With The Rise Of New Apps, Okta Raises $25M For Identity Management Platform

Okta has raised $25 million for its identity management platform. The Series C round was led by Sequoia Capital with all the company’s existing investors also participating. The raise brings Okta’s total investment to $52.5 million.

The investment shows the growing need for identity management as enterprise providers demand better ways to manage the onslaught of applications and devices employees use.

With the funding, Okta is also announcing a new framework on how they think about their offering  – what they’re calling the Enterprise Identity Network – and what it means to be  a “modern” identity service, as well as a mobile app, a new integration with Microsoft 365, and expanded on-premise integrations.

There’s a rising-tide effect happening in the identity management market. There are more apps than ever, and companies just can’t keep up with managing all the different factors that come when thousands of people need access to dozens of new applications.

The legacy solutions don’t quite do the job as they were designed back in the day for client/server environments. Microsoft Active Directory is a case in point. Microsoft is retrofitting it for Windows Azure, but in the meantime, identity management providers like Okta are coming in to fill the void.

Okta faces new pressure with Salesforce.com’s entrance into the identity management market. At the time of their announcement in September, there were all kinds of declarations that Salesforce.com was the “Okta killer.” But the attention seems to have worked — for Okta at least.

Since then, Okta CEO Todd McKinnon said the sales pipeline has gone through the roof. More people are looking at the service and metrics across the board are up.

Okta’s growth signals how important identity is in the enterprise space. It’s clear why this is the case. The apps available are only going to scale in availability. To manage that, companies need identity platforms so they can better manage access and be assured that security policies are being met.