IT Built as a Product

Rethinking IT

Walk into most IT organizations, and you’ll see teams working reactively, resolving tickets, fixing bugs, and occasionally automating a report. But internal IT operates with a very different rhythm at Okta, one of the world’s leading identity and access management platforms. That’s because, under the stewardship of Alvina Antar, who served as CIO until early 2025, Okta reshaped its internal tech org to run like a product-led team.

“We operate as a product and engineering organization for the company that’s running our business,” said Antar in a podcast interview. “Just as product and engineering aren’t pressured since they’re the experts of the technology they’re delivering to sell, we should have that same mindset.”

This shift gave IT at Okta more strategic freedom, allowing the team to focus not on merely enabling but on actively shaping and driving company-wide transformation. Antar’s tenure was marked by a bold reimagination of how technology serves the enterprise, from optimizing infrastructure and streamlining business processes to embracing AI. This reimagination was driven by one unshakable belief: internal IT deserves the same design excellence, data rigor, and autonomy typically reserved for customer-facing products.

Finding Empowerment

Historically, IT departments have been centralized power centers of data, compliance, and technology. But that model quickly becomes a bottleneck in today’s agile, product-centric organizations. Antar recognized early that to move at the speed of business; the traditional operating model had to be dismantled in favor of decentralization.

“Data and insights at the speed of the business is huge for us,” she explained. “We're positioning ourselves to accelerate our self-service capabilities and democratize data for every employee.”

That meant putting analytics tools and automation capabilities directly in the hands of Okta’s teams, enabling them to access insights, customize workflows, and make decisions without routing every request through a centralized IT function. Antar’s team built out data pipelines, streamlined APIs, and deployed low-code/no-code platforms, making it easier for employees across marketing, finance, HR, and operations to solve their problems.

The results were a dramatic increase in speed, responsiveness, and innovation. By treating technology as an enabler rather than a control mechanism, Antar empowered the business to think and act with confidence backed by accessible, trusted data.

Security in the Age of AI

As generative AI accelerated across the enterprise landscape, many leaders fixated on how quickly AI could generate content, automate workflows, or uncover insights. Antar, however, chose to fixate on something just as critical: trust.

At Okta, Antar helped shape a security-first approach to AI that blended responsible data practices with real-time visibility into where AI models were being deployed. The company implemented automated policy enforcement, tracked model usage, and developed classification protocols for the data that powered their AI tools.

Okta’s 2024 “AI at Work” report echoed her concerns: 74% of C-suite leaders cited data privacy as a top risk in adopting AI. Antar helped guide Okta through this era of uncertainty by focusing relentlessly on security even as the company moved quickly to capitalize on generative AI’s capabilities in customer support, IT operations, and employee enablement.

Partnering Beyond Procurement

Startups often view the enterprise CIO as a buyer. But the best startups understood Alvina was a builder first.

“The startups I spend the most time with are those that take the time to understand my strategies and how their product can help me be successful,” she said.

This perspective transformed Okta into a highly collaborative technology ecosystem. Antar encouraged smaller vendors to research Okta’s mission, business goals, and pain points before pitching a product. She routinely asked startups to align their roadmaps with hers and pressed them on how their tools could be embedded into workflows rather than bolted on top.

In practice, this meant fewer one-size-fits-all platforms and more bespoke, integrated solutions tailored to the needs of a fast-moving identity business. Antar’s partnership model didn’t just procure technology; it co-created value.

Redesigning Work

While Alvina Antar is best known for her product-first IT mindset, her work as a leader extended far beyond systems and software. She has long been one of Silicon Valley’s most vocal advocates for women in technology and underrepresented groups in the enterprise space.

Her leadership extended into practice. Antar co-founded the Silicon Valley CIO Women’s Network and served on boards for organizations like Girls in Tech, BUILD, and the Dignity Health Foundation. At Okta, she championed mentorship circles, pay equity audits, and targeted hiring initiatives designed to make the IT and engineering functions more inclusive and representative.

These weren’t performative efforts. Antar viewed diversity as an innovation multiplier. Under her guidance, Okta’s internal IT organization became a model for operational excellence and cultural transformation.

Building for Longevity

By the time Alvina Antar departed Okta in early 2025 to become Chief Digital Officer at F5, she had left a profound mark on the company and the wider CIO community. In her years at the helm, she transformed IT from a service provider to a strategic partner. She shifted the company from centralized decision-making to decentralized empowerment. She helped Okta scale securely into the age of AI.

Antar’s legacy at Okta is visible in the seamless experience employees now have with internal tools, in the trust built into the company’s data infrastructure, and in the operational model that allows every department to innovate freely, securely, and responsibly.

It’s also reflected in the broader tech ecosystem. Her blueprint for a product-led, decentralized, and inclusive IT function is being studied and emulated by CIOs and CTOs far beyond identity access management.

A Model for Modern CIOs

What does the modern CIO look like? If Alvina Antar’s time at Okta is any indication, the answer is this: part product manager, part partner, part protector, and fully transformational.

She didn’t just digitize workflows. She reimagined the role of IT as a growth driver. She didn’t just support AI adoption. She designed secure systems for responsible scale. And she didn’t just lead teams. She built communities of inclusion, courage, and collaboration.

In an era when technology leaders are expected to balance innovation with trust and speed with ethics, Antar’s playbook at Okta reminds us that great tech doesn’t just unlock data; it unlocks people, too.