Before we heap praise on CloudFlare, its important to note a few things before we do so, so we have context. CloudFlare was the last company on our mind. In fact, we weren’t even going to write about them for the rest of the year, because everything they’re doing was average. And average in the CDN industry is actually good, because they’re 40+ extremely smart CDNs in the market. Sure, the revelation of CloudFlare generating $100M in revenue this year at 70% gross profit was surprising, but it still wasn’t a “wow” type scenario.
Things happen, and this industry is dynamic, changing from one week to the next. And CloudFlare receiving $110M is cool, but getting the money from Google, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Baidu and Fidelity is shocking. There is nothing sweeter than being shocked, especially when we underestimate a company like CloudFlare. Two things are certain: 1) this will have an impact on the industry and its players and 2) the degree of impact will take some time to figure out. Thus, we went from a state of not wanting to write about CloudFlare for the rest of the year, to the “Most Outstanding CDN and Cyber Security Company in 2017” the day after. Congrats to CloudFlare. And its going to be really hard for any company to surpass what CloudFlare has done this year.