Okta Launching Updated Partner Program to Accelerate Growth

Okta is rolling out a redesigned partner program to recognize and reward specialist partner expertise. It also includes some tiering changes.

Launching April 3, the Okta Elevate partner program aims to streamline engagement with its partner community, create more opportunities and accelerate growth. Okta wants to engage with its partners more strategically.

Okta plans to recognize and reward partners for the value they can deliver to customers and the company. That includes finding, developing and influencing, to delivering, managing and transacting. The more of these that  a partner offers, the more value they provide to Okta and mutual customers.

Okta Completely Overhauled Its Partner Program

Bill Hustad, senior vice president of channels and alliances, said Okta has completely overhauled its partner program with Elevate.

Okta’s Bill Hustad

“In many ways, the evolution of our technology is driving the need for a new, improved partner program,” he said. “Identity is an $80 billion market at the intersection of cloud, digital transformation and cybersecurity. As a result, customers are shifting their decision-making from a tool purchase to a multiyear strategic decision, as identity powers all parts of a business. The strategic nature of identity broadens our appeal for new partner types, such as SIs, MSPs, technology partnerships and cloud service providers. It also allows our existing partners to evolve and expand their identity practices. Some partners will grow from workforce identity into customer identity, while others will build managed services with identity at the core.”

Partner Program Features

The Okta Elevate partner program will transform the partner experience in four ways. That includes:

• Simplifying deal registration.
• A broader range of specializations, from customer identity cloud to workforce identity cloud, to workflows. It also simplifies its approach to service delivery partners with streamlined specialization requirements in one, unified partner program.
• A new partner tiering framework provides partners access to various financial and business benefits, from training and tools, to market development funds (MDF) and partner advisory councils. Partners enter at the activate tier and meet a combination of revenue and specialization requirements to achieve higher tiers. Those include amplify, ascend and apex.
• A new partner badging model. These digital badges will become the primary way customers identify the capabilities partners deliver on behalf of Okta. Partners can earn badges for being tech champions, public sector experts or MSPs.

Elevate will make it easier for partners to work with Okta, Hustad said.

“First, the newly published partner program guide will clearly outline how we work together,” he said. “We will launch rules of engagement internally, and focus on internal and external enablement. Second, we are rolling out new automation to support new programmatic processes like enhanced deal registration, account mapping and strategic MDF management.”