Okta Cloud Single Sign-On Saving LinkedIn $87,000 Yearly

Identity and access management specialist Okta is boasting that over the last two years, enterprise social networking giant LinkedIn has saved $87,000 annually in operating costs and gained an additional $240,000 per year in user productivity boosts by leveraging its single sign-on solution for cloud apps.

There’s an associated case study, if you want to get the nitty-gritty. As you may imagine, LinkedIn is a fairly cloud-friendly company, and according to Okta’s press release, employees were struggling to remember URLs and passwords for the increasing number of apps the everyday workflow required. IT staff were stuck spending chunks of their day resetting passwords, while workers just couldn’t get stuff accomplished.

But with Okta, it doesn’t matter how many SaaS applications LinkedIn adds. Users have just one username and password for the entire range. And as a fringe benefit, IT staff get additional insight into how employees are using the cloud, including compliance-mandated auditable sets of access and de-provisioning reports. And while on the topic, according to LinkedIn, it’s saving another 30 percent annually on provisioning and de-provisioning costs.

Mike Jennings, senior director of LinkedIn corporate IT, said in the press release:

Interesting stuff — putting aside Okta’s obvious angle in this story, cloud identity and access management is a growing market, and case studies such as this one illustrate why. And if you’re a cloud service provider, it’s probably time to take a look to adding a solution of the kind into your portfolio if you haven’t already.