Cloudflare is recognized by Forrester and Gartner for its top tier services such as DDoS mitigation, scalable and integrated WAF, and CDN solutions.
Each evaluation report looks at a wide range of criteria to compare how the top solution providers stack up against one another.
The Forrester Report
The Forrester Wave™: DDoS Mitigation Solutions Report for Q1 of 2021 completes a thorough analysis of each service providers' DDoS mitigation solution through 28 criteria in the following categories:
- Current Offering
- Strategy
- Market Presence
Cloudflare stands out from the pack by receiving the highest possible scores in 15 of the evaluation criteria.
Comparatively, Cloudflare ranks above Akamai, Amazon Web Services, Google, and Microsoft for its DDoS Protection solution.
Where Cloudflare Stands Out
Current Offerings
| Cloudflare | Amazon Web Services | Akamai | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Security Operations Centers | 5.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 5.00 |
| Response Automation | 5.00 | 3.00 | 1.00 | 3.00 |
| Speed Of Implementation | 5.00 | 5.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 |
Strategy
| Cloudflare | Amazon Web Services | Akamai | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Public Vision | 5.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 |
| Planned Enhancements | 5.00 | 3.00 | 1.00 | 3.00 |
| Performance | 5.00 | 5.00 | 5.00 | 5.00 |
| Development And Support | 5.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 5.00 |
Market Presence
| Cloudflare | Amazon Web Services | Akamai | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Installed Base | 5.00 | 3.00 | 5.00 | 3.00 |
Key DDoS Protection Factors
Forrester recommends that businesses and organizations should look for a DDoS provider like Cloudflare that excels and offers:
Protects Cloud Assets
Anyone moving their application to a public cloud service provider (CSP) should be aware of how that CSP protects their application.
The CSP and its DDoS protection go hand-in-hand, which allows businesses to instinctively trust their provider.
Can Defend Layer 7 Without A WAF
Attackers can be difficult to defend against at layer 7 with heavy queries and malformed requests.
The previous go-to solution was to use a web application firewall (WAF), but we know that not all assets are web applications.
With DDoS protection, it requires less maintenance and is compatible with on-demand models, making it a better solution than a WAF.
Automate Not Just Detection But Response
If you ask anyone who has had to stand up against a public-facing SSH server, you’ll find out that brute force attacks take less than a minute to appear in their logs.
Attackers use DDoS as a malicious automation weapon, so it’s important that your provider can automate all mitigations in order to save your team time and resources.
Gartner Peer Insights Reviews
Gartner Peer Insights gathers verified reviews from the IT community and actual customers that use the different products.
These ratings identify Cloudflare as a leader with high over all scores in evaluation& contracting, planning & transition, and delivery & execution as a CDN provider from a wave of reviews from Cloudflare CDN users.
Cloudflare notably has perfect scores in Integration and Salability
Cloudflare also leads the pack for its Gartner WAF ratings with a 94% recommendation score for Cloudflare WAF.
Comparatively, Akamai only received 84%, Amazon Web Services at 90%, and Microsoft at 85% in customer recommendation ratings.
Conclusion
We are honoured to be recognized as a Cloudflare Certified Partner. This designation is awarded to Fishtank Consulting for the ability to demonstrate how Cloudflare's industry leading tools have drastically increased performance and security for our clients.
There can be a lot of moving parts to set up Cloudflare properly, so we highly recommend using a Certified Cloudflare Partner like Fishtank Consulting. Send us a message to [email protected] to get started.
