Zscaler, a pure play cloud security company based in San Jose CA, started in 2008 and has raised $38M in funding. The founding members have a long history of building and selling companies, including CipherTrust, which was sold to McAfee. Zscaler is a SaaS Security Cloud Platform that offers solutions in the areas of Web Security, Mobile Security, & Email Security. Zscaler built a global network from the ground up, that now processes 12 billion transactions per day, secures 12 million users in 180 countries, and has 4,500 global customers. Their clients include VMWare, Pitney Bowes, BT, Verizon, and Swisscom. Their infrastructure spans 100+ data centers, thus surpassing the footprint of all CDNs, with the exception of Akamai.
Zscaler could easily decide to enter the CDN business in a heartbeat. They already have all the infrastructure in place. Plus, they offer a WAF like solution, URL filtering, and a feature set that is tailored to ISPs. In hindsight, they deal with all the infrastructure pieces that CDNs deal with. All they would need to do is add caching servers, and hire a small team to build-out the CDN feature set, and dashboards for reporting and auto provisioning.
At a billion dollar valuation, it could easily afford to do it. Zscaler could even buy a small CDN, integrate it into its cloud platform, and become potent player in the CDN ecosystem. It’s hard to say at this point what their plans are, or if they would even consider entering the CDN space. I would, there is more to gain than lose, especially with a 4,500 strong customer base. The Zscaler product set addresses the B2B market similar to Aryaka, and the B2C like CDNs. Don’t be surprised if they decide to enter the CDN space, just like Incapsula.