A big thank you to everyone who reached out after my
announcement about joining Ory. I was
humbled by the support and enjoyed reconnecting to discuss why Ory is a
compelling choice for IAM.
For those who don’t know me, I've spent considerable time in IAM with Yubico and
SecureAuth, multi-cloud infrastructure with CloudBolt and Axway, and with
vertically significant companies like AXON. My experience showed me the
increasing complexities and needs equation of IAM, but I didn't realize just how
much a fresh approach was needed.
From the Outside Looking In
Before joining Ory, I reached out to many of you to discuss current IAM
challenges and the landscape as a whole. Some mentioned the months-long
replacement cycles for workforce projects and most agreed that CIAM is still
considered a huge challenge. CISO and CIO colleagues pointed out the market's
frustration with rampant security issues and price hikes from incumbent
providers in combination with the difficulty of switching IAM solutions. Many
confirmed the value of the open-source community around Ory’s projects
Kratos, Hydra,
Oathkeeper, and
Keto, praising the technology's excellence. Our
investors (Balderton,
Insight, and InQTel)
appreciated the kudos our engineers receive from engineers and the flexibility
we offer organizations to either 'own their own' identity stack or move to the
Ory Network for speed, scale, and security. CISO colleagues also noted that
trusting an IAM vendor’s compliance certification isn’t as robust as having the
entire community verify how the software works. My research showed that Ory’s
founders, engineers, and open-source community anticipated these issues over 8
years ago and developed a solution for today's IAM complexities. This made my
decision to join Ory very easy.
From the Inside Looking Out
Since joining the company, I've heard common feedback from our open-source
community and customers, such as ‘my current solution can’t meet my needs for
scale or customizability’, ‘My current solution failed and continues to fail at
peak times’ and ‘Ory is the only truly headless solution on the market.’
Investors echo these sentiments, praising Ory as a brilliantly extensible
platform that addresses the complexities of web-scale IAM. Products and services
struggle to perform at peak times — because they don’t have workflows in place
that prevent failures and because they have close to zero visibility into why
things are failing.
Our customers seek greater reliability and value from the front door to the
solutions, content, and services they offer. New challenges are emerging for
digital companies in a
cookie-less world, where user
relationships are constantly being disrupted. A flexible identity stack is
needed to solve problems that incumbents have struggled with, accelerating the
replacement of homegrown solutions, Auth0, Ping, Cognito, and others.
When engineers try Ory, they see a fresh, modern approach that is composable,
headless, and easy to use. In every customer conversation, decision-makers note
that Ory was preferred and selected by their IAM teams because they want to
provide a better service for partners, customers, and employees. These
engineering and IAM teams contribute to a vibrant community that stands for
innovation, collaboration, and scalable identity solutions. Ory offers them the
scale, customizability, and choice in deployment they need. Its an easy-to-try
identity stack, you don’t have to Buy to Try, and you certainly don’t need to
Pay to Use. Ory provides complete and unmatched flexibility out of the box.
I am thrilled to be part of the Ory community and look forward to our future
together. Reach out if you want to learn more
or think we can help you transform your IAM stack.
