Why Former Loudcloud CEO Ben Horowitz Invested In Cloud Identity Startup Okta
Long before he was part of the powerful investing duo behind venture fund Andreessen Horowitz, Ben Horowitz was a co-founder and CEO of Opsware (previously known as Loudcloud) a pioneer for cloud computing companies (Opsware was eventually sold to HP in 2007 for $1.6 billion). He’s considered an expert in the cloud so his first investment in a cloud computing startup is something to pay attention to.
Okta, which received $750,000 in funding from Andreessen Horowitz last fall, is a cloud application management service. Okta’s platform allows companies to have control of their users, applications, and data both in the cloud and behind the firewall.
The startup was founded by Todd McKinnon, the former VP of Engineering of the most successful cloud company to-date, Salesforce. Horowitz calls McKinnon “the ultimate domain expert on building cloud applications” and says that he “may also be the most astute engineering manager that [he's] ever worked with.”
Okta aims to solve the problem of how companies manage their applications that are based in the cloud. When moving to the cloud, IT admins face the challenge of securing and controlling users and access, simplifying the adoption and scaling of these applications, and at the same time making sure that the business is optimizing its applications in the cloud. As Horowitz says:
Okta’s initial product aims to solve the Cloud identity problem. I like the problem, because it is seriously different in the cloud than it is on-premise and, for new companies, different equals good.
But Horowitz adds that the market opportunity is huge “because the cloud identity market will likely become the cloud management market. Given that those current markets combined are between $10B and $20B (depending on what you count), the resulting market will be extremely large.”
Plus, SaaS offerings like Okta are being adopted by smaller companies in large numbers. Horowitz says that the average Okta customer has less than 2,000 employees and already a few application that require integration.
Andreessen Horowitz has invested in a number of high-profile, consumer-focused startups, such as Foursquare and Zynga, so it’s certainly notable to see the firm getting into cloud investments. And Okta seems to have the right combination of talent, product and investor confidence. We expect to see good things coming from this startup in the future.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
INTERESTED IN IMPROVING YOUR CAREER? CHECK OUT …
|
THE CAREER TRANSFORMATION SYSTEM TM SIGN UP NOW! |
Resources
Search Jobs
Post Your Resume to 65+ Job Sites
Resume Service
Popular Tags:
Okta is late on the scene by atleast a decade. The leader in the space is ProtectNetwork. We have been using them for years now. http://www.protectnetwork.com/about
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
[Reply]
Andreessen Horowitz, Ben Horowitz are really very smart n futuristic people they know how to invest…. A new lingerie portal is also launched with more than $500k of self funding avoof.com
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
[Reply]
Great post. The cloud is a very hot topic right now and all the big new startups are starting with the cloud. It can save them a ton of money and make things easier. Good Call Horowitz!
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
[Reply]