I think Cloudflare is (for companies already using it) approaching the status of trusted main cloud supplier (which usually would be AWS, GCP, Azure) via which the majority of cloud costs are billed (so you don't have to go through a fresh procurement process).

▲ ryandvm 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I don't know what you mean by "trusted", but how many times do folks have to go through the same loop?

   - Company has great initial product
   - Company gets popular
   - Shareholders demand infinite growth
   - Company becomes rent-seeker
   - GOTO 10

I'm with OP - a company that wants to insert itself in the middle of everybody's business is not being altruistic, they're playing the long game.

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viraptor 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> I don't know what you mean by "trusted",

It means "hi spending approver, I'm going to add $100 to our CF account" instead of "hi accounting+management+security, please initiate the process of evaluating new third party vendor Foo for use in my project, I hope we can get it approved and integrated into SSO sometime next month".

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tomrod 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

CloudFlare is FedRAMP high. This is a pretty big deal for a lot of a certain type of system owners.

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deadbabe 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There is nothing wrong with “inserting yourself in the middle of everybody’s business”. That is how you reduce friction between parties and make optimizations that are only possible by being able to manage both sides of the connection. It’s also a really good way to make money.

	▲	ryandvm 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Well... there's "nothing wrong" with being a car dealership either. "Wrong" is a funny way to look at it.

▲ ricardobeat 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This practice of having the one provider should be eliminated. Companies self-inflict lock-in to large platform providers, prevent their own teams from using better technology options and stifle innovation. It's crazy that even with a pile of SOC/ISO/PCI/HIPAA/NIS certificates, procurement is still a months-long process, it should be much easier to do business.

▲ ttul 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I think their strategy is: "AI coding means we can build everything. Our infrastructure approach is incredibly quick to build upon, so why not build it all ourselves and then anyone with half a brain will move their stuff to Cloudflare and leave AWS in the dust."