Cloudflare Case Studies Udacity's Expansion into China with Cloudflare

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	Udacity's Expansion into China with Cloudflare Cloudflare

Udacity's Expansion into China with Cloudflare

Cloudflare

Technology Category	Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Storage Services
Applicable Industries	Education
Applicable Functions	Product Research & Development Sales & Marketing
Services	Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services System Integration
Challenge	Udacity, an online education company, aimed to penetrate the rapidly growing education market in China. However, they faced challenges due to strict internet regulations by the Chinese government and slow internet connections throughout the country. Their US-based content was difficult to access for Chinese customers, leading to frustration and potential loss of customers. The main issue was that the loading of assets from their classroom, hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS), would take several minutes due to throttling of AWS CloudFront nodes to as little as 20Kbps. Read More
About Customer	Udacity is an online education company that offers 'Nanodegree' educational programs. The company's mission is to make entry-level tech jobs more accessible to people around the world. Udacity's programs have been taken by students from hundreds of different countries, and some of these students have been hired by top tech companies including Google, Amazon, and Facebook. As part of their strategy to democratize education, Udacity aims to penetrate developing markets, with China being a prime target due to its deep cultural values of education and increasing private spending on education. Read More
Solution	To solve the challenge of slow asset load times, Udacity needed a Content Delivery Network (CDN) that had a presence in mainland China. They chose Cloudflare, which offers a Global CDN network with 20 points of presence (PoP’s) across mainland China through a strategic partnership with Baidu. By leveraging these mainland China PoP’s, Cloudflare offers the only globally integrated CDN with a China presence, dramatically increasing web performance and security for Udacity and their visitors across China. In addition to a global, scalable network, Udacity required control. Through Page Rules, Udacity has fine-grained control over their use of Cloudflare’s network and security services. Read More Log in to view content
Contents

Technology Category

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Storage Services

Applicable Industries

Education

Applicable Functions

Product Research & Development

Sales & Marketing

Services

Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services

System Integration

Challenge

Udacity, an online education company, aimed to penetrate the rapidly growing education market in China. However, they faced challenges due to strict internet regulations by the Chinese government and slow internet connections throughout the country. Their US-based content was difficult to access for Chinese customers, leading to frustration and potential loss of customers. The main issue was that the loading of assets from their classroom, hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS), would take several minutes due to throttling of AWS CloudFront nodes to as little as 20Kbps.

About Customer

Udacity is an online education company that offers 'Nanodegree' educational programs. The company's mission is to make entry-level tech jobs more accessible to people around the world. Udacity's programs have been taken by students from hundreds of different countries, and some of these students have been hired by top tech companies including Google, Amazon, and Facebook. As part of their strategy to democratize education, Udacity aims to penetrate developing markets, with China being a prime target due to its deep cultural values of education and increasing private spending on education.

Solution

To solve the challenge of slow asset load times, Udacity needed a Content Delivery Network (CDN) that had a presence in mainland China. They chose Cloudflare, which offers a Global CDN network with 20 points of presence (PoP’s) across mainland China through a strategic partnership with Baidu. By leveraging these mainland China PoP’s, Cloudflare offers the only globally integrated CDN with a China presence, dramatically increasing web performance and security for Udacity and their visitors across China. In addition to a global, scalable network, Udacity required control. Through Page Rules, Udacity has fine-grained control over their use of Cloudflare’s network and security services.

Impact #1	Udacity achieved a two order of magnitude performance improvement with Cloudflare’s China CDN.
Impact #2	Engineers in Udacity’s Shanghai office saw asset load times that were as high as ten seconds drop to 500 milliseconds when they switched their site to Cloudflare.
Impact #3	Udacity was able to easily and quickly troubleshoot problems with their site using Page Rules.

Impact #1

Udacity achieved a two order of magnitude performance improvement with Cloudflare’s China CDN.

Impact #2

Engineers in Udacity’s Shanghai office saw asset load times that were as high as ten seconds drop to 500 milliseconds when they switched their site to Cloudflare.

Impact #3

Udacity was able to easily and quickly troubleshoot problems with their site using Page Rules.

Benefit #1	Asset load times dropped from 10s to 0.5s thanks to Cloudflare’s China CDN.

Benefit #1

Asset load times dropped from 10s to 0.5s thanks to Cloudflare’s China CDN.

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Overview

Udacity's Expansion into China with Cloudflare

Operational Impact

Quantitative Benefit