Edge Cloud Helps Cloudflare Build Better, More Secure Web Infrastructure | Juniper Global Summit

00:00 [music]

00:07 -Hello everyone, my name is Jason Fritch.

00:09 I'm Vice President of Global Sales for the Cloud Provider

00:11 segment here at Juniper Networks.

00:13 Joining me today is Nitin Rao,

00:15 who is Senior Vice President of Infrastructure at Cloudflare.

00:17 Nitin, welcome, and thanks for joining us today.

00:21 -Great to chat with you, Jason.

00:23 Juniper has been a terrific partner, so appreciate getting to speak with you.

00:27 -Oh, absolutely. Me too, I'm excited.

00:29 As you mentioned, Juniper and Cloudflare,

00:31 we've partnered together for a number of years.

00:33 I'm quite certain most folks joining us today

00:36 know of Cloudflare and how you help ensure excellent and reliable access to

00:40 global internet for businesses of all sizes around the world.

00:43 You folks have built a global platform through the incubation

00:46 of data centers that support the security and performance of the internet,

00:49 but then can you tell us a bit more about the

00:51 scope and scale of Cloudflare's business and the network that powers it?

00:55 -Sure. It's been a real privilege to

00:59 help grow the Cloudflare network with partners like Juniper.

01:03 There's a substantial portion of the internet through Cloudflare every day.

01:07 More than 25 million internet properties run on Cloudflare's infrastructure,

01:13 the global network spans more than 200 cities across 100 countries,

01:19 and we stop about north of 50 billion cyber threats every day.

01:26 It's been really exciting to see how we can not only protect

01:31 infrastructure facing the internet but increasingly also protect corporate applications,

01:37 protect the teams and remote workers accessing anything connected to the internet.

01:43 -What's been so impressive watching Cloudflare's incredible growth over the years,

01:48 has been the rate of that growth.

01:50 Is there anything that you believe has fueled your unique

01:55 growth in the last few years that differentiates you folks?

01:59 -Well, one thing that I'm especially proud of, is that we really represent

02:04 the breadth of the internet, and so you could be a blogger on our free plan,

02:12 a small and medium business paying us $200 a month,

02:17 or you could be one of 17% of the Fortune 1000 companies

02:22 that run their critical infrastructure on Cloudflare.

02:27 I think it's seeing that breadth of the internet

02:30 helps make the service better for everybody.

02:34 In many ways, it's similar to a neighborhood watch,

02:38 where shared threat intelligence helps ensure that every company no matter

02:43 where they are, is safer together.

02:47 -Absolutely. One thing that's impressed me in observing your business

02:50 and how you engage your customers is how easy you make those individual customers,

02:54 whether it's the smallest customer, the largest customer, engage you and onboard with you.

02:58 There's no differentiation there.

03:00 Then, a lot of talk about how traffic patterns are changing

03:03 on the internet in the last few years,

03:05 the proliferation of devices and data, content,

03:08 and how that impacts the network.

03:09 Industries and workforces are moving to remote work, especially in the last year.

03:13 Can you tell me a little bit about Cloudflare as you are

03:15 on these trends and the effect that they're having on the network?

03:19 -Sure.

03:21 I haven't been to an office in at least a year,

03:25 much like I'm guessing you and most people.

03:28 Even so, for our own business, onboarded hundreds of new employees,

03:33 and like lot of companies, we've had to rethink

03:37 how you design corporate networks.

03:40 We don't, for instance, give them VPN seats, Cloudflare employees,

03:45 remote workers, contractors.

03:47 Instead actually, connect to the Cloudflare network,

03:51 to the nearest data center.

03:53 We use a zero trust model for how we secure our global infrastructure.

03:59 We actually offer this to customers, and so they're the smallest

04:04 and largest of companies use Cloudflare's zero trust model to

04:09 keep business going especially, close to my heart is using a

04:14 number of pharmaceutical companies able to do daily work,

04:18 connecting using Cloudflare's infrastructure.

04:23 -Any observations about the global market or emerging

04:26 markets in terms of traffic patterns or increase in activity?

04:31 -If you're a network engineer, April 2020 was a particularly interesting month,

04:39 not only because we were each personally living through the

04:42 change and uncertainty that was going on around the world,

04:45 but also because for networks like Cloudflare, we added more traffic in 12 weeks

04:50 than we did in the prior 12 months.

04:53 Stress makes networks stronger.

05:01 Not only for Cloudfare, but really across the network engineering community.

05:05 We ended up, in many ways, being stronger because of that.

05:12 I'm grateful for how as an industry, we came together to absorb the

05:18 growth in traffic on the internet.

05:21 As one example, we had equipment landing in places like Brazil,

05:26 in India, and Russia and the internet was relying on us getting

05:31 that equipment up and running.

05:34 It's a privilege to help make that happen and it really took a village.

05:40 It also I think forced companies to really rethink the way they

05:44 design their networks, upgrading a traditional VPN box in an office.

05:51 That model goes only so far.

05:53 You have to really rethink access authentication.

05:59 A number of companies are forced to go faster with

06:02 their digital transformation because of the last year.

06:06 -Absolutely. I also think that the last year has just reminded everybody

06:11 whether you're here in this industry or not, the importance

06:15 and the relevance that the network plays and how critical it is to

06:19 all connections and connecting everybody.

06:22 Kudos to your ability and for the last year as well.

06:25 I spent a lot of time in logistics just-- Nitin, as you mentioned,

06:28 supporting customers to get products and get components

06:32 to where they needed to be as quickly as possible. It was hard as ever.

06:36 I love that with you guys.

06:38 This week at our summit, we're talking a lot about

06:41 Juniper's true north which is experience-first networking.

06:44 For our cloud-provider customers, that's not just about hardware or

06:48 delivering functions or features but providing products and

06:52 solutions that rapidly integrate into how you operate

06:55 and how cloud providers operate their network

06:57 so that it will enable you to do what you do faster and better.

07:01 What's your view on this in terms of how Cloudflare ensures

07:04 a great end-user experience for your customers?

07:08 -First, at the outset, I really appreciate that Juniper cares about

07:12 experience-oriented networking.

07:15 That's really important.

07:18 There are a handful of companies

07:20 that play an outsized role in keeping the internet safe, fast, reliable.

07:25 It's really important that we cooperate to make sure

07:30 the internet experience is as seamless as possible.

07:33 I think there's an opportunity around reliability.

07:37 Even something like route leaks really ought to be a thing of the past.

07:41 It's been terrific seeing networks partnering with companies like

07:46 Juniper and Cloudflare, adopt standards like RPKI and do the work

07:51 to help ensure we're safer together.

07:54 Also, it's been great to see really the democratization

07:58 of where people write code.

08:02 Once upon a time, even if you deployed code to the

08:06 cloud, it typically run in Ashburn or Miami or São Paulo.

08:10 Increasingly, you should be able to write code and it should

08:12 just run in the network in every corner of the world,

08:16 be it Reykjavik or Mumbai, India.

08:19 It's really great to see how the network is the computer and more

08:26 and more developers out of the gate

08:28 should have access to the largest networks in the world.

08:32 That's only possible because of the various companies

08:35 that cooperate behind the scenes to help make that so.

08:39 -It is nice. You mentioned it earlier, but Cloudfare does walk the walk in

08:42 that aspect of just your business model that we talked about, of

08:47 just a network experience and a fast network and access to a

08:51 great network should be something that's available to everybody.

08:55 You folks are certainly driving that as well.

08:59 Then, could you tell us a little bit more about Juniper's role

09:01 within Cloudflare's network, please?

09:04 -Juniper has been an important partner in building out the

09:07 Cloudflare network from the earliest days in our journey

09:11 and we're grateful for the partnership.

09:14 Cloudflare's infrastructure in north of 200 cities across 100 countries

09:20 and in many of those cities, we're spread across

09:23 multiple interconnection points.

09:26 We have routing and switching hardware.

09:31 This equipment both helps us transport the internet traffic

09:37 we sit in front, but also secure the internet traffic we sit in front.

09:42 Juniper's a valued partner in that.

09:46 -You touched earlier about the heroes within your team,

09:50 of the network engineers, that's changed a lot in the last couple of years.

09:54 What do you think network professionals need to grow their skills?

09:59 What does it mean to be a network engineer at Cloudflare?

10:03 -Sure.

10:04 I think you need to be perennially curious.

10:11 For some network engineers at a company like Cloudflare,

10:15 that means running a global network.

10:17 For other folks, that might mean learning major hyper-scale

10:23 clouds like AWS or Azure or Google,

10:26 but you have to certainly rethink your skillset.

10:31 I think the way we approached problems like

10:35 designing an MPLS, moving data from point A to point B,

10:39 how you think about MPLS, how you think about WAN is going to change,

10:43 and so it's important to keep adapting.

10:45 Then finally, if you think of compute storage and network,

10:49 the lines between those three will continue to blur,

10:52 and so the more that network engineers and network architects aren't siloed

10:57 from their colleagues designing servers, but actually can

11:00 learn from each other, I think a world where servers are more networking

11:05 gear and networking gear have the transparency and control of servers

11:09 is a good world for everybody.

11:12 -I think we're seeing that, and you folks are definitely on the

11:15 leading edge of that as well, but we're seeing that across the

11:17 cloud community, that direction is already in flight, certainly.

11:23 What do you think is next for your industry?

11:25 What's next for Cloudflare?

11:28 -The thing, and in many ways, it feels companies like Cloudflare

11:33 are collaboratively becoming the operating system for the internet,

11:39 and so I'm really excited about the developer who's starting off right now

11:44 right now and has the resources of a big internet giant,

11:48 and can build tomorrow's great technology company, from the ground up.

11:54 I think you can rethink the way computer runs around the word.

11:58 You can rethink storage, you can rethink databases.

12:02 It's such really a privilege to see a new generation of companies being born,

12:08 and companies like Juniper and Cloudflare get the

12:11 opportunity to assist behind the scenes, and that's very exciting.

12:16 -Yes, and by doing that, you're going to enable the

12:19 empowerment of new business models as well absolutely.

12:23 Nitin, I want to thank you so much for your time today.

12:25 We certainly appreciate your insights, and I have to tell you,

12:28 I've known you for a few years now and we've negotiated some deals and

12:31 you're a smart and tough negotiator.

12:33 I love being on this side of the table with you and collaborating with you.

12:37 Thanks so much for your time and your insights.

12:40 -It feels like everything we do, we really do,

12:44 not on behalf of our company, but on behalf of the internet.

12:48 I'm grateful for partners that support us on our journey.

12:52 -Thanks so much Nitin. Appreciate your time.

12:54 -Thanks so much.