Okta released it’s eighth annual, looking at which apps and cloud services on the Okta identity platform were the most popular from November 1, 2020, to October 31, 2021. The report found that, for the most part, Okta users tend to favor best-of-breed over the single-vendor approach of the past.
Microsoft Office 365 remains the most popular service, with AWS second and Google Workspace third, moving up fast with 38% year-over-year growth. In an interesting twist, though, showing a desire to avoid that single vendor lock-in, 38% of companies using Office 365 also used Google Workspace, while 45% also used Zoom and 33% also used Slack.
14% of users implementing a multi-cloud infrastructure vendor approach, up from 8% in 2017.
This quoting extensively from TechCrunch.
SalesForce released their Global Digital Skills Index research to examine the evidence associated with various aspects of the digital skills gap. There is much disconnection in the data.
According to the skills index, nearly three-quarters of respondents (73%) do not feel equipped to learn the digital skills needed by businesses now, and even more (76%) do not feel prepared for the future.
Only 31% of Gen Z respondents, the first digitally native generation, feel ‘very equipped’ for a digital-first job right now. Just 17% of Baby Boomers believe they are ‘very equipped now’ for digital-first employment.
Most senior leadership respondents (57%) said they are prepared with the digital skills necessary over the next five years. This contrasts with just 37% of managers.
Why do we care?
I paired these because, on the one hand, businesses favor more distinct apps in their drive to best in breed.. while at the same time, it appears employees have a significant skills gap to overcome. Like the previous story, investing in people matters – but here, the story is about offering that as part of the service. The increase in training capabilities for some providers is apparent when viewed through this lens. Sell more training, not just implementation.
Best of breed selection of products should be scary to those MSP platform companies – businesses aren’t buying what you’re preaching, per the data. Avoiding single vendor lock-in seems to be the dominant strategy.