Perfect Match, Google and Fastly
Fastly scored a big win in its partnership with Google. Fastly has integrated their CDN into the Google Cloud platform, and so far, they are the only CDN on the planet doing so.  I’m no VC, but this partnership should have a big positive impact on the Fastly valuation. Currently, Google has a home grown internal CDN that’s been in operation for many years. The Google internal CDN is a well oiled machine that’s highly optimized to serve Google content. However, it’s not at the same level as Amazon Cloudfront or Azure CDN. At least it wasn’t until now. Google has closed a major gap in their product line thanks to Fastly. Google cloud customers can now buy CDN services from Fastly.
Is this partnership a precursor to Google acquiring Fastly down the line? Probably, especially with Steve Souders on board with Fastly. For those unfamiliar with Steve Souders, he is a world famous web performance engineer who previously worked at Google. Him and IIya Grigorik are rock stars in their own right.
 Aryaka Networks
Mark Fogul has joined Aryaka Networks as VP of Global Service Provider Alliances. Mark has worked in the VP roles with Websense, Trend Micro and Clear Path Networks. Mark brings an interesting skill set to Aryaka in that he has a deep understanding of security, and experience in forming OEM partnerships with the likes of Vodafone, Orange, Telstra, AT&T, HP, EDS, IBM, CSC and so on. The addition is perfect timing, as Aryaka Networks is hungry to expand its business into new verticals. I bet Mark surpass expectations, and brings home the big deals. All Aryaka Networks needs today are just a handful of partnerships with large global IT conglomerates such as HP, EDS, and Telstra to catapult it into the “B” club.