This shift in focus is part of a broader strategic push. McKinnon’s convinced that businesses will eventually zero in on just a handful of cloud platforms for certain activities, such as internal collaboration or customer-relationship management, and he wants Okta to be the one they choose for identity. Using the company’s internal operations to highlight best practices for using its own products should help it advance that cause.
Antar has already shown she can master this kind of approach. At Zuora, where she spent six years as the company’s first ever CIO, she turned the IT function into, which helps businesses manage recurring revenue streams. She also developed deep relationships with other CIOs working for companies that rely on cloud-based subscription revenues.
In her new role at Okta, Antar will report to Hector Aguilar, the company’s president of technology who oversees both software engineering and IT. Some tech companies prefer to keep these teams separate, but Okta’s new CIO thinks it’s sensible to combine them. “There’s value in looking at technology as one single arm of business for customers and internal users,” says Antar, who argues it will make it easier to avoid duplicating effort and to attract top talent.
One of the things Antar plans to focus on is diving even deeper into the mountain of data Okta has about how customers use its platform to help generate insights to guide decision-making. Another is helping with mergers and acquisitions, an area Antar’s very familiar with from her time at Dell, where she worked before Zuora. She says she wants to help with due diligence and to evolve the company’s playbook for integrating acquisitions.