Today, Cloudflare is launching early access to the Deskope Program, a new set of tooling to help migrate existing Netskope customers to Cloudflare One for a faster and easier security experience. In addition, we’re also thrilled to announce the expansion of the Descaler Program to Authorized Service Delivery Partners, who will now have exclusive access to the Descaler toolkit to help customers move safely and quickly to Cloudflare.

To set the stage, Cloudflare One is our Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) platform that combines network connectivity services with Zero Trust security on one of the fastest, most resilient, and most composable global networks. The Descaler Program was announced in early 2023 as a frictionless path to migrate existing Zscaler customers to Cloudflare One. Today, we are announcing the Deskope Program as a new and equally effortless path to migrate existing Netskope customers to Cloudflare One.

The Deskope Program follows the same approach as the Descaler process, including the tools, process, and partners you need for a frictionless technical migration. This program is completed through architecture workshops, technical migration tooling, and when requested, trusted partner engagements.

Deskope's approach is based on minimizing manual effort and reducing the potential for error, allowing for a migration experience that is both fast and reliable. Combining automated tools and expert support, we ensure that your Netskope configurations are accurately translated and optimized for Cloudflare's environment. Following an extract, transform, and load sequence using API calls to your current Netskope account, the Deskope toolkit will export your current Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway (SWG) configuration and transform it to be Cloudflare One-compatible before migrating it into a new Cloudflare One account (or an existing one, if you’d prefer).

Drawing from the success of the Descaler process and migrating customers in just a few hours, Cloudflare is now expanding the offering to customers who wish to migrate from Netskope to Cloudflare One.

When it comes to speed, Cloudflare Gateway, our secure web gateway, is simply faster.

During 2023’s Speed Week, we published a blog called Spotlight on Zero Trust: we're fastest and here's the proof comparing secure web gateway products. This data shows that Cloudflare’s Gateway is faster to more websites from more places than any of our competitors. To quote from the blog:

“In one exercise we pitted the Cloudflare Gateway and WARP client against Zscaler, Netskope, and Palo Alto which all have products that perform the same functions. Cloudflare users benefit from Gateway and Cloudflare’s network being embedded deep into last mile networks close to users, being peered with over 12,000 networks. That heightened connectivity shows because Cloudflare Gateway is the fastest network in 42% of tested scenarios:”

But speed without control can be dangerous. The good news is that all the speed is easy to manage and deploy.

When it comes to simplicity, Cloudflare One is a unified, cloud-native platform that is easy to set up and manage, with a single onboarding wizard that further streamlines setup for both policy and the single-agent deployment to endpoints. This is in contrast to Netskope, where the policy creation process can slow administrators down as they have to first build reusable objects from scratch, so even a basic Secure Web Gateway policy requires many different elements to get started. Cloudflare’s Gateway policy builder is streamlined to allow administrators to quickly set a policy’s scope by defining conditions for Gateway to match traffic against. Traffic, identity, and even device posture conditions can be joined with logical operators 'AND' or 'OR' to easily manage what would otherwise be complex filtering controls.

Cloudflare is equally committed to making the migration process as cost-effective as possible using flexible financial options for customers wanting to migrate over.

As we introduce the Deskope Program, we are equally excited to accelerate Descaler even further by inviting Authorized Service Delivery Partners to leverage the Descaler toolkit to help more customers move to Cloudflare One.

In a May 2023 blog post detailing our global services partner strategy and the momentum of our Authorized Service Delivery Partner program, we showcased our partnership with service providers all around the world, highlighting the strategic importance of the program in delivering unparalleled Cloudflare solutions through our trusted network of service providers.

We are thrilled to announce that our Authorized Service Delivery Partners now have the option to access the Descaler toolkit, along with training and support materials we have developed from our global experience with key customers. This initiative is designed to empower our authorized partners, complementing their existing skills and unique service offerings.

With access to the Descaler tool, our partners will be even better equipped to assist with your critical migration requirements to Cloudflare. Plans are underway to launch exclusive Descaler training for our partners in March 2024. Access to this training, as well as the Descaler tool itself, will be by invitation only, extended to our authorized partners.

For customers and prospects, joining the Descaler or early access Deskope Programs are as easy as signing up using the link below. From there, the Cloudflare team will reach out to you for further enrollment details. By providing details about your current SSE deployment, ongoing challenges, and future Zero Trust or SASE goals, we’ll be able to hit the ground running. To get started, sign up here.

For partners, to get detailed information and to express interest in participating, connect with your assigned Channel Account Manager or Partner Service Delivery Manager. We look forward to supporting our partners in delivering high-quality services and enhancing their capability to meet the evolving needs of the market. If you are a partner with experience in delivering Cloudflare services and would like to become an Authorized Service Delivery Partner, please use this checklist to get started.

Speed matters, especially when it comes to exiting a slower service and transitioning to a new one. Back in March, 2023, we announced the Descaler Program, a frictionless path to migrate existing Zscaler customers to Cloudflare One. This program makes it easy for customers to make the switch to a faster, simpler, and more agile foundation for security and network transformation with Cloudflare.

Through repeated engagements with customers of all sizes, we've improved the Descaler tooling to allow Zscaler to Cloudflare configuration migrations to be completed in hours, not days. This accelerated transition has helped organizations meet migration deadlines and eliminate countless hours of manual migration effort without skipping a beat. Today we’re excited to share more stories from customers and the amount of time it took them to ‘descale’.

As a quick recap, Cloudflare One is our Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) platform that combines network connectivity services with Zero Trust security services on one of the fastest, most resilient and most composable global networks. The platform dynamically connects users to enterprise resources, with identity-based security controls delivered close to users, wherever they are.

At its core, the Descaler Program helps derisk change. It’s designed to be simple and straightforward, with resources to ensure a smooth transition and supporting technology to ensure the migration achieves your organization's goals. The magic of this process is in the technology and its simplicity. Following extract, transform, and load best practices, using supported and documented API calls to your current account, the Descaler toolkit will export your current configuration and settings and transform them to be Cloudflare One-compatible before migrating into a new Cloudflare One account.

A question almost every customer asked was “so, how long is this going to take?”. The answer? As soon as you can meet with the Cloudflare team.

The speed at which customers are able to move from Zscaler ZIA to Cloudflare Gateway continually gets faster. As the title of this blog post implies, it usually takes more time to set up a meeting with the right technical administrators than to migrate settings, configurations, lists, policies and more to Cloudflare. We’ve seen this time continue to get faster through Descaler engagements. But it wasn’t this way from the onset. To be the fastest at everything we do, it means iterating and learning from customers to find the best solution possible. Here are three customer stories of doing just that.

A UK ecommerce giant with 7,500 employees sought a solution that could provide them with faster, safer access to corporate resources and SaaS apps while eliminating the exorbitant costs associated with Zscaler. With Descaler, they achieved this goal in just one week. Our streamlined migration process ensured minimal disruption to their operations, empowering them to seamlessly transition to Cloudflare One before a tight renewal deadline. By reducing the time and cost involved in the migration, they were able to focus on what matters most—driving their business forward.

To better communicate what is available to be moved into Cloudflare Gateway, the team was curious on what objects they had active in their account in a simplified view. Based on this feedback, the Cloudflare team added the option for the Descaler tool to provide a summary of what will be moved to Cloudflare, as shown below.

Sample Descaler summary output

For a US-based Fortune 100 oil and gas company with nearly 20,000 employees, the key priority was to streamline their application, network, and security services. With Descaler, they were able to move over more of their security service and achieved this objective in just under two days. Cloudflare’s intuitive dashboard provided them with a single pane of glass to manage all their services efficiently, simplifying their operations and enhancing their overall productivity. The speed at which Descaler facilitated their migration allowed them to seamlessly consolidate their services, unlocking new levels of efficiency and cost savings.

The team had also put a significant amount of effort into curating lists of IP addresses, hostnames, and URLs of sites and services used in their filtering policies. These thousands of items were transformed and loaded into their new Cloudflare production account almost instantly. With some minor testing, they were able to save hours of copying and retain their security intelligence.

Recently a prominent Australian based telecommunications company that owns one of the countries largest fiber networks prioritized employee Internet security and the prevention of malware attacks. Descaler played a crucial role in their quest to protect users and block malware, with a configuration migration time of less than 24 hours. By migrating to Cloudflare One, they ensured their employees had access to robust security features and comprehensive protection, bolstering their defense against potential threats.

Having Terraform output was table stakes for this organization and many others the team interacted with. Terraform is a tool for building, changing, and versioning infrastructure, and provides components and documentation for building Cloudflare resources. Without the ability to manage their Cloudflare configuration as infrastructure-as-code, it meant breaking their normal workflows. From this feedback the Descaler team added the option to export the configuration in a shareable Terraform file which was then shared with the customer.

Migration times are still getting faster and the overall process even smoother due to iterations like the ones mentioned above. We’re excited to invite new customers to take advantage of the program by signing up using the link below. From there, the Cloudflare team will reach out to you with further enrollment details.

With the Descaler Program we’re excited to offer a clear path for customers to make the switch to Cloudflare One. To get started, sign up here.