Pandemic will drive rapid adoption of new network architectures: Fastly CFO Adriel Lares

Companies are increasingly recognizing the importance of digital transformation not only to survive during these uncertain times but also for long-term success, according to Fastly (NYSE: FSLY) CFO Adriel Lares. Notably, Fastly is among the few firms that have tremendously benefited from the global lockdowns and social distancing measures, thanks to its popular cloud computing and content delivery services.   

The San Franciso-based company had earlier this month reported quarterly results that smashed past estimates and had raised annual guidance, buoyed by the accelerated need across sectors to transfer operations to online from offline.  

Speaking of the long-term implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on the business, Lares told AlphaStreet that the management believes the structural changes from the pandemic would empower developers to rapidly adopt new network architectures.

“And, as we are seeing this trend accelerate and evolve, we believe we’re best positioned to partner and grow with these companies as they look for a trustworthy and modern platform,” he said.

On enterprise customers

In the first quarter, Fastly added nine more enterprise customers, adding up to a total of 297, and accounting for 88% of its trailing twelve-month total revenue. Not only is the firm increasing its penetration into the enterprise customer base, these customers have been spending more on Fastly solutions, signifying their increased acceptance and long-term stability.

In Q1, Fastly saw average enterprise customer spend increase to $642,000, from $607,000 in the prior sequential quarter. Lares said the consistent growth in enterprise customer spend was mostly attributable to the increased adoption of optimization and security products, such as Media Shield, Cloud Optimizer, WAF, and our TLS services.

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Meanwhile, the CFO declined from commenting on the trends that were expected in this metric in the upcoming quarters.

On thriving in a competitive landscape

According to the executive, the largely untapped nature of the market makes it easier to grow at a rapid pace. Even as the company invests in R&D to bring out new products and capabilities, it will also work with larger players including Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL) through partnerships to address different kinds of customer needs. He said:

“There is a need for both a central hyper-scale cloud and an edge cloud. They each solve for different computer science problems – when milliseconds matter, processing at the edge is an ideal way to handle highly dynamic and time-sensitive data. For other functionalities, the edge cloud complements data center, central cloud, and hybrid solutions.”

With the expansion of Compute@Edge beta availability in the latter half of the year, Fastly hopes to become more useful to its existing and potential customers.

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For more insights about Fastly, read the latest earnings transcript here.