Okta appoints Nextgen as first ANZ distie

Identity solutions vendor Okta has appointed Nextgen as its first distributor for Australia and New Zealand.

Okta said the move is part of an overall expansion of its local go-to-market activities as it looks to continue growing its ANZ presence.

Okta said the Nextgen appointment will help broaden its reach in ANZ by giving it access to more channel partners, resources, recruitment, onboarding and training support.

“At Nextgen, we’re focused on working with the world's leading application providers, and are therefore, selective about the technology partners we choose to work with,” Nextgen chief executive John Walters said in a statement. “Okta is the clear market leader in the identity space as a result of their ecosystem, best-of-breed platform, adoption, holistic approach, and vision.”

“We’re excited to support Okta in its global expansion efforts, and to support our ecosystem of security channel partners with the necessary resources to ensure the organisations they work with are successful.”

Okta APAC director of regional alliances Matt Paull told CRN that Nextgen was chosen partly because the distie had “a real keen interest” in Okta, particularly when the company started shifting from direct to partners.

“It’s important that we align with someone who wanted to work with Okta and understood the potential, so Nextgen absolutely has that,” Paull said.

“[Nextgen] also has a good portfolio of more cloud-first businesses — which was important since we’re a 100 percent cloud product — so we needed a distributor who understood software-as-a-service and could actually help us take it to market.”

Paull added that while Nextgen can help with partner recruitment, Okta isn’t necessarily looking to add more partners right away but it’s about understanding the channel partner ecosystem better and acting as “an extended arm” of Okta’s ANZ business.

The Okta deal marks another security win for Nextgen, which in 2019 alone struck up relationships with Darktrace, Bitdefender, Netskope, Automation Anywhere and Pasesler.