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> I don’t understand your argument. A relatively small but innovative company is working to provide competition against the big 3 cloud providers … and you crin

by nuerow 5y ago

> I don’t understand your argument. A relatively small but innovative company is working to provide competition against the big 3 cloud providers … and you cringe? Cloudflare is by no means a small hosting provider. By some accounts, cloudflare is world's leading CDN provider by a long margin, far ahead of AWS in this market, and it currently piles up about half a billion dollars in revenue. https://blog.intricately.com/2020-state-of-the-cdn-industry-trends-market-share-customer-size https://blog.intricately.com/2020-state-of-the-cdn-industry-...

nvarsj 5y ago
That report is very misleading. Customer count is a useless metric for a CDN. If you looked at total traffic and spend, Cloudflare would be dwarfed.
- andrewnyr 5y ago
  It is when about 18% of the internet runs through Cloudflare.
  - motives 5y ago
    Source? Assuming you're talking about 18% of traffic and not percentage of websites, how do you define what counts as traffic in that case? Transfer between AS's? Does internal traffic within AS's count? Does traffic between entities within the same AS count (e.g traffic from one AWS customer to another, or traffic from a Netflix OCA to an ISP?) I'm skeptical of any entities ability to fully measure the throughput of the internet even remotely accurately. The closest estimate you'll likely get is if you're a transit provider able to measure data transfer, and even then you'll be lucky to extrapolate within the correct order of magnitude from that for total global inter-AS traffic.
    - collinmanderson 5y ago
      The 18% likely comes from here (% of websites) https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/proxy https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/proxy
    - kazen44 5y ago
      also, what is considered internet Traffic? lots of private wan's also exist. which complicates this comparison even further.
gzer0 5y ago
Meanwhile, AWS holds 41% of the entire marketspace, with $14.8 billion USD in revenues per quarter. Extrapolating that a bit, $60 billion USD in revenues... $500 million is peanuts compared to this [1]. What Cloudflare is trying to do is remarkable considering what they are up against. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/29/aws-earnings-q2-2021.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/29/aws-earnings-q2-2021.html
- nuerow 5y ago
  > What Cloudflare is trying to do is remarkable considering what they are up against. I repeat, Cloudflare is already the world's leading CDN provider, ahead of AWS by a long margin. This is not a David vs Golias story. At most it's a CDN Golias vs a all-in Golias. It's disingenuous to compare Cloudflare and it's CDN offering to AWS at face value based on gross revenue. AWS offers everything from build pipelines to satellite ground stations, and even provides backup services comprised of a big truck with armed guards. Cloudflare is impressive and very successful, but it's by no means a small upstart, specially when it serves a market where it eclipse all competitors, including AWS.
  - tw04 5y ago
    Perhaps you meant Goliath? In any case, it kind of is a David vs. Goliath. Cloudflare currently employs ~1800 people and has revenues of under a billion dollars. They don't qualify as a large enterprise by anyone's definition. They aren't a 2-man shop but they are very much a David in the broader market. Amazon is an absolute monstrosity in comparison.
    - chucksmash 5y ago
      Golias is used in some other languages. See, e.g., http://www.bibliadinamica.comunidades.net/o-gigante-golias http://www.bibliadinamica.comunidades.net/o-gigante-golias
      - imwillofficial 5y ago
        Interesting read!
dfdz 5y ago
Amazon market cap 1.732T Google market cap 1.89T Microsoft market cap 2.289T Cloudflare market cap 55.86B Who do you expect to provide competition to Amazon/Google/Microsoft for egress pricing if not smaller company who is a "leading CDN provider" ? Your comment seems to be justifying why Cloudflare is ideally suited to provide competition against the big 3 cloud providers with its R2 offering ...
- johnday 5y ago
  Why would you think that a company's market cap (not only the relevant portion of the business, but the entire company) is a reasonable marker for how big of a player they are inside of this part of the industry? Heck, market caps at this point are almost entirely untethered from reality. {cf. Tesla}
  - ant6n 5y ago
    It seems cloudflare makes about 500M in revenue. So their price/revenue is like 100, ouch. The market seems to believe cloudflare will do very well.
  - robocat 5y ago
    Market cap is a reasonable proxy measure for how much money those companies can bring to bear to win the market (especially if losses[1]), should those companies decide that competing is a number one priority. Two examples from Microsoft: XBox (worked) and Windows Phone (failed). Revenues or profits in the cloud market for each company are mostly a measure of how much they are winning. How much they are spending is a measure of how much they are trying to compete, and the amount they can spend is also dependent on profits in other areas of their respective business. > Heck, market caps at this point are almost entirely untethered from reality Most stocks have some basis in reality, and relative value still matters even if you think the whole market is in Lala land. The stocks mentioned are not diamondhand stocks. Variation in valuation is not hitting two orders of magnitude, which is what we have here. A better measure might be some gross profitability figure for each company that measures how much each company can pump into competing (expenses), but that is hard to calculate, especially for Amazon. [1] Google Cloud Losses Shrink 59%, Revenue Hits $4.6B https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/google-cloud-losses-shrink-59-revenue-hits-4-6b/2021/07/ https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/google-cloud-losses... Edited: added second paragraphs.
jsnell 5y ago
Cloudflare is definitely not the world's leading CDN provider. Akamai has 7x the revenue.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

by nuerow 5y ago

nvarsj 5y ago

That report is very misleading. Customer count is a useless metric for a CDN. If you looked at total traffic and spend, Cloudflare would be dwarfed.

andrewnyr 5y ago
It is when about 18% of the internet runs through Cloudflare.
- motives 5y ago
  Source? Assuming you're talking about 18% of traffic and not percentage of websites, how do you define what counts as traffic in that case? Transfer between AS's? Does internal traffic within AS's count? Does traffic between entities within the same AS count (e.g traffic from one AWS customer to another, or traffic from a Netflix OCA to an ISP?) I'm skeptical of any entities ability to fully measure the throughput of the internet even remotely accurately. The closest estimate you'll likely get is if you're a transit provider able to measure data transfer, and even then you'll be lucky to extrapolate within the correct order of magnitude from that for total global inter-AS traffic.
  - collinmanderson 5y ago
    The 18% likely comes from here (% of websites) https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/proxy https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/proxy
  - kazen44 5y ago
    also, what is considered internet Traffic? lots of private wan's also exist. which complicates this comparison even further.

gzer0 5y ago

Meanwhile, AWS holds 41% of the entire marketspace, with $14.8 billion USD in revenues per quarter. Extrapolating that a bit, $60 billion USD in revenues... $500 million is peanuts compared to this [1]. What Cloudflare is trying to do is remarkable considering what they are up against. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/29/aws-earnings-q2-2021.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/29/aws-earnings-q2-2021.html

nuerow 5y ago
> What Cloudflare is trying to do is remarkable considering what they are up against. I repeat, Cloudflare is already the world's leading CDN provider, ahead of AWS by a long margin. This is not a David vs Golias story. At most it's a CDN Golias vs a all-in Golias. It's disingenuous to compare Cloudflare and it's CDN offering to AWS at face value based on gross revenue. AWS offers everything from build pipelines to satellite ground stations, and even provides backup services comprised of a big truck with armed guards. Cloudflare is impressive and very successful, but it's by no means a small upstart, specially when it serves a market where it eclipse all competitors, including AWS.
- tw04 5y ago
  Perhaps you meant Goliath? In any case, it kind of is a David vs. Goliath. Cloudflare currently employs ~1800 people and has revenues of under a billion dollars. They don't qualify as a large enterprise by anyone's definition. They aren't a 2-man shop but they are very much a David in the broader market. Amazon is an absolute monstrosity in comparison.
  - chucksmash 5y ago
    Golias is used in some other languages. See, e.g., http://www.bibliadinamica.comunidades.net/o-gigante-golias http://www.bibliadinamica.comunidades.net/o-gigante-golias
    - imwillofficial 5y ago
      Interesting read!

dfdz 5y ago

Amazon market cap 1.732T Google market cap 1.89T Microsoft market cap 2.289T Cloudflare market cap 55.86B Who do you expect to provide competition to Amazon/Google/Microsoft for egress pricing if not smaller company who is a "leading CDN provider" ? Your comment seems to be justifying why Cloudflare is ideally suited to provide competition against the big 3 cloud providers with its R2 offering ...

johnday 5y ago
Why would you think that a company's market cap (not only the relevant portion of the business, but the entire company) is a reasonable marker for how big of a player they are inside of this part of the industry? Heck, market caps at this point are almost entirely untethered from reality. {cf. Tesla}
- ant6n 5y ago
  It seems cloudflare makes about 500M in revenue. So their price/revenue is like 100, ouch. The market seems to believe cloudflare will do very well.
- robocat 5y ago
  Market cap is a reasonable proxy measure for how much money those companies can bring to bear to win the market (especially if losses[1]), should those companies decide that competing is a number one priority. Two examples from Microsoft: XBox (worked) and Windows Phone (failed). Revenues or profits in the cloud market for each company are mostly a measure of how much they are winning. How much they are spending is a measure of how much they are trying to compete, and the amount they can spend is also dependent on profits in other areas of their respective business. > Heck, market caps at this point are almost entirely untethered from reality Most stocks have some basis in reality, and relative value still matters even if you think the whole market is in Lala land. The stocks mentioned are not diamondhand stocks. Variation in valuation is not hitting two orders of magnitude, which is what we have here. A better measure might be some gross profitability figure for each company that measures how much each company can pump into competing (expenses), but that is hard to calculate, especially for Amazon. [1] Google Cloud Losses Shrink 59%, Revenue Hits $4.6B https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/google-cloud-losses-shrink-59-revenue-hits-4-6b/2021/07/ https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/google-cloud-losses... Edited: added second paragraphs.

jsnell 5y ago

Cloudflare is definitely not the world's leading CDN provider. Akamai has 7x the revenue.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]