Cloudflare Announces First Office In Canada To Further Support Canadian Customers, Innovation, And Growth

The company expands its presence in Canada with a team and operations in Toronto focused on regional growth and customer success

Cloudflare, Inc, the security, performance, and reliability company helping to build a better Internet, today announced that Toronto will be home to its first office in Canada. Cloudflare’s expansion demonstrates the company’s continued investment in the region and its commitment to supporting its growing customer base. Cloudflare’s new Canada-based team and operations will grow brand awareness, support and acquire customers, and recruit local talent.

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“As a proud Canadian I’m especially excited that we are hiring local talent to further support our Canadian customers in the world’s tenth largest national economy,” said Michelle Zatlyn, co-founder, President and COO of Cloudflare. “Cloudflare blocks billions of cyber attacks in Canada each day for our customers. As the world continues to rely on the Internet, we look forward to securing and accelerating Canadian organizations and giving their users, customers, and teams the tools they need to be fast, reliable, and secure no matter where they are working.”

“I am very pleased that Cloudflare has chosen Toronto as the location for its first Canadian office, which will allow them to take advantage of our unmatched talent pipeline,” said John Tory, Mayor of Toronto. “Toronto is a magnet for software companies, like Cloudflare, due to our highly-skilled and diverse workforce. As we work toward economic recovery, it’s very encouraging to see that international businesses continue to view the Toronto Region as the place to be for technology and innovation.”

Today, Cloudflare’s network spans more than 200 cities in over 100 countries. The company first established a data center in Canada in 2012. Today, Cloudflare’s network spans seven cities in Canada. As the company’s edge network continues to grow globally, Cloudflare is securing and speeding up organizations, corporate networks, and users across the world regardless of location.

Cloudflare has 3.5 million customers globally, and already supports thousands of customers in Canada—from global 2000 enterprises, to nonprofits, to healthcare companies trying to speed up vaccine distribution, to local entrepreneurs spinning up their next ideas. Canadian customers include companies like Shopify and its 1 million storefronts, media company Thomson Reuters, and investment service Wealthsimple. Cloudflare also has global partnerships with companies like Acquia to better serve Canadian customers including Irving Oil, The University of Ottawa, and Videotron.

“Security is a top priority when it comes to personal finances,” said Michael Katchen, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Wealthsimple. “We designed Wealthsimple to be simple and secure so that our customers can feel empowered to make smart financial decisions with ease. Cloudflare has been an incredible partner by providing us with complex Internet security, performance, and reliability in a simple way. These continue to be clear, critical technologies and we welcome their expansion in Canada.”

“With Cloudflare, we could see hundreds of thousands of malicious requests rotating through IP addresses, trying to login using hacked credentials and spam our site. Cloudflare automatically blocked them,” said Leonard Teo, founder and CEO, ArtStation. “Soon, we saw the number of malicious attacks drop drastically. Because of Cloudflare, it just wasn’t worth the bother, so they gave up. We still see a few bots trying — but they don’t get through, thanks to Cloudflare.”

Lending Technology for the Greater Good

Cloudflare offers initiatives to lend its technology and expertise to organizations in need in Canada and across the globe. Through Cloudflare’s Project Fair Shot, the company is helping to ensure COVID-19 vaccine registration sites, like Canadian health platform Jane, can manage the distribution of vaccines efficiently. “Jane was used to help vaccinate the population of Whistler in Canada with Cloudflare’s Project Fair Shot and Waiting Room technology. Cloudflare made everything go so smoothly and managed the sudden volume like a charm,” said Alison Taylor, Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Jane.

Cloudflare also offers its technology to a number of Canadian non-profits through Project Galileo, an initiative that equips politically and artistically important organizations and journalists with powerful tools to defend themselves against online attacks, at no cost. GlobalMedic and Compute Canada are among Cloudflare’s Canadian Project Galileo recipients.

“GlobalMedic’s focus is on disaster response and our website is an extremely important tool that helps get aid out the door,” said Jamie Cross, Emergency Programs Manager at GlobalMedic. “While we have a small staff, our website allows us to share impact with donors, raise much needed funds for our programs, and recruit volunteers to help assemble aid that we send around the world. Any downtime would be very detrimental to our mission. Cloudflare eliminates the stress of worrying about the security and reliability of our website, leaving us to focus on aiding the people who need it most.”

“Cloudflare’s Project Galileo allows us to make the Compute Canada Federation’s open-source advanced research software repositories freely accessible to researchers in the spirit of international scientific collaboration, without the risk of exposure to attacks,” said Ryan Taylor from the University of Victoria, a member of the Compute Canada Federation. “While we are based in Canada and do not have infrastructure located in other countries, Cloudflare’s global network makes it possible for research organizations and sites in other locations worldwide to benefit from the software environment we provide. Cloudflare’s caching, load balancing with dynamic steering, and zero-downtime features improve the performance and robustness, enabling our Canadian users to access the same advanced research software environment of our national high performance computing systems, from any computer, regardless of location.”

Committing to the Canadian Region

Toronto Global, a team of experienced business advisors assisting global businesses to expand into the Toronto Region, the Government of Ontario’s Trade and Investment Office in San Francisco, and the Canadian Trade Commissioner Service support Cloudflare’s investment in Canada. “Cloudflare is a critical player in the global Internet infrastructure and, given their Canadian founder roots in Silicon Valley, their growth in Canada is a homecoming of sorts,” said Rana Sarkar, Consul General of Canada in San Francisco. “We’re thrilled to be part of their next chapter.”

“We are thrilled that Cloudflare has chosen Toronto as the location for their first Canadian office,” said Vic Fedeli, Ontario’s Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade. “In Ontario, we are setting the pace for a new era in the information technology sector, and Cloudflare will be able to take advantage of our premium talent pool, dynamic ecosystem, and strategic location in the heart of North America as they continue to grow their business in the province and beyond.”

Scaling Canada’s Partner Ecosystem

Cloudflare partners with a number of Canadian companies and has global Channel, Alliance, and Technology partnerships to better serve mutual Canadian customers. “Cloudflare has definitely contributed to our ability to satisfy some of the most complex client requirements in this competitive landscape”, said Joey Campione, Founder and CEO of Opticca Security. “Opticca’s partnership with Cloudflare has been extremely beneficial to our advancement in the Zero Trust Network Access, WAF, DDoS, and CDN markets. Cloudflare has consistently demonstrated a level of excellence across all facets of the business we have been exposed to and collaborated with over the last two and a half years. They are now heavily investing in Canadian markets, bringing on some of the most talented and results-driven individuals we have had the opportunity to work with. Our Cloudflare client base continues to echo this sentiment, recognizing their ‘customer success’ driven culture and continuous innovation regarding their products, people, and processes.”

“Cloudflare has helped our clients achieve secure, fast, and resilient access to their service offerings that are spanning multiple cloud providers,” said Shlomo Bielak, Chief Technology Officer at Benchmark Corp. “We see the Canadian market shifting towards SaaS and multi-cloud environments and we have a successful partnership with Cloudflare to meet those maturing needs. We welcome their expansion into the Canadian market especially during a time of need and growth.”

Collaborating with Canada’s Academic Community

Cloudflare has worked with a number of research teams and academic communities, including the University of Waterloo, to evolve global cybersecurity, cryptography, and privacy. “Canada, alongside leaders like Cloudflare, has been at the forefront of research and specifically preparing for digital systems to be secure against quantum-enabled attacks. A Canadian base for Cloudflare is very welcome and aligns with Canada’s global strength in security research, innovation, and talent,” said Michele Mosca, co-founder of the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo, co-founder and Director of Quantum-Safe Canada, and co-chair of the board of Quantum Industry Canada.

“Being close to the research center of Canada and with global security research evolving, we are very pleased that Cloudflare is opening an office in Toronto,” said Alfred Menezes, Mathematics Professor at the University of Waterloo. “Opening this office allows us to deepen Cloudflare’s participation in Waterloo’s world-renowned co-op program. Our group in cryptography, security, and privacy at the University of Waterloo has collaborated with Cloudflare researchers for years and is looking forward to furthering our work together with local talent.”

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