Sun said the company greatly reduced its legacy sign-on system the week of March 16 in favor of Okta.
“Okta really has enabled us to prepare the workforce to work from home in the March timeframe in a really smooth manner,” he said. “The thing about the backdrop of this pandemic is we have come to a conclusion that we should try to be moving aggressively toward using cloud services providers,” whose subscription payment plans help FedEx manage user prices.
Like companies with workers at home, educational institutions have needed to figure out how to teach pupils remotely. Seton Hall University, a private Catholic school in South Orange, New Jersey, had a leg up because students and faculty had been using Okta since 2013. The college went from offering a few hundred online courses in the spring semester to providing more than 2,000 virtual classes in a few days, through Blackboard, which students access via Okta. The university also has an online portal named for its mascot, PirateNet, that is the information hub for its community, used for everything from paying tuition bills to registering for classes.
“Really behind the scenes PirateNet is hundreds of apps inside Okta,” said Paul Fisher, an associate chief information officer of Seton Hall.
When the coronavirus began to spread in March, Okta was among the first U.S. companies to publicly grapple with how to work around the pandemic. The company was scheduled to host a splashy San Francisco conference for customers, partners and analysts -- a software-industry ritual to strengthen future sales and telegraph the company’s strategic direction.
McKinnon, the CEO, had to decide whether to cancel the event, delay until some unknown date or take it online. He opted for a remote conference, appearing from his home, and filmed a sketch in which he said his family promised not to interrupt him. His son walked into the frame anyway.
The playful tone was a professional departure for McKinnon, a 6-foot-2-inch tall bodybuilder and a former CrossFit athlete. Pat Grady, a venture capitalist at Sequoia who invested in Okta and remains on its board, said that in an industry full of CEOs who use lofty language to explain how their apps are changing the world, McKinnon presents his company’s mission in a just-the-facts way that has gained him credibility, and a little criticism.
Okta’s successful navigation of the pandemic has paid off for its co-founder. During these last five months, McKinnon, 48, has become a billionaire on paper. Bloomberg estimates his net worth has climbed to about $1.7 billion from about $900 million at the start of the year. Through a spokesman, McKinnon declined to verify his net worth.
In 2016, McKinnon said Okta would give 1% of its equity to nonprofit organizations in its community. In the aftermath of the May killing of George Floyd, McKinnon and Kerrest pledged more than $1 million each for racial justice issues and said they will match employee contributions to civil-rights organizations. McKinnon and his wife also said they would provide $500,000 for Covid-19 relief efforts.
Despite persistent rumors Okta may sell itself to a larger tech company, McKinnon’s long-term plan is to grow the business he co-founded into one of the world’s largest software makers. He says big challenges motivate him to work harder. Years from now, after the Covid-19 virus has been defeated, he expects his slice of the software market will only grow more essential.
“We’re technology believers,” McKinnon said. “We think it’s not perfect. We think that there’s a lot of work we can do to make it better, easier to use more secure, more helpful for users. But that’s what’s exciting about we’re trying to do. It’s an almost boundless thing.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.