ChaosSearch improved customer service and onboarding with Okta

ChaosSearch helps businesses create order from chaos by transforming cloud storage such as Amazon S3 or Google GCS into a live Search, SQL, and GenAI analytic database for scale workloads. This lake database, Chaos LakeDB, can be deployed as a fully managed SaaS platform or an embedded version for use cases such as observability, security, and application insights. “We’re Google for Amazon S3, for lack of a better term,” says Founder and CTO Thomas Hazel. Their patented technology and architecture dramatically reduces the cost and complexity of data analytics. 

“With most solutions out there, as data doubles in size, so do your costs,” explains Hazel. “We provide unlimited access and can charge by daily ingestion and/or usage-based, at half the cost of our competition.”

Thanks to a strong team of engineers, ChaosSearch was well-versed at building everything in-house. But after a period of rapid growth, including a series A funding round, they found their resources were stretched thin. They needed an Identity solution that lets them keep onboarding new customers without stealing focus from their core competency. They began to look for a solution that was easy to implement but also secure and trustworthy so they could continue to meet the needs of their most security-conscious customers.

Federated Identity support becomes a must-have to meet customer demand

After receiving funding, ChaosSearch moved from the build-out phase to actually signing customers. This meant opening themselves up to customer feedback, and one demand clearly stood out: Single Sign-On (SSO). 

This issue intensified as their services grew. “Provisioning users at scale can be a real nightmare,” says Hazel. He began to realize that SSO was going to be a non-negotiable as many of their potential clients had an internal set-up that required multiple user logins. If ChaosSearch couldn’t provide that capability, they risked losing business.

A trustworthy Identity service solution delivers significant value

The team didn’t want to detract from their core focus of data organization by spending time and resources building their own Identity service. They also realized that anything they put together would be less secure than outsourcing to a proven expert, and might put their user’s data at risk. “We focus on our core competency, database technology and distributed systems,” Hazel says.

They discovered Auth0, the technology that now powers the Okta Customer Identity Cloud, via the Amazon Web Services Partner Network. As both businesses are built on AWS, it was a natural fit, and a great embodiment of how businesses in the AWS community are working together to drive further cloud adoption and efficiency.

ChaosSearch incorporates very few outside services into their infrastructure, so this decision wasn’t taken lightly. Customer Identity Cloud is “the fourth component in a very simple, though powerful, architecture,” says Hazel. In particular, outsourcing security requires an exceptional level of trust and due diligence. “Our simplified architecture has very few moving parts, so we scrutinize every third party component. We integrated with Customer Identity Cloud because it delivers significant value to our platform and customers."

Increased productivity and better service in seconds

With Customer Identity Cloud, ChaosSearch is now capable of accommodating any potential customer requirements for enterprise federation. “Once we go into production we are able to onboard new customers 50% faster because we can seamlessly add users with RBAC.” says Hazel. “Our customers specify the protocol they want, and Okta handles the rest.” 

The benefits of Okta also extend throughout the customer lifecycle as Individualized sign-on has made it much easier for customer success agents to identify who is having issues and why. “It used to take us half an hour to figure out who was doing what,” Hazel says. “Now it takes seconds. We estimate a 90% time savings related to the management of authentication for our B2B customers" 

Increasing end-user security and saving employees’ time 

With Customer Identity Cloud, ChaosSearch was able to solve their federated Identity support issue and quickly move on to other aspects of building their platform. Offering SSO will continue to save them time as the company scales: “It's great because our customers are happy with the ease and speed of our setup,” says Hazel. “And from a  customer success perspective, we are better able to help our customers.” 

With this issue resolved, ChaosSearch can move forward and focus on their real goals. “We're on a mission to make petabyte-scale data accessible without having to break the bank,” says Hazel. 

About Customer

ChaosSearch is redefining the boundaries of data analytics by offering transformative solutions that empower businesses to make data-driven decisions with unparalleled efficiency. Our ethos is centered on simplifying complexity and turning challenges into opportunities. Chaos LakeDB is at the forefront of revolutionizing data lake architectures in the AI-driven era. By seamlessly transforming cloud storage into a dynamic analytical database, it integrates diverse data streams, streamlines intricate pipelines, and delivers at scale actionable insights through Search+SQL+GenAI analytics. By eliminating manual redundancies and activating static data lakes, Chaos LakeDB provides businesses with both real-time and historical intelligence. As champions of innovation, ChaosSearch is dedicated to delivering tools that not only meet but also anticipate the evolving needs of modern businesses. Dive into a world where data is not just stored but becomes a dynamic force driving growth and innovation.