SC

Strategy Canon

Zscaler: sourced choices

40 product and go-to-market choices, oldest first. Back to the case study

  1. 2008-08-04Product · Entry product and architecture Zscaler made its in-the-cloud internet security service generally available on a multi-tenant, globally deployed set of gateways, stating it was not putting existing web proxies in a data center. ZS12
  2. 2008-08-04Product · Integrated functions The launch service combined antivirus, anti-spyware, bot and phishing protection, URL filtering, Web 2.0 application control, data-leak prevention and compressed logging in one service. ZS12
  3. 2008-08-04Go_To_Market · Launch partner and claim Zscaler launched with partners including Wipro and claimed twice the functionality at half the cost of existing solutions. ZS12
  4. 2008-08-13Go_To_Market · Pricing and first customers At launch Zscaler sold its service by monthly subscription at $1 to $5 per user depending on modules, with Hinda Incentives and the Weather Channel named as early customers. ZS47
  5. 2009Product · Build through the downturn During the 2008-2009 downturn Chaudhry chose not to raise money and to concentrate on building product while sales were slow. ZS5
  6. 2009Go_To_Market · Buyer pivot After firewall, proxy and network managers showed little interest, Chaudhry redirected selling to chief security officers, accepting that most would refuse. ZS5
  7. 2009Go_To_Market · Sales hiring and VARs Chaudhry found that salespeople hired from box-selling companies and value-added resellers, who wanted appliances and deployment work, were a poor fit for a cloud service. ZS5
  8. 2013-06-25Product · Engineering team Chaudhry hired engineers from NetScaler who had built scalable load balancers, and engineering reached about 50 people in San Jose within months. ZS6
  9. 2013-06-25Product · Points of presence Zscaler built checkpoints in about a hundred data centers so that a user's traffic went to the nearest one wherever the user was. ZS6
  10. 2013-06-25Go_To_Market · Early customers Early customers had a few hundred users each; Sears was an early large customer with 50,000 users; by 2013 the service had 4,000 enterprises. ZS6
  11. 2013-06-26Product · Identity and mobile Zscaler bundled mobile security and single sign-on through Ping, Okta or OneLogin into an offer to switchers. ZS16
  12. 2013-06-26Go_To_Market · Competitive buyout Zscaler offered Websense and Blue Coat customers six months' free service and free migration help to switch, through all authorized partners. ZS16
  13. 2013-06-27Go_To_Market · Channel recruitment Zscaler's EMEA head pitched UK partners on switching Blue Coat and Websense customers, citing rivals' reduced partner margins on support and renewals. ZS44
  14. 2015-08-03Go_To_Market · Founder funding Chaudhry self-financed the company (about $60 million across two rounds per Fortune; $50 million in his later account) before a $38 million round in 2012 and a $100 million TPG-led round in 2015. ZS9
  15. 2016-04-26Product · Private access Zscaler launched Zscaler Private Access, giving authorized users access to individual internal applications in data centers or public clouds without placing them on the network. ZS18
  16. 2018-02-16Product · Operated updates The service ran in more than 100 data centers covering users in 185 countries and applied more than 120,000 unique security updates per day for all customers. ZS1
  17. 2018-02-16Go_To_Market · Joint channel sale Zscaler sold through telecom service providers, system integrators and resellers while its own sales force built direct customer relationships, and stated a land-and-expand strategy. ZS1
  18. 2018-02-16Go_To_Market · Large-enterprise base Zscaler had more than 2,800 customers including over 200 of the Forbes Global 2000, with dollar-based net retention of 115-122%. ZS1
  19. 2018-03-16Go_To_Market · IPO Zscaler listed on Nasdaq, raising $192 million. ZS3
  20. 2018-09Product · Peering placement Data centers were co-located in internet interconnection hubs with direct peering to telecom carriers, SaaS providers and public clouds. ZS2
  21. 2018-09Product · Consolidation Zscaler described its cloud as integrating many point products that competitors sold separately. ZS2
  22. 2018-09Go_To_Market · Channel concentration Sales through the top five channel partners were 42%, 47% and 46% of revenue in fiscal 2018, 2017 and 2016. ZS2
  23. 2019-03-28Product · CASB gap Zscaler Internet Access relied on McAfee Skyhigh or Microsoft Cloud App Security for cloud access security broker functions rather than its own product. ZS17
  24. 2019-09-26Go_To_Market · Sales rebuild After sales leadership turnover and longer large-deal cycles, Zscaler hired Dali Rajic as president of go-to-market to build a repeatable enterprise sales process. ZS30
  25. 2020-05Product · Workload expansion Zscaler acquired Cloudneeti (April 2020) and Edgewise Networks (May 2020) to extend from user traffic into cloud posture and workload segmentation. ZS3
  26. 2020-05-28Product · Rapid remote rollout Customers turned on Private Access at scale in days: a European conglomerate added more than 200,000 users in three weeks and a US insurer 30,000 in one week. ZS19
  27. 2020-05-28Go_To_Market · Transformation bundles Zscaler sold transformation bundles to large accounts, such as a fintech that bought 40,000 users plus ZPA for 25,000 while consolidating four vendors; management credited a consultative sales approach. ZS19
  28. 2020-05-28Go_To_Market · ZPA upsell mix ZPA made up about 43% of new and add-on business in the third quarter of fiscal 2020, against about 20% in the first half. ZS19
  29. 2022-07-15Product · Posture and experience At Zenith Live 2022 Zscaler introduced Posture Control for cloud workloads and root-cause analysis in its Digital Experience monitoring. ZS37
  30. 2023-10-17Go_To_Market · Reference marketing Zscaler sponsored published testimonials from named customers such as NOV, United Airlines and Molson Coors. ZS23
  31. 2024-01Product · Branch SASE Zscaler announced Zero Trust SASE in January 2024, extending the platform to branch connectivity. ZS3
  32. 2024-03Product · Data acquisition Zscaler acquired Avalor for $310 million. ZS3
  33. 2024-03-26Go_To_Market · Carrier managed service BT became a global provider of managed security services built on Zscaler across 180 countries. ZS40
  34. 2025-01-24Go_To_Market · Cost-reduction pitch and partners Chaudhry pitched cutting firewall and VPN spending by 50-60% within two years and said Zscaler wanted hundreds of targeted transformation partners rather than a broad reseller base. ZS29
  35. 2025-05Product · Managed detection Zscaler acquired Red Canary, a managed detection and response provider. ZS3
  36. 2026-01-04Go_To_Market · Repeat executive buyers Chaudhry reported that 285 executives had bought Zscaler at two employers, 84 at three and 45 at four. ZS4
  37. 2026-09Product · Red Canary integration Red Canary ended fiscal 2026 at $141 million ARR and was expected to add no net new ARR in fiscal 2027 while folded into an agentic security-operations product. ZS20
  38. 2026-09Product · AI and data security Security-for-AI bookings rose more than 50% sequentially in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026 and 70% of those deals included data security. ZS20
  39. 2026-09Go_To_Market · Z-Flex contracts Z-Flex commitments let customers swap modules without new procurement cycles; they reached $1.7 billion of total contract value in fiscal 2026. ZS20
  40. 2026-09Go_To_Market · Enterprise penetration Zscaler reported 785 customers above $1 million ARR, half of the Fortune 500 and 115% net retention. ZS20