Principal Systems Engineer, Cloudflare

Cloudflare has been responsible for a number of admirable initiatives, offering free web protection to human rights groups, journalists, artists, and US election websites. This goes some way to counteracting the flak Cloudflare has received in some circles for the controversial groups and users who use its services. This chequered history, however, has not affected its over 80% market share in the content delivery network field.

This is perhaps in part because it has proven sharp at staying abreast of the rapidly morphing tech and digital space and customer demands. For example, Cloudflare is shifting to 100% renewable energy usage to create a zero-emissions internet, and in 2020 released a feature that would help users navigate data privacy regulations by selecting where their data is stored.

The cloud infrastructure market reached $53 billion in 2022. While the Big 3 (Amazon, Microsoft, and Google) own 65% of the market, that still leaves billions of dollars left for companies such as Cloudflare. Its ambitious and successful work is likely to continue being a crucial feature of the web, but in 2023, placed it in the crosshairs of hackers looking to exploit its infrastructure. The beginning of 2024 saw Cloudflare vow to bolster its security and patch vulnerabilities.