CompanyGraph
Okta Inc.
OKTA · United States
A cloud identity platform that sits between employee login attempts and thousands of SaaS applications, enforcing access policy before any application session opens.
Okta sits at the intersection of employee login attempts and SaaS applications, enforcing access policy through centralized engines that require a live, vendor-specific integration for every application in the catalog — so the catalog's completeness is both the core differentiator and a continuous engineering obligation that scales with the number of supported vendors. Because each vendor uses distinct SAML or OAuth implementations that change over time, the platform's operational integrity depends on sustained synchronization work that cannot be fully automated, meaning catalog breadth directly determines the engineering load required to keep access from breaking at the point of redirection. Data residency laws compound this by prohibiting authentication processing outside designated geographic regions, which forces infrastructure replication into each new jurisdiction before any customer there can be served, converting geographic expansion into a discrete compliance and infrastructure cost. That combination of embedded customer workflows — Active Directory synchronization, custom SAML configurations, multi-year audit trails, and direct API code dependencies — makes removal disruptive enough to sustain the platform's position, but only as long as the catalog remains complete, which depends on the engineering capacity that expansion itself strains.
How does this company make money?
The platform charges monthly and annual subscription fees based on the number of active users and applications integrated. Additional charges apply for advanced capabilities including adaptive multi-factor authentication and API access management.
What makes this company hard to replace?
Active Directory synchronization and user provisioning workflows are embedded in customer IT infrastructure, making removal disruptive to core directory operations. Custom SAML configurations exist for each integrated application and would need to be individually rebuilt elsewhere. Multi-year compliance audit trails cannot be easily migrated to another system. Developer-built applications using Okta's authentication APIs carry direct code dependencies that require engineering work to replace.
What limits this company?
GDPR and jurisdiction-specific data residency laws prohibit routing authentication processing outside designated geographic regions, forcing infrastructure replication into each compliant zone. Sub-second login response times impose hard latency ceilings on how far processing can be geographically separated from the authenticating user. Each new regulatory jurisdiction therefore becomes a discrete infrastructure and compliance cost before a single customer in that zone can be served.
What does this company depend on?
The platform depends on AWS cloud infrastructure for authentication processing, API partnerships with SaaS providers including Salesforce and Microsoft, SAML and OAuth protocol standards, SOC 2 Type II compliance certification (an independent audit confirming security controls meet a defined standard), and multi-factor authentication hardware token suppliers.
Who depends on this company?
Enterprise IT departments would lose centralized access control across their SaaS application portfolios. SaaS application vendors would need to arrange alternative authentication integration methods. Remote workforce authentication would fragment across individual application login systems. Compliance teams would lose unified audit trails for user access across applications.
How does this company scale?
Authentication policy logic and user interface components replicate across new customer deployments without additional development cost. Each new application integration, however, requires custom API development and ongoing maintenance that cannot be fully automated, because authentication protocols vary across vendors.
What external forces can significantly affect this company?
GDPR and emerging data residency laws require authentication processing to remain within specific jurisdictions, adding infrastructure obligations in each new market. Zero-trust security mandates from cyber insurance providers — policies that require continuous identity verification rather than assumed internal-network trust — create compliance requirements that reach into how the platform is configured. Remote work adoption has increased demand for cloud-based identity verification.
Where is this company structurally vulnerable?
Because the differentiator is the live state of thousands of vendor-specific integrations, a wave of breaking changes across major SaaS vendors — triggered by a protocol shift such as mass OAuth deprecation — would force engineering resources to triage across the entire catalog at once. Integrations would degrade faster than the dedicated vendor relationships can restore them, collapsing the catalog's completeness, which is the sole property that prevents customers from assembling point integrations themselves.