Cloudflare Named a Leader in IDC MarketScape CDN Assessment

Cloudflare has been placed in the Leaders category of the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Commercial CDN 2022 Vendor Assessment (doc #US47652821, March 2022). The report evaluated 10 CDN vendors based on current capabilities and future strategy for delivering commercial CDN services, and IDC singled out Cloudflare for its innovation pace and integrated security offerings.

IDC specifically highlighted Cloudflare as "a highly innovative vendor" investing in virtualization, serverless, AI/ML, IoT, HTTP3, 5G, and mobile edge computing. The firm also noted the appeal of Cloudflare's integrated SASE offering for global enterprise customers, alongside its "isolate serverless architecture" on the Workers developer platform, which IDC says shortens time to market in a digitally led market.

Edge-First Serverless Development

Cloudflare Workers was built from the ground up for an edge-first serverless model. The approach stems from Cloudflare's origins as a distributed edge network rather than an attempt to push compute outward from centralized data centers. Today, the platform serves hundreds of thousands of developers, from hobbyists to enterprises, handling millions of requests per second.

The platform's isolate-based architecture is designed to let developers build applications without managing underlying infrastructure. IDC's assessment points to the platform's high customizability as a key competitive differentiator for customers who need to ship quickly.

Actionable Analytics on Raw Event Data

Cloudflare customers have access to extensive dashboard and API analytics covering network performance, firewall actions, and cache ratios. The analytics layer operates on raw events rather than pre-aggregated metrics, which enables powerful filtering and analysis on high-dimensionality data.

This granularity translates into actionable insights: customers optimizing cache performance can analyze specific URLs to see not only hits and misses but also expired or revalidated content that signals a short URL. All events, whether viewed in the console or in logs, appear within 30 seconds or less. IDC notes that the self-serve portal's dashboards and actionable content delivery and security analytics are bolstered by a comprehensive suite of enhanced services for enterprise-grade customers.

Unified SASE and Zero Trust

Cloudflare One combines network connectivity with Zero Trust security services on the company's global network. Cloudflare Access and Gateway natively work together to secure connectivity between any user and any application or Internet destination. For deeper threat and data protection, Browser Isolation and CASB services operate across both Access and Gateway to control data in transit, at rest, and in use.

IDC's assessment states that Cloudflare's enterprise security Zero Trust stack is extensive and meets the secure access requirements of a distributed workforce, and that its data localization suite appeals to global enterprise customers. With mobile, SaaS, and public cloud having rendered the traditional corporate network model obsolete, Cloudflare positions Zero Trust networking as the path forward—a direction the company says it is actively enabling.

China Delivery via JD Cloud Partnership

Cloudflare addresses the regulatory and policy complexities of operating in mainland China through its partnership with JD Cloud & AI. International businesses can grow their Chinese online presence without managing separate security and performance tools from separate vendors.

Recent advancements allow customers to serve DNS from within mainland China, with queries answered directly from JD Cloud Points of Presence. This supplements DDoS protection, WAF, serverless compute, SSL/TLS, and caching services available from more than 35 locations in the country. IDC notes that the partnership lets Cloudflare deliver cached content in-country from origins outside mainland China, providing a consistent Internet experience across the region and the rest of the world.

One Software Stack Across a Global Network

A core architectural decision at Cloudflare has been running the same software stack across all servers and data centers. Whether the service is content caching, serverless compute, Zero Trust functionality, or other performance and security offerings, every physical point of presence runs the full suite. This uniformity translates into consistent performance and security policies, all manageable from a single dashboard or API set.

The network spans 250 cities across over 100 countries and serves millions of customers, more than 140,000 of whom are paying customers. IDC attributes Cloudflare's significant growth over recent years to a clear strategy of investing in new technology while expanding its network and sales operations into new territories.