Okta Adds Krista Anderson as Chief Customer Officer

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Apr 4, 2014) -  Okta today announced the addition of Krista Anderson, formerly a senior vice president at salesforce.com, as the company's first chief customer officer. The appointment is a direct reflection of Okta's ongoing commitment to customer success as its cloud-based identity service spans more locations, customer segments, industries and use cases. The company also announced its surpassing of 1,000 customers and more than four million users worldwide.

"Krista was essential in building the renowned customer support and customer success programs salesforce.com has been known for from the beginning. She's a proven leader in high-growth environments, consistently exceeding renewal and adoption targets year-over-year," said Todd McKinnon, CEO of Okta. "We've doubled our customer base to 1,000+ in less than six months, and that rapid pace has much to do with our company-wide focus on customer success and the phenomenal team behind it. Krista will ensure our customer support, customer success and training continue to be world-class as we scale internationally and provide enterprises with new kinds of business value."

Anderson brings more than 13 years of experience to Okta, delivering superior levels of adoption, loyalty and customer satisfaction for both enterprise and small business customers. Before joining the company, she served as senior vice president, Customers for Life at salesforce.com, where she managed a portfolio comprising the largest and most strategic enterprise customers, including HP, Cisco, Dell and Allergan. In her last 12 months with the company, Anderson redefined the company's customer onboarding program, established a global process for identifying, triaging and managing at-risk customers en masse and launched the global customer community enabling salesforce.com customers to collaborate and learn from each other.

"Okta has the opportunity to do it right. The company has put customer success front and center since the beginning, orienting all decisions around what's best for its millions of users," said Krista Anderson, chief customer officer, Okta. "With such a killer product and seasoned, passionate team executing behind the scenes, we have a very real opportunity to redefine the optimal customer experience for enterprise technology -- one that puts the customer first, and technology second."

Global Scale, Expanded Leadership Team, Rapid Innovation

Okta has continued to rapidly onboard enterprises, serving an increasingly global user base and introducing new features to its service. Highlights thus far in 2014 include:

• 1,000+ Enterprise Customers: The Okta customer base now includes distinguished brands like Chiquita Brands, leading international food marketer and distributor, including the namesake banana label; Noble Corporation, a leading offshore drilling contractor for the oil and gas industry; Seton Hall University; and island-inspired lifestyle brand Tommy Bahama.
  
  
• 100% Increase in Headcount, Expanded Management Team to Support Enterprise Momentum: Anderson joins Okta on the heels of two management team additions: Eric Berg, formerly vice president of products, as chief product officer, and Hector Aguilar, formerly vice president of engineering, as chief technology officer. Okta now has more than 300 employees worldwide, having doubled headcount from this time in 2013. The swift growth represents Okta's focus on continued innovation in scaling the Okta service globally and delivering on its mission to securely connect any combination of people, applications, devices and organizations.
  
  
• First Patent Secured: Okta was recently issued its first patent that supports the company's metadata-driven system and approach to building and maintaining application integrations at scale. With 3,000+ applications in the Okta Application Network and new functionality that makes it simple for any customer to create their own integrations, the ability to centrally manage and maintain those integrations at scale is essential to Okta's continued growth. Okta has been granted a patent for this technology, a significant differentiator in the company's approach in the IDaaS market.
  
  

About Okta

Okta is an enterprise-grade identity management service, built from the ground up in the cloud and designed to address the challenges of a cloud, mobile and interconnected business world. Okta integrates with existing directories and identity systems, as well as thousands of on-premises, cloud-based and mobile applications, to enable IT to securely manage access anywhere, anytime and from any device.

More than 1,000 enterprises, including Allergan, LinkedIn, MGM Resorts International and Western Union, use Okta to increase security and employee productivity, as well as lower IT costs and improve compliance. The hundreds of enterprises, thousands of cloud application vendors and millions of people using Okta today also form the foundation for the industry's first Enterprise Identity Network. Okta is backed by premier venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock Partners, Khosla Ventures and Sequoia Capital. To learn more about Okta, visit: http://www.okta.com.

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