The common denominator, as enterprises race to actionize artificial intelligence, is balancing its raucous hype, potential risks and realistic opportunities. At Okta Inc., striking that balance in AI adoption has meant a pragmatic blueprint that codifies discipline rather than pointless experimentation.

Okta’s Jenna Cline discusses the company’s AI adoption approach with theCUBE.

Given its focused approach, what’s the progress report from Okta on AI adoption dividends?

“We are living in an age where we are taking another transformational journey in technology, and I’m happy to be a part of it,” said Jenna Cline (pictured), senior vice president of business technology at Okta. “At the same time, I am very aware of doing AI at Okta as a security company, but any enterprise IT team is going through the same thing. How do we make it real? When we started, we took a slower approach. We launched an AI governance committee right away to ask questions, understand … know what we didn’t know.”

Cline spoke with theCUBE’s Rebecca Knight and Jackie McGuire at Okta’s Oktane event, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed how AI adoption is as much about people as it is technology, with employees needing communication, training and opportunities to engage with new tools. (* Disclosure below.)

AI adoption begins with governance, not gadgets

Before scaling, Okta formed an AI governance committee to ask tough questions and identify blind spots. Its slower approach meant possible subsequent kinks were ironed out before tool rollout. This measured start helped Okta establish “paved paths” — frameworks and guardrails that allow teams to innovate with confidence, according to Cline. By focusing first on employee productivity use cases, the company gained early wins while ensuring safe, controlled growth.

“A lot of people were using that in their daily lives, and so we were able to solve a lot of the use cases first,” she said. “We’re at a point where we’re able to provision a lot of new technologies safely. We call them paved paths, which are tools and guidelines that our teams can use to go do their innovation and feel safe about what they’re doing.”

AI is inseparable from data strategy, Cline added. That’s why Okta united its technology and data teams under one umbrella. This organizational design has enabled closer collaboration, making it easier to prepare data for AI and build reusable modules. The result? Faster acceleration and democratization of AI across teams, without bottlenecks or silos.

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Okta’s Oktane event:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Okta’s Oktane event. Neither Okta Inc., the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE