others, it is not a solution for that.

Okta Platform helps to address specific industry or regulatory requirements such as healthcare and financial services in my cloud environment. For instance, it benefits the banking industry and the e-commerce industry as well. However, it is available for many industries because it's a very mature and cloud-first IAM platform, making it perfect for companies or startups that are just starting out; they don't need to go through on-premise setups.

What I like about Okta Platform includes its large, pre-built application integration catalog, which is very useful. It also has strong support for the SAML standard and OpenID, commonly referred to as OIDC. Additionally, it offers good API and extensibility for custom use cases and works well in hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

The main benefits that Okta Platform brings to the table include strong authentication, which is the first thing, and adaptive MFA, which is very good. For example, if someone tries to log in from a country that is different from the countries they typically sign into, then Okta Platform will ask them to perform another authentication to verify that it is, in fact, the same user. Strong authentication is crucial, along with federation that I used for both cloud and on-premise systems. Federation worked very well, and it facilitates fast SaaS onboarding, with application templates in Okta Platform which make the whole configuration easier. Coming from a Microsoft background, I appreciate how Okta Platform is vendor-agnostic, meaning you do not need to depend on anything; it can work with any identity or identity governance vendor.

I noticed measurable security and operational improvements in my cloud-based workloads since implementing Okta Platform. It is very stable; we didn't have many errors when it came to users trying to log in, which is the first thing. Federation also worked, and that's one use case I can say I used it for. I had a client that was an organization with over 5,000 employees, and they wanted the authentication to go for Microsoft, but through Okta Platform. In reality, what happens is the user tries to log into an Okta Platform application and then gets redirected to Microsoft. That is federation, which refers to redirecting them to a Microsoft page. Once they complete the right authentication, they are redirected back to Okta Platform, making it a successful use case for a large organization in the insurance industry.

While there are many good things about Okta Platform, I would like to see improvements, especially in the IGA capabilities, which are limited compared to more dedicated IGA tools. I believe adding this would give them a real benefit. Additionally, it is not designed as a privileged access management solution, referred to as PAM. As I come from a Microsoft background, I see that Microsoft has both IGA and PAM capabilities, which Okta Platform lacks. Another area for improvement is pricing; it becomes complex and expensive when you add features. I would like to see licensing transparency, possibly some cost control notifications. Lastly, better policy visualization would be nice to have, showing how the policies configured can be represented more visually.

I have been working with Okta Platform for the past year.

When it comes to scalability, I find that Okta Platform's performance is very good. That's the whole point. As soon as you scale up, it often comes with additional costs, but that worked perfectly for us. We managed to implement it for a large organization with many users, so there was no problem; it was very stable.

I would evaluate customer service and technical support for Okta Platform by noting that we did need assistance once when we blocked ourselves out and had to contact Okta Platform support. It took about two days for them to respond, which I think is reasonable. However, this also depends on the support license that you have. We had the minimum one, but still, two days is acceptable as they helped us resolve the issue.

My experience with the deployment of Okta Platform is that the initial setup is straightforward for standard use cases such as fast SSO and MFA. However, complex environments such as hybrid AD, custom applications, or lifecycle automation require careful design and skilled implementation to avoid the technical debt that's often referenced.

Regarding the pricing of Okta Platform, while it is high and complex, I find it does bring a return on investment. The important thing is for companies to evaluate the total cost and not just the base licensing because once you add more features, the total cost increases. This evaluation varies based on the organization's use case; if it's below around 100,000 users, it should be fine. However, if you plan to go beyond that, evaluating the total cost becomes crucial.

I decided to switch to Okta Platform for different use cases for different organizations, particularly at Deloitte. We noticed that many of these organizations that are very Microsoft-heavy, meaning they have many products with Microsoft, find that Microsoft Entra ID, which is an IAM and IGA solution, fits them perfectly because they are already in that Microsoft ecosystem. However, for organizations that are not heavily involved with Microsoft, then Okta Platform is a great solution because they do not need to be dependent on any vendor. It's cloud-first, and so if you need specific IAM without being tied to Microsoft, I think Okta Platform is the best alternative.

Given my experience with Okta Platform and with other technologies, my advice to other organizations considering it is to clearly define if they want IAM versus IGA requirements as early as possible. Okta Platform is not a full IGA platform, and organizations need to understand that coming in. They should also evaluate the total cost and not just the base licensing. Lastly, if they are Microsoft-heavy organizations, they might consider Microsoft Entra ID, but if they are not deeply tied to Microsoft, then definitely go with Okta Platform. I would rate my overall experience with Okta Platform as an eight out of ten.