Fastly

Last updated
Fastly, Inc.
Company type Public
Industry Internet
FoundedMarch 2011;13 years ago (2011-03)
FounderArtur Bergman
Headquarters San Francisco, California, U.S.
Key people
Services
RevenueIncrease2.svg US$506 million (2023)
Increase Negative.svgUS$−198 million (2023)
Increase Negative.svgUS$−133 million (2023)
Total assets Decrease2.svgUS$1.53 billion (2023)
Total equity Increase2.svgUS$979 million (2023)
Number of employees
1,207 (2023)
ASN
  • 54113
Website www.fastly.com OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
Footnotes /references
[1]

Fastly is an American cloud computing services provider. It describes its network as an edge cloud platform, which is designed to help developers extend their core cloud infrastructure to the edge of the network, closer to users. [2] The Fastly edge cloud platform includes their content delivery network (CDN), image optimization, video and streaming, cloud security, and load balancing services. [3] Fastly's cloud security services include denial-of-service attack protection, bot mitigation, and a web application firewall. [4] Fastly's web application firewall uses the Open Web Application Security Project ModSecurity Core Rule Set alongside its own ruleset.

Contents

The Fastly platform is built on top of Varnish. [5] As of December 2021, Fastly transfers 50–100 Tbps of data. [6] [ better source needed ]

History

Fastly was founded in 2011 by the Swedish-American entrepreneur Artur Bergman, previously chief technical officer at Wikia (now Fandom). [7] [8] In June 2013, Fastly raised $10 million in Series B funding. [9] In April 2014, the company announced that it had acquired CDN Sumo, a CDN add-on for Heroku. [10] In September 2014, Fastly raised a further $40 million in Series C funding, [11] followed by a $75 million Series D round in August 2015. [12]

In September 2015, Google partnered with Fastly and other content delivery network providers to offer services to its users. [13] In April 2017, Fastly launched its edge cloud platform along with image optimization, load balancing, and a web application firewall. [3] [14]

Fastly raised $50 million in funding in April 2017, [15] and another $40 million in July 2018. [16] The company filed for an initial public offering (IPO) in April 2019 and debuted on the New York Stock Exchange on May 17, 2019. [17] [18] In February 2020, Bergman stepped down as CEO and assumed the role of chief architect and executive chairperson; Joshua Bixby took over the CEO role. [19]

In August 2020, Fastly announced it was acquiring cybersecurity company Signal Sciences for $775 million ($200 million in cash and $575 million in stock). [20]

In June 2021, Ronald W. Kisling, previously employed by Alphabet as the CFO of the Fitbit division, was hired to serve as Fastly's CFO, succeeding Adriel Lares. He assumed the position in August 2021. [21] [22]

In May 2022, Fastly announced it had acquired Glitch, a web coding platform with more than 1.8 million developers. [23]

In August 2022, Todd Nightingale, previously employed by Cisco as Executive Vice President of Enterprise Networking and Cloud business, was hired to serve as Fastly's CEO, succeeding Joshua Bixby. [24]

In August 2023, it was announced Fastly has acquired the domain status API provider, Domainr. [25]

Operation

Fastly's CDN service follows the reverse proxy model, routing all website traffic through their own servers instead of providing a 'cdn.mydomain.com' address to store site-specific files. It then fetches content from the point of presence nearest to the location of the requesting user, out of nearly 60 worldwide. [26] It is priced as a pay-as-you-go service subject to a US$50 per month minimum charge, with bandwidth charged at variable rates depending on region. [27] Content is not directly uploaded to their servers, rather it is pulled periodically from the origin server and cached in order to reduce the time required for an end-user to access the content. [28]

Fastly supports the UDP-based HTTP/3 protocol, as well as DRM enabled content, encryption and secure tokens to restrict media access. [27] [29]

On 8 June 2021, Fastly reported problems with their CDN service which caused many major websites, such as Reddit, gov.uk, Twitch, Spotify and Amazon, along with major news sources such as The New York Times , The Guardian , CNN and the BBC, to become unavailable. [30] It also affected certain parts of other major websites, such as the servers hosting the emojis used by Twitter, resulting in them becoming inaccessible. [31] The outage was resolved by Fastly after a few hours. Fastly has since stated that the cause of the outage was a software bug triggered by a specific user configuration. [32] [33]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Akamai Technologies</span> American computer networking company

Akamai Technologies, Inc. is an American company that provides content delivery network (CDN), cybersecurity, DDoS mitigation, and cloud services. Akamai is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The company operates a network of servers worldwide, renting the capacity of the servers to customers running websites or other web services, in order to provide greater speed or availability to the end user by using an Akamai owned server that is located closer to the user.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Content delivery network</span> Layer in the internet ecosystem addressing bottlenecks

A content delivery network or content distribution network (CDN) is a geographically distributed network of proxy servers and their data centers. The goal is to provide high availability and performance by distributing the service spatially relative to end users. CDNs came into existence in the late 1990s as a means for alleviating the performance bottlenecks of the Internet as the Internet was starting to become a mission-critical medium for people and enterprises. Since then, CDNs have grown to serve a large portion of the Internet content today, including web objects, downloadable objects, applications, live streaming media, on-demand streaming media, and social media sites.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">F5, Inc.</span> U.S. information technology company

F5, Inc. is an American technology company specializing in application security, multi-cloud management, online fraud prevention, application delivery networking (ADN), application availability & performance, network security, and access & authorization.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Xunlei</span> Chinese multinational technology company

Xunlei Limited is a Chinese multinational technology company and an online service provider founded in 2003. The subsidiary of Xunlei Limited, Shenzhen Xunlei Networking Technologies, Co., Ltd. was formerly known as Sandai Technologies (Shenzhen) Inc. and changed its name to Shenzhen Xunlei Networking Technologies, Co., Ltd. in May 2005. Its headquarters are in Nanshan District, Shenzhen.

Kaltura is a New York-based software company founded in 2006. Kaltura operates in four major markets: Cloud TV for operators and media companies, online video platform (OVP) offered mostly to media companies and brands looking to distribute content or monetize it, Education Video Platform (EdVP) offered to educational institutions, and Enterprise Video Platform (EVP) for collaboration, communications and marketing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Box (company)</span> Cloud content management program

Box, Inc. is a public company based in Redwood City, California. It develops and markets cloud-based content management, collaboration, and file sharing tools for businesses. Box was founded in 2005 by Aaron Levie and Dylan Smith. Initially, it focused on consumers, but around 2009 and 2010 Box pivoted to focus on business users. The company raised about $500 million over numerous funding rounds, before going public in 2015. Its software allows users to store and manage files in an online folder system accessible from any device. Users can then comment on the files, share them, apply workflows, and implement security and governance policies.

Edgecast Networks, Inc. was a subsidiary of Yahoo! Inc. and provider of content delivery network (CDN) and video streaming services. Founded in 2006, it was notable for being a self-provisioning CDN technology used by the telecommunication and hosting industries.

Egnyte is a software company headquartered in Mountain View, California. It sells cloud-based content security, compliance, and collaboration tools for businesses. Egnyte was founded in 2007 with a focus on modernized file servers, but it has since shifted to selling tools that help users securely collaborate with coworkers and third parties.

Twilio Inc. is an American cloud communications company based in San Francisco, California, which provides programmable communication tools for making and receiving phone calls, sending and receiving text messages, and performing other communication functions using its web service APIs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cloudflare</span> American technology company

Cloudflare, Inc. is an American company that provides content delivery network services, cloud cybersecurity, DDoS mitigation, and ICANN-accredited domain registration services. Cloudflare's headquarters are in San Francisco, California. According to The Hill, Cloudflare is used by more than 20 percent of the Internet for its web security services, as of 2022.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aaron Levie</span> American entrepreneur (born 1984)

Aaron Winsor Levie is an American entrepreneur. He is the co-founder and CEO of the enterprise cloud company Box.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DigitalOcean</span> American cloud infrastructure provider

DigitalOcean Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational technology company and cloud service provider. The company is headquartered in New York City, New York, US, with 15 globally distributed data centers. DigitalOcean provides developers, startups, and SMBs with cloud infrastructure-as-a-service platforms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">WalkMe</span> American web-based software company

WalkMe is an American multinational software-as-a-service (SaaS) company, with headquarters in San Francisco, California. Its Digital Adoption Platform (DAP) was recognized in Everest Group's PEAK Matrix Assessment of DAP vendors as the leading DAP product. Alongside its headquarters in San Francisco, the company has offices in Raleigh, North Carolina; Tel Aviv, Israel, and a global footprint including the United Kingdom, Australia, and Japan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fuze (company)</span> American communications and software company

Fuze is a cloud communications and collaboration software platform designed for the enterprise. Fuze was acquired by 8x8. The company is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.

Snowflake Inc. is an American cloud computing–based data cloud company based in Bozeman, Montana. It was founded in July 2012 and was publicly launched in October 2014 after two years in stealth mode.

Yottaa is a web and mobile optimization services company based in Waltham, Massachusetts. Its main product is a platform that helps with website conversions, as well as performance and security.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Podium (company)</span> American software company

Podium is a private technology company headquartered in Lehi, Utah that develops cloud-based software related to messaging, customer feedback, online reviews, selling products, and requesting payments.

Cohesity is an American privately held information technology company headquartered in San Jose, California with offices in India and Ireland. The company develops software that allows IT professionals to backup, manage and gain insights from their data across multiple systems or cloud providers. Their products also include anti-ransomware features, Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service, and SaaS management.

Zeta Global Holdings Corp. is a data-driven marketing technology company which was founded in 2007. Zeta offers companies a suite of multichannel marketing tools focused on creating, maintaining, and monetizing customer relationships.

References

  1. ↑ "US SEC: Form 10-K Fastly, Inc". U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. 22 February 2024.
  2. ↑ "How The New York Times Handled Unprecedented Election-Night Traffic Spike". DataCenter Knowledge. April 18, 2017.
  3. 1 2 Kepes, Ben (April 18, 2017). "In the need for speed, Fastly goes all the way to the edge". Computerworld . Retrieved October 10, 2017.
  4. ↑ "Discontent and disruption in the world of content delivery networks". TechCrunch. June 2017.
  5. ↑ "The benefits of using Varnish". Fastly.com. 30 March 2015. Retrieved December 23, 2020.
  6. ↑ "PeeringDB".
  7. ↑ Novet, Jordan (September 16, 2014). "Fastly grabs $40M on its quest to build a big, cool content-delivery network". VentureBeat. Retrieved December 23, 2020.
  8. ↑ Rockwell, Nick (2018-09-07). "Open Questions: A Conversation with Fastly CEO Artur Bergman". The New York Times . Retrieved 2022-05-30.
  9. ↑ "Fastly Raises $10M for Content Delivery Network Built for Mobile, Real-Time World". TechCrunch. June 6, 2013. Retrieved December 23, 2020.
  10. ↑ Richards, Ryan (April 16, 2014). "Ruby on Rails on Fastly". www.fastly.com. Archived from the original on December 23, 2020. Retrieved December 23, 2020.
  11. ↑ Miller, Ron (September 16, 2014). "Fastly Growing Quickly Snags $40M As VCs Give Generously". TechCrunch. Retrieved December 23, 2020.
  12. ↑ Lardinois, Frederic (August 5, 2015). "Fastly Raises $75M For Its Real-Time CDN". TechCrunch. Retrieved December 23, 2020.
  13. ↑ "Google Partners With CloudFlare, Fastly, Level 3 And Highwinds To Help Developers Push Google Cloud Content To Users Faster". TechCrunch. 9 September 2015.
  14. ↑ "Fastly Releases Edge Cloud Platform". Bizty.
  15. ↑ "Fastly raises another $50 million for its content delivery networking technology". TechCrunch. 23 May 2017. Retrieved December 23, 2020.
  16. ↑ Dillet, Romain (July 17, 2018). "Fastly raises another $40 million before an IPO". TechCrunch. Retrieved December 23, 2020.
  17. ↑ Shieber, Jonathan (April 20, 2019). "Fastly, the content delivery network, files for an IPO". TechCrunch. Retrieved December 23, 2020.
  18. ↑ Novet, Jordan (May 17, 2019). "Fastly shares rocket as much as 60% in IPO debut". CNBC. Retrieved December 23, 2020.
  19. ↑ Hernbroth, Megan (February 23, 2020). "'I like being in the trenches': Fastly CEO steps down after disappointing market debuts, citing his 'true strengths and passions' as a developer instead of company leader". Business Insider Australia. Retrieved December 23, 2020.
  20. ↑ Shieber, Jonathan (August 27, 2020). "LA gets a big SaaS exit as Fastly nabs the Culver City-based Signal Sciences for $775M". TechCrunch. Retrieved December 23, 2020.
  21. ↑ "Fastly Appoints Ron Kisling as CFO". www.businesswire.com. 2021-06-29. Retrieved 2021-07-07.
  22. ↑ Maurer, Mark (2021-06-29). "Cloud-Services Firm Fastly Hires Google Executive as CFO". Wall Street Journal. ISSN   0099-9660 . Retrieved 2021-07-07.
  23. ↑ Kastrenakes, Jacob (2022-05-19). "Glitch acquired by cloud service provider Fastly". The Verge. Retrieved 2022-05-20.
  24. ↑ Narcisi, Gina (2022-08-03). "Cisco Networking And Cloud Leader Todd Nightingale to join Fastly as CEO". CRN . Retrieved 2022-08-03.
  25. ↑ "Fastly acquires Domainr and launches new TLS Certification Authority". SiliconANGLE. 2023-08-17. Retrieved 2023-08-18.
  26. ↑ "Fastly network map". Fastly website. 2021-03-31. Retrieved 2021-06-09.
  27. 1 2 Williams, Mike (15 February 2021). "Fastly review". TechRadar .
  28. ↑ "How Fastly's CDN Service works". Fastly documentation. 2018-04-24. Retrieved 2021-06-09.
  29. ↑ Sudia, David (2023-01-05). "How to Get Started with HTTP/3". The New Stack. Retrieved 2023-05-12.
  30. ↑ Singh, Manish; Dillet, Romain (8 June 2021). "Twitch, Pinterest, Reddit and more go down in Fastly CDN outage". TechCrunch . Retrieved 2021-06-08.
  31. ↑ "Massive internet outage hits websites including Amazon, gov.uk and Guardian". The Guardian . 2021-06-08. Retrieved 2021-06-08.
  32. ↑ Rockwell, Nick (2021-06-08). "Summary of June 8 outage". Fastly Blog. Retrieved 2021-06-09.
  33. ↑ "How One Fastly Customer Broke The Internet". Gizmodo . 9 June 2021. Retrieved 2021-06-13.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.