Okta reveals 5-year trend of best-in-breed apps; also, a kind request I have of you

Okta, a top identity platform that many businesses use for single sign-on (SSO), has been aggregating the details of which apps their customers use for the previous 5 yrs. Each and every 12 months, they publish a report that shares a wealth of interesting stats, this kind of as the relative level of popularity of distinctive apps. This is a further case in point of ground-real truth empirical data about tech stacks that I come across extremely credible.

In the 2022 version of Okta’s report, just introduced, the most fascinating chart is the a person I have excerpted higher than. It displays that businesses who use Microsoft 365 applications and platforms — which collectively span every thing from docs and spreadsheets to progress platforms and videoconferencing — have also been escalating their adoption of “overlapping” applications and platforms from other companies.

Yes, they are Microsoft 365 prospects. But some desire AWS over Azure. Or Salesforce around Dynamics. Or Slack and Zoom more than Groups. Or Smartsheet more than Excel. Or Tableau about PowerBI.

For just about every of all those apps, you can adhere to their light-weight-to-dim-coloured dots in the chart steadily sliding left to proper, calendar year-about-year. The adoption of best-of-breed applications, at the very least in just the context of Microsoft 365, has unmistakably been increasing.

With the exception of Box, which has been going in the exact reverse direction (sorry, Box). I individually like Box, and their CEO’s Twitter account is pure gold. But out of all the applications in the record, it looks to me their main product or service could possibly be the least complicated for Microsoft to commoditize from inside of the Business office 365 natural environment.

Is this finest-of-breed trend agent of stacks general, specifically for martech?

It definitely aligns with the ongoing expansion in stacks we have found in other aggregate information from the SaaS Administration Platforms. And lots of of the apps overlapping with Microsoft 365 are component of the martech planet.

But I can hear the objection to the methodology. “Hey, just mainly because I use Microsoft Word does not imply that I want to use Microsoft Dynamics as my CRM. These are apples and oranges!”

Fair enough. But it’s an attention-grabbing considered experiment. If the world’s second-most significant, $2.3 trillion software corporation — and the world’s 1st-premier, $2.8 trillion Apple, who does not even contact most of these application classes — simply cannot fulfill you with every little thing from their portfolio, then who could? And if you reply that it all is dependent on the natural boundaries of classes, because obviously documents are various than CRM data, I would humbly take note that delineating these so-known as pure boundaries gets more durable as types get nearer to each individual other.

Just one other chart from that Okta report that I’d like to spotlight:

This is the growth of adoption of big cloud platforms, these types of as AWS and Azure, being related as a result of Okta. Two points really worth noting:

Initial — wowzers — the length between AWS and all people else is breathtaking.

But next, and extra related to my narrative, the expansion in adoption of all of these cloud platforms — steep up-and-to-the-proper climbs — is advancement in their use by builders to build a lot more computer software. They are the motor guiding The Terrific Application Explosion. And extra and extra of that app explosion is customized-designed.

If you adhere to individuals development traces, they guide to a entire world of far more software program diversity, not less.

Now for the form request I have of you…

Our Once-a-year Martech Career Study

If you delight in my posts and would like to support our martech community, I’d question this favor of you: make sure you take a pair of minutes to comprehensive this 2022 Martech Wage and Career Study that I’m conducting all over again with my friends at Martech.org. The extra martech execs like on your own who participate, the higher the n of the our examine, and the far more important the success will be.

We’ll then publish the aggregate outcomes for all people to read. I’m tremendous curious to see the results. Aren’t you?

Thank you for your help.