Modern Infrastructureand Development:
Using Identity to Scale forTomorrow’s Technology
Okta Inc.
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San Francisco, CA 94105
info@okta.com
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Modern Infrastructure and Development: Using Identity to Scale for Tomorrow’s Technology

Table of Contents
Modernization is the answer

3

The pains of legacy infrastructure3

How modernizing drives scale

3

Scale securely with an identity-as-a-service API provider

4

Five steps to modernize your tech stack4

Okta’s Customer Identity products52Modern Infrastructure and Development: Using Identity to Scale for Tomorrow’s Technology

As a result of groundbreaking technological advances over

Maintaining costly infrastructure

the past 20 years, we’ve witnessed a massive shift in theThe servers, network equipment, and legacy middleware/

way businesses are operated. What began as a quest tovirtualization software that once filled your capital

supplement brick and mortar with a digital storefront isexpenditure are now liabilities. Lack of flexibility, constant

now a customer experience-driven crusade to be the mostmaintenance and upgrades, and the very real threat ofinnovative, the most agile, and the most accessible. This newtotal loss due to disasters such as fire and flood translatereality means that in order to be a leader in the twenty-firstto vast overspending.

century, you must also be a digital leader.

Modernization is the answer

Customer friction
An outstanding customer experience is and always
has been at the crux of a business’ success, and that

To insulate themselves against catastrophic data breaches,

experience starts with onboarding your users. In today’scompanies are moving toward modernizing their tech‘bring your own device’ world, this means providing a faststacks through the refactoring and consolidation of legacy

and seamless sign-in and sign-up experience using thesoftware components.

modern capabilities of the device they’re using, such as
authenticating users through built-in biometric readers likeOn top of bolstering data security, modernization also

Apple FaceID. Unfortunately, achieving this can be nearly

increases agility, shortens app development cycles, andimpossible to accomplish when your digital assets arereduces infrastructure costs. It’s a no-brainer for any

powered by legacy identity, and customers are taking noticebusiness that wants to survive rapid scaling. But how do youof those who aren’t stacking up.

actually do it? And—more importantly—how do you do it
while still retaining the ROI of your current infrastructure?

Lack of developer agility
While developing languages change and are updated alottin

Okta surveyed 100 top IT and app development leaders

new functionality to a wide array of new use cases thefrom companies with over 1,000 employees totruth is, current systems are not keeping up with todays

discover what’s holding them back when it comes todevelopment standards. Companies like Amazon, Facebook

application modernization. The results are both surprisingand Google roll out changes across vast systems in anand enlightening.

instance while most homegrown legacy systems can takeweeks, months and even years of change management for

The pains of legacy infrastructurea single change to roll out. Additionally, 32% of those polled
said they’re struggling with security due to their aging,on-prem systems. Migrating those systems comes with aWith the rising use of cloud applications, most of today’svariety of challenges.

new companies operate solely (or at least primarily) in thecloud. But more established businesses are often caught inSecurity

limbo, wondering how to migrate from their decades-old

Nowadays everyone is a target, including you and yourlegacy infrastructure to the cloud.

customers’ personally identifiable information (PII). Staying
up to speed on the latest in data security practices is key toOn top of how, they are also wondering if they should

building and maintaining a healthy business. But most pre-migrate. According to our survey data, 50% of respondents

modernization organizations can’t say with certainty thatare worried about the security of their data as they migrate

their developers are doing so, nor can they be confident

to the cloud among several other challenges.

their legacy software is patched up-to-date to protect3Modern Infrastructure and Development: Using Identity to Scale for Tomorrow’s Technology

against the latest security vulnerabilities. One common area

and integrate legacy assets with modern solutions suchof weakness is around API security; only a handful of app

as SAML and OpenID Connect. As a result, you have thedevelopment teams are well versed in OIDC and OAuth 2.0,

flexibility to maintain your legacy systems while protecting

the modern authentication and authorization frameworks.

them behind the cloud identity which ultimately will allow

A vendor dedicated entirely to identity and app security can

you to architect for scale as your cloud presence grows

help fill the gaps.

and your on premise dependencies diminish.

How modernizing drives scale

However, 74% of survey respondents reported having
concerns about creating new vulnerabilities frommisaligned security policies, and they’re absolutely

These days, technology is often synonymous with scale. The

right: it’s important to limit the number of redundant

tools you have access to are built to amplify your efforts sotechnologies you employ. Choosing the right software,that you can generate more impact with less effort. Without

one that consolidates identity and security, integrates

these tools at your disposal, it’s unlikely your business willwith your existing applications and creates flexibility to

be able to keep up with your competitors—not to mention

still use legacy applications in conjunction with yourprotect yourself from crippling security breaches.

modern applications, will ultimately prevent security
mismanagement and reduce administrative overhead.

However, a common misconception among manyorganizations is that they can’t afford to modernize…and it’s
no wonder why. Currently, 38% of businesses are spending

Five steps to modernize your tech stacktheir IT budget on maintaining legacy infrastructure, and awhopping 43% see these costs as a barrier to innovation.

Identity is critical to every application in your tech stack. It
not only ensures your users can sign in securely but also gives

With their budget tied up in the past, it’s difficult for thesethem the right level of access. Leveraging modern identity

organizations to see into the future. But the numbers are

standards such as OAuth 2.0 enables app development teams

clear: as the infrastructure ecosystem continues to evolve,

to transition to a microservice-based architecture.

and software development cycles speed up, it’s critical to
move away from on-prem infrastructure and monolithic

To begin modernizing your tech stack with identity at its

methods of development. Modernization empowers teams

core, start with these simple steps:to shift existing budget allotments to software expenses,
reduce the cost of infrastructure that reoccurs with1

Migrate to the cloud

hardware updates, and allows the ability to take advantageof new software immediately.

Cloud-based infrastructure will promote agility andsimplicity within your organization, whether it’s best-

Scale securely with anidentity-as-a-service API provider

suited for full cloud migration or a hybrid-cloud solution.
With Okta Customer Identity products, migration issimplified thanks to direct integrations with legacy

For those with extensive legacy systems, migrating to thedirectories such as Active Directory (AD), Lightweightcloud entirely might not be possible or even ideal. In these

Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) and an on-premcases, a hybrid-cloud model utilizing identity as a service

provisioning connector, as well as a robust integrationis the best option. Identity as a service allows you to adapt

network of over 6,000 industry-leading apps to centralize

4Modern Infrastructure and Development: Using Identity to Scale for Tomorrow’s Technologyand automate access management. The result is an5

Shift from monolith to microservices architectures

environment that is secure, easy to maintain, and capableof deploying new services quickly.

Traditional on-prem applications are monolithic, meaning
they operate as a single, giant web of code. They’re simple to2

Leverage the API economy

develop and deploy at the outset, but become increasingly
difficult to update and scale down the line. By transitioning toTo mitigate the risks associated with using APIs without

microservices—loosely coupled services that make up a larger

negatively impacting the benefits, organizations should

application—app dev teams can deploy updates on specificconsider implementing API Access Management. Built oncomponents quickly and with ease.

Okta’s Universal Directory, Okta’s API Access Management
allows the ability to easily grant (and revoke) API access

For the Motorists Insurance Group, Okta’s microservices

based on predefined policies. The result is a sharp reduction

approach allowed them to choose the apps that best suited

in security risks associated with exposed APIs.

their needs—like F5 to give agents access to their on-premsystems and applications, MuleSoft to ensure each agent

3Refactor for cloud-nativeaccesses the right backend services, and Guidewire to
manage policies, billing, and claims. Armed with theseUser tech stacks are multiplying by (what seems like) theimprovements, they were better able to serve their nearlyday, and users—including customers, partners, contractors,

700,000 policy holders.

and vendors—are cycling technologies at an increasing rate.
Refactoring—the process of restructuring existing code—canhelp by transforming an application to become cloud-native.

Okta’s Customer Identity productsThis process, while not for the faint at heart, empowers
businesses to scale securely at a pace that would otherwiseYour development team should be focused on your core

be unattainable using a solely on-prem environment.

product—not maintaining overloaded and underperforming
on-prem systems. With the Okta Customer Identity

4

Retire legacy infrastructure that can’t
be modernizedproducts, this becomes a completely achievable goal.
Use Okta’s best-in-class Customer Identity products, andIf your organization is still using legacy homegrowntake advantage of everything Okta has to offer, including

applications, it becomes increasingly difficult to incorporatea scalable service that grows as you grow; a secure user

multi-factor authentication—a must-have when optimizing

store; easy-to-roll-out MFA; password policy engine;

for security. These apps are a priority for retirement.

out-of-the-box account recovery flows; a catalog ofproducts for integration with your existing systems; SDKs

Beyond that, you’ll want to determine which systems

for the most common programming languages; a fullyand data you keep on-prem and which you migrate tocustomizable sign-in widget, and support for the next wave

the cloud. A good rule of thumb is to keep the most vitalof identity technology.

systems and data on-premises while migrating less sensitive
data and more frequently accessed systems to the cloud.
For London-based finance firm TP ICAP, this meant using
Okta to move its customer-facing Fusion platform to AWS
to make it more flexible, scalable, and easy to use. After
their huge success with Fusion, TP ICAP implemented Okta
across the entire organization.

Contact us to learn more, and visit ourCustomer Identity products page to see
how Okta can help you get started withmodernizing your infrastructure.