Dec 5, 20214 min read

"Build Your Edge" at StackPath

What is Stackpath?

StackPath is an edge cloud platform, providing cloud services that are physically closer to end-users than core cloud providers’ services. This means that people get their movies, music, games, websites – or anything else they do online – more quickly and securely than ever before.

Current industry landscape

The world has drastically changed in the past two decades, mainly due to the internet. The cloud was growing rapidly but people have become less tolerant with latency. The days of dial-up are long gone. Technology has changed daily life and everything can now be / is done online. With COVID-19 and a global pandemic this is even more so true as people work from home, have meetings over Zoom, and avoid public places as with more reliance on online shopping and communication.

The birth of StackPath

StackPath is the vision for a security platform specifically designed to accommodate the crushing demand of increasing internet traffic in an ever-expanding spectrum of cyber threats for companies. In 2015, StackPath founders, all of whom came from technology backgrounds, realized the closer to the end users they could get, the better the experience would be, not only from a latency perspective but from a security one as well.

StackPath was launched in July 2016 as the first secure edge platform having already sought out and acquired best-in-class technology and intellectual property that would propel the development of the platform including: MaxCDN, a leading NextGen CDN company, Fireblade, an Israel-based company with patented cloud based WAF technology, and Cloak, a leading VPN technology company.

Since launch, StackPath has two additional acquisitions under its belt: Highwinds, provider of CDN, cloud storage, IP transit, transport and colocation, and Server Density for hosted monitoring and patented DDOS mitigation technology that rounds off an impressive array of IP.

StackPath offers Edge Compute such (VMs and containers), Edge Delivery (CDN, origin shield, serverless scripting, Edge RulesTM, and EdgeSSLTM, and Edge Security (WAF, WAAP). Everything StackPath has to offer is cloud agnostic – as recent outages have proven is more important than ever – and users can pick and choose what they use and how they use it. While competitors are doing individual pieces of what StackPath is doing, the difference is that StackPath is creating something that doesn’t currently exist: an inherently secure, frictionless and scalable platform at the cloud's edge that enables developers at organizations of any size to build protection and performance into any cloud-based solution without needing cloud security and delivery expertise of their own. They have dozens of locations that each sit well inside their city limits, rather than in a handful of places out in the middle of nowhere in Iowa or eastern Washington State.

Customer experience

By its very nature, StackPath addresses its customers’ pain points – security, latency, and website performance being the key ones they face. Being at the edge and 2-4 hops closer to our customers’ customers than a normal hyperscaler makes it easy for them to address the pain points.

The success of StackPath

StackPath was recently voted the Best Tech Work Culture in Dallas by Tech in Motion, in part because when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, they didn't miss a beat. They immediately put employee safety first and switched to a work from home scenario. To help ease the transition and improve morale during these trying times, the company started bi-weekly, company-wide virtual All Hands to provide company updates and discuss what a specific team is up to. They even bring in customer or partner guest speakers from time to time. In addition, StackPath added a monthly "Lunch & Learn" session to provide a deep dive on a piece of technology, product or milestone at the company, added a bi-weekly "TGIF!" session, which anyone at the company can lead, to give thanks and kudos to one another, share some fun facts about ourselves, and just be together. Virtually. They enhanced their weekly internal newsletter, "the Weekly Wire" to introduce new hires and celebrate birthdays, anniversaries and other milestones, and increased Slack channels and virtual happy hours to keep the staff engaged and connected. StackPath employees probably know more about what is happening around the company than they did before the pandemic hit. They've been agile, innovative, and resilient for sure. The environment was great before the pandemic, but StackPath has done more in the past year to really improve the camaraderie and environment and recognize and thank people more often. StackPath was also recently named the #1 best tech startup in Dallas for 2022 for the FIFTH year in a row by The Tech Tribune. They received these same honors for 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021. As The Tech Tribune Editor-In-Chief Rafael Melvin said, “We’ve selected StackPath as the #1 best tech startup in Dallas and as a top 5 tech startup in Texas for all four years since our inception, and for good reason. The StackPath team has shown a strong and consistent brand, demonstrating quantifiable growth year over year. Their product offerings remain top tier in a highly competitive industry, city and state. They also continue to retain extremely active, responsive and nimble leadership. Their success is even more impressive considering they only launched in late 2016, granting us the pleasure of many more years in which we expect to recognize their excellence.” StackPath was also recently named one of the "30 Fabulous Companies of the Year" by the Silicon Review with CEO, Kip Turco, also recognized as a visionary leader.