We are extremely excited today to announce our investment in Netskope, which is building a new security platform for enterprises that are heavily dependent on cloud services and therefore, need to protect their data across cloud applications and stop online threats that come from being cloud-forward. Sanjay Beri, CEO and co-founder, has assembled a team that has not only built several publicly traded security platform companies in the past, but is very motivated and passionate to build the first large (and potentially publicly traded) cloud security platform company. However, what we found most impressive about Netskope is its customer base which includes enterprises like ILM, Levi’s, Toyota and nVidia.
The concept of a “traditional IT perimeter” is disappearing rapidly due to the rise in connected mobile devices, the usage of cloud apps and the growing adoption of hybrid (public and private) cloud computing infrastructure. Defending and securing the traditional IT perimeter typically entails deploying many of the following: firewall/VPN appliances, intrusion prevention, proxy appliances for securing web traffic, gateway antivirus (AV), data loss prevention (DLP), etc. However, in this “cloud-enabled and mobile-first” world, the functionality of traditional gateway-based security is moving to cloud security platforms. Netskope is the only cloud security company that we found, amongst the hundreds of cloud-security vendors, that is focused on building a cloud-native platform to provide the functionalities that an enterprise needs to secure this new amorphous, cloud-based and mobile-first IT perimeter.
A cloud-security platform should provide context-aware governance of all cloud usage in the enterprise in real time, whether accessed from the corporate network, remotely or even from a mobile app or sync client, so that security professionals can understand risky activities, protect sensitive data, stop online threats and respond to incidents in a way that fits how people work today. To implement this product vison, a platform would need to process billions of transactions across thousands of services while understanding the context of these transactions to detect threats, detect unsanctioned data usage, detect data leakage and implement very granular policies. We believe no other cloud security vendor’s platform or architecture comes close to handling these kinds of throughputs in real-time or enables them to be deployed on-premise, or used as a SaaS service while being managed from a single user management console, like Netskope.
The adoption of cloud-based applications is growing 30 percent to 35 percent per year and many estimate 80 percent of all new applications used by an enterprise in 2020 will be SaaS based. Similarly, the adoption of public and hybrid cloud-based computing infrastructure is also increasing and several estimates say that it will be a $90 billion market by 2020. We believe that Netskope is well positioned to leverage these macro-trends and become the pre-eminent cloud-security company in a few years. We are extremely thrilled to welcome Netskope to the Sapphire Ventures family and look forward to helping them scale their business in the U.S. and Europe with the help of our dedicated market development team and our global network of G2000 enterprises.
Disclosures
The opinions expressed here represent those of the author and not necessarily the views of Sapphire Ventures. The data contained herein have been obtained from sources believed reliable, but the accuracy of this information cannot be guaranteed.
Nothing presented herein is intended to constitute investment advice and under no circumstances should any information provided herein be used or considered as an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy an interest in any investment fund managed by Sapphire Ventures. Sapphire Ventures does not solicit or make its services available to the public.
The investment identified above does not represent all of the investments made or recommended by Sapphire Ventures, and was not selected based on the return on Sapphire Ventures’ investment in it. It should not be assumed that any current or future investments were or will be profitable. Past performance is not indicative of future performance.
A complete list of Sapphire Ventures’ direct investments, as well as IPOs and M&A exits (denoted by an asterisk*), across our pooled investment vehicles is as follows and can be viewed here. Aepona*, Alfesco Software, Alteryx*, Apigee*, Apriso*, Black Duck Software, Box*, Catchpoint, Celarix*, CloudHealth Technologies, Connectiva*, Control4*, Convercent, Criteo*, Currency Cloud, Cyphort, Datria*, Docusign, DSSD*, Endeca*, ExactTarget*, Feedzai, Fitbit*, Five9*, FollowAnalytics, Gild, Groundwork*, IEX, Ignite Technologies*, Imprivata*, Inkling, Integral Ad Science, Iovation, Iron.io, iTAC Software*, iYogi, Jaspersoft*, JFrog, Jibe, JustDial*, Kaltura, Krux*, Lavante*, LeanData, Linkedin*, Lithium Technologies, Livongo, Localytics, LogLogic*, Looker, Marin Software*, Mirantis, Mulesoft*, Narrative Science, Newgen Software, Next Principles*, Nutanix*, OnDeck*, One97, Onventis, OpenX, Payscale*, Ping Identity*, PubNub, Qubit, QuMu*, Recommind*, Retail Solutions, Return Path, Right Hemisphere*, Savo, ScaleIO*, Scytl, Socrata, Splashtop, Spring Mobile Solutions, Square*, Sun Basket, Tealeaf Technologies*, Ticketfly*, Tidalscale, Tremor Video*, Vendavo*, Violin Memory*, Voxeo*, and Zend Technologies*.
