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Cloudflare (NET) Buys Baselime to Enter Observability Market

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Cloudflare, Inc. (NET - Free Report) announced last week that it acquired Baselime, the cloud-native observability platform, signaling its entry into the observability market. This move allows Cloudflare to address the challenges of observability for serverless applications by leveraging Baselime's technology and expertise in serverless platforms.

Why Does the Baselime Acquisition Matter?

Serverless applications have become increasingly popular due to their scalability and reduced management overhead. However, traditional observability solutions often struggle to provide comprehensive insights into these complex environments. With Baselime's expertise and technology, Cloudflare aims to bridge this gap and empower developers with robust observability tools.

"Cloudflare is building the next frontier of cloud computing with their connectivity cloud," commented Boris Tane, the founder and CEO of Baselime. "Our core mission has always been to simplify and innovate observability for the future of the cloud, and Cloudflare's ecosystem offers the ideal ground to further this cause."

Through the integration of Baselime's capabilities into its developer platform, Cloudflare plans to provide developers with a unified solution for monitoring, debugging and optimizing serverless applications. This move aligns with Cloudflare's vision of becoming the leading developer platform, offering essential tools to enhance the developer experience.

"Two million developers building on Cloudflare trust us to help scale their apps globally," noted Matthew Prince, the co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare. "We believe that to be the leading developer platform, having the best observability tools built in is going to be table-stakes."

With Baselime's technology onboard, Cloudflare aims to empower developers to build, deploy and maintain serverless applications more efficiently, ultimately driving innovation in the observability space.

Growing Through Acquisitions

Cloudflare has made acquisitions to expedite growth. Acquisitions have expanded its portfolio and capabilities, helping the company enter newer markets.

Since its inception in 2009, the company has acquired 10 businesses, including the recent buyout of Baselime. In February 2022, NET bolstered its product suit with the acquisition of Area 1 Security, which has developed a product that tracks phishing attacks and stops them before they land in an employee’s inbox. In the same month, it bought Vectrix, a company that provides businesses with one-click visibility and control across all its SaaS applications.

Additionally, Cloudflare continues to focus on strengthening its portfolio by adding new capabilities that include Defensive.AI, Cloudflare One Data Protection Suite, Hyperdrive and Magic WAN Connector.

The company is witnessing huge growth in customer numbers for its core application services, Zero Trust solutions and network services like Magic Transit in Cloudflare One. Given the risks posed by advanced cyber threats to businesses' finances and reputations, NET is rapidly expanding its role in this area with its advanced global cloud security platforms.

The abovementioned factors have been driving Cloudflare’s financial performance. The company’s fourth-quarter 2023 revenues and adjusted EPS surged 32% and 150%, respectively, on a year-over-year basis. The robust top-line growth was aided by client wins and growing momentum among large enterprise customers, driven by the heightened need for stronger security and a zero-trust approach.

Zacks Rank & Stocks to Consider

Cloudflare currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). The NET stock has risen 15.5% in the year-to-date (YTD) period.

Some better-ranked stocks in the broader technology sector are BILL Holdings, Inc. (BILL - Free Report) , Meta Platforms (META - Free Report) and Twilio (TWLO - Free Report) . BILL Holdings currently sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), while Meta and Twilio each carry a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) at present. You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for BILL Holdings’ fiscal 2024 earnings has been revised upward by 2 cents to $2.23 per share in the past seven days, which calls for an increase of 35.2% on a year-over-year basis. The long-term expected earnings growth rate for the stock is pegged at 23.6%. BILL shares have plunged 22.9% YTD.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Meta Platforms’ 2024 earnings has been revised 12 cents upward to $19.94 per share in the past 60 days, which suggests year-over-year growth of 34.1%. The long-term estimated earnings growth rate for the stock stands at 19.5%. The META stock has soared 48.9% YTD.

The consensus mark for Twilio’s 2024 earnings has been revised upward by 27 cents to $2.64 per share over the past 60 days, which indicates a 7.8% increase from 2023. It has a long-term earnings growth expectation of 19.6%. The TWLO stock has declined 20.9% in the YTD period.

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