Co-authored by Caitlin Fischer, Senior Manager of Analyst Relations at Okta

Yeehaw – this past March was Gartner’s first time hosting their annual IAM conference in the Dallas, Texas area.

For the uninitiated, Gartner is a leading industry analyst firm with experts covering all facets of cybersecurity and identity. Gartner Identity and Access Management Summit is their biggest conference focused on identity across workforce and customer. Okta has been a longtime premier sponsor of the event. Upon walking into the conference, you might even think it was an Okta conference due to our massive branding presence at the registration desk and mostly everyone wearing Okta lanyards.



We even had a funny situation where we saw someone wearing an Okta lanyard, went up to them with a “Howdy Oktanaut”, only to be told that they worked for Forgerock (womp). We all had a good spirited laugh though, and that really speaks to the friendly nature of the conference and all the attendees’ genuine desire to move the identity industry forward.

Roughly two thousand people attended the conference and made the trip down to Dallas, which was an attendance figure similar to pre-pandemic levels. Yuliya & Ariel led an awesome session on phishing resistance to a standing-room only crowd and our IAM consigliere Tom Malta hosted a super engaging fireside chat with one of our most impressive customer references, Chris Rich from MassMutual. We met with some of our key analysts that work on the hallowed Magic Quadrant, including conference chair and the main MQ author Henrique Teixeira, who got into the Texas spirit wearing a cowboy hat in the halls for most of the conference.

The show floor was packed and some sessions were standing room only. In the live sessions we heard a few common themes from the analysts, first that we’re in the right industry. Cybersecurity budgets are not getting cut and identity is critical infrastructure for any enterprise. As identity continues to be critical, it’s more frequently coming under attack. This raises the need for threat detection and Gartner estimates that by 2026, 90% of organizations will use some form of ITDR. 

The Okta booth was buzzing with lots of conversations and demos. Many of those were carried over to a fun happy hour networking event we hosted on the first night of the conference. Prospects had many questions about FedRAMP High. Okta was able to meet with a state education agency and discuss an opportunity for Okta to be used for students and faculty across one hundred districts. 

Finally, Okta for Good had a great presence at the event. It’s admirable how the strategic events marketing team made the decision to forgo disposable swag items in favor of making a difference with donations to some impactful nonprofit organizations. So rather than leaving the conference with some Okta stress ball that will likely become landfill material, folks that came by our booth had fun playing Plink and donating to some O4G charities. In total, Okta 4 Good raised awareness and ten thousand dollars for: Tech Impact, YearUp, Genesys Works, and NetHope. 



This event brought together the best in the industry and gave Okta an opportunity to be shine at one of the industry’s largest identity dedicated events. If you have any questions about Gartner IAM, upcoming analyst events, or analysts in general please drop an email to analystrelations@okta.com.

Until next time, giddyup!!