2019 in Review

At the end of the year, it’s traditional to take stock of a company’s achievements, its growth, earnings, market share, and so on. There are many ways to measure a company’s success and, after more than 25 years leading companies at various stages, I could convey all the various performance indicators that a CEO would share; instead, I’d like to spend a little time discussing factors that are harder to measure but that I see every day at Zscaler.

They include a culture that rewards character and passion, teams that support open communications and reject politics, and an environment that inspires innovation and customer obsession. Culture, teamwork, and environment will never be represented on any balance sheet, but they are the secret to delighting customers and achieving extraordinary results—thereby reaching all those measurable KPIs.  

Today, I’m pleased to share some of the events of 2019 and accomplishments we achieved—innovations, partnerships, accolades, growth, and customer success. Some of these can be measured in numbers, and all of them are the result of intangible factors that will continue to build Zscaler into a world-class company.

Market Leadership

Gartner released two important research reports this year that make a strong case for Zscaler’s architectural approach for the delivery of security and other cloud services. The first was a Market Guide on zero trust network access (ZTNA) and, in August, Gartner released its report, The Future of Network Security is in the Cloud. Both of these reports call for the need to move security off the network and into the cloud, pushing services close to users for the best experience, and reducing risk by eliminating the attack surface. When we started more than a decade ago, the notion of cloud-delivered security was a tough sell to all but a handful of pioneers. Today, it’s known to be an imperative for digital businesses, and it’s gratifying to have our vision supported by the esteemed analysts at Gartner.

I am immensely proud of the fact that in 2019 Zscaler was named a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Secure Web Gateways for the ninth year in a row. Zscaler holds the furthest position for completeness of vision and ability to execute. In its analysis, Gartner, once again, provided strong validation of our cloud approach, and we believe our position offers further evidence that a unified security platform-as-a-service is the key to enabling cloud transformation for modern organizations.

Innovation & Scale

From the start, innovation has been a core Zscaler value, and it is achieved through the passion of our employees to solve customer business challenges. I spend a lot of time with customers, exchanging ideas and listening to their insights as they transform from the old world to the new. But, I am far from the only one at Zscaler who is listening to customers, and many of our innovations are inspired by the unique challenges they present us with. This year, we introduced Zscaler B2B, which solves a long-standing problem that businesses face when exposing their applications to their customers, suppliers and manufacturers.

Zscaler is proud to be serving an increasing number of local, state, and government agencies with stringent security requirements. I was thrilled when Zscaler Private Access (ZPA) achieved Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) Ready status at the High Impact level, which enables federal agencies to use Zscaler to meet their Trusted Internet Connection (TIC) requirements. Zscaler has also been added to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) Program Approved Products List. The CDM program helps agencies identify and mitigate cyber risk and quickly implement new cybersecurity solutions.

The Zscaler global reach expanded in 2019, too. The eminently scalable Zscaler platform is now distributed across more than 150 data centers, with our latest data center opening this year in Normandy, France. Our global presence and peering relationships with major providers in internet exchanges means our services are close to users, and that proximity creates short hops and a great user experience all over the world.

As a multi-tenant cloud built for reliability, availability, and scalability, we can bring new data centers online and perform upgrades without any disruption to our services—or to our customers. As our cloud capacity has grown, so has activity. The volume of transactions we process in our cloud has been doubling consistently every 20 months and, at the end of 2019, we are processing two trillion transactions per month and 1.5 Tbps of traffic.

Partnerships & Integrations

Partnerships with innovators have been important to our success and our customers’, and this year we expanded on one of our most important alliances—with Microsoft. Zscaler was the first and only cloud security provider to be named a certified partner in the Microsoft Networking Partner Program (NPP) for Office 365. We have made long-term investments in Office 365 innovation, collaboration, and user experience, and we are thrilled to partner with Microsoft to make it easier for customers to adopt and use the full Office 365 suite.

Over the summer, we also announced an exciting partnership with CrowdStrike to develop an integrated solution that delivers 100% cloud-native protection, including all of Zscaler's core competencies as well as the ability to identify, report on, and respond to threats at the endpoint.

The People of Zscaler

The Zscaler team grew by more than 33 percent in 2019. We are delighted to welcome dedicated professionals across the organization in engineering, marketing, customer support, sales, finance, and many others whose passion and expertise will help us achieve our mission of enabling a world where information can be accessed securely no matter where it lives. Hiring isn’t easy when it’s as important to find people who are a cultural fit as it is to find those with the right skills and experience. But our commitment to our cultural values is a reason that Zscaler was named a Glassdoor great place to work.

If you joined us at Zenith Live Cloud Summit this year in Las Vegas or Lisbon, you would have had the opportunity to meet many Zscaler employees and customers. These events are the highlight of the year, allowing me to meet hundreds of customers, partners, and industry leaders at the forefront of IT transformation. Earlier in the year, we introduced Zscaler Academy city tours, which provided training and technical sessions to customers in 13 cities, from Tokyo to Chicago to Paris, and we look forward to resuming our “world tour” in 2020.

As we wind down the last few days of 2019, I am so grateful for the milestones we achieved together, some of which can be measured and many of which cannot. I look ahead to the new year and the new decade with great confidence in our employees, appreciation for the families that support us in our work, and enormous gratitude for our customers, partners, and friends who are taking this journey with us. I wish you great success in the year ahead and immeasurable joy throughout the holidays.