Today, Cloudflare is excited to launch the Descaler Program, a frictionless path to migrate existing Zscaler customers to Cloudflare One. With this announcement, Cloudflare is making it even easier for enterprise customers to make the switch to a faster, simpler, and more agile foundation for security and network transformation.

Zscaler customers are increasingly telling us that they’re unhappy with the way in which they have to manage multiple solutions to achieve their goals and with the commercial terms they are being offered. Cloudflare One offers a larger network, a ‘single stack’ solution with no service chaining that enables innovation at an incredible rate, meaning lots of new product and feature releases.

At its core, the Descaler Program helps derisk change. It’s designed to be simple and straightforward, with technical resources to ensure a smooth transition and strategic consultation to ensure the migration achieves your organization’s goals. Customers can expect to be up and running on Cloudflare One in a matter of weeks without disruption to their business operations.

What makes up the Descaler Program?

Knowledgeable people. Clear process. Like-magic technology. Getting the people, process, and technology right is critical for any successful change. That’s why we’ve brought together the best of each to help customers experience a frictionless migration to Cloudflare One.

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.

Eligibility

Enterprise organizations who use competitive security products from Zscaler, such as ZIA or ZPA, and have 1,000 employees or more are eligible to participate. The Descaler Program builds in resources and touch points with Cloudflare experts on two related paths – one focused on technical success, the other focused on business success.

Technology success

Administrators rejoice. The Descaler Program includes the tools, process and partners you need for a frictionless technical migration.

1. Architecture workshops. Our experts and yours will take a fresh look at where you are and where you need to go over the next two to three years to enable digital transformation. This interactive session with Cloudflare experts will help us focus together on the most meaningful migration paths for your organization and dive into the supporting technologies available to make the transition to Cloudflare even easier.

Outcomes from this mutual investment of time will include a custom migration plan, access to the Descaler toolkit, and dedicated resources from Cloudflare to facilitate a seamless cutover while sharpening focus on your short, medium, and long term business goals facilitated through networking and security technology. You will leave with a better  understanding of your migration path to an Internet-native SASE platform, but more importantly, how you can make Zero Trust and SASE concepts tangible for your business.

2. Technical migration tools. In addition to providing people and processes focused on supporting your migration, Cloudflare can help you leverage a suite of technical tools and scripts that in just a few clicks, automatically export settings and configurations of already deployed Zscaler products to be migrated into Cloudflare One. This toolkit is positioned to save countless hours of unnecessary point-and-click time wasted.

The magic of this flow is in its simplicity. Following extract, transform, and load (ETL) best practices, using supported and documented API calls to your current account, the Descaler toolkit will export your current configuration and settings from ZIA or ZPA, transform them to be Cloudflare One-compatible before migrating into a new Cloudflare One account.

Take a ZPA application for example, the Descaler toolkit will look at existing settings around Application name, Domain/SNI, IPs, Ports allowed, Protocols allowed, User groups, and more before exporting, transforming, and importing into a new Cloudflare One account. In situations where time is of the essence, quick time to value migration paths can be taken. For example, if faced with an urgent ZIA migration then it’s simply a matter of switching over DNS to get a baseline of protection, turning off Zscaler and then managing the process to deploy WARP and a full Secure Web Gateway in short order.

Getting started with the toolkit
You’ll first be asked to create a new API key in your ZIA or ZPA account. From there the Cloudflare team will share the toolkit to be run locally by one of your system administrators alongside members of the Cloudflare team to support in case there are any questions. Cloudflare won’t ever need or ask for your API key, just the outputs. Cloudflare will then use the output to transform and load the configurations into a newly provisioned Cloudflare One account.

The Descaler toolkit only performs read and list API requests to your Zscaler account. In scenarios where systems or services you wish to migrate do not map 1:1, the Cloudflare team and our Authorized Partners will be standing by to assist in making the migration process as smooth as possible.

3. Trusted partner engagements. The Cloudflare Partner Network includes service and implementation partners who deliver security, reliability and performance solutions with a broad range of value-added services. Our Technology Partners offer customers complementary solutions within the cloud stack for hands-on keyboard assistance when desired. Back in January we announced the Authorized Partner Service Delivery Track for Cloudflare One and are excited to connect customers to authorized partners that meet Cloudflare’s high standards for professional services delivery.

As the Descaler Program continues to grow additional capabilities such as full technical training with customer certification courses along with support for in-house professional services and authorized partner professional services delivery are being explored to make the transition process even easier. This is only the beginning of the technical resources being made available to customers looking to make the switch to Cloudflare.

Business components

For CxOs, it couldn’t be more clear when it comes to showing tangible business value and cost savings that impact your businesses bottom line.

1. Return On Investment (ROI) calculation. We value showing, not just telling you about the value from Cloudflare One. We want to make sure customers migrating anything  recognize the quantifiable business impacts that can potentially be realized by moving to the Cloudflare One platform.
2. Escape hatch for your current contract. Don’t let your existing contract be a stopper to your long term security modernization. Cloudflare is committed to making the migration process as cost-effective as possible – which means tools and flexible financial options for customers to reach escape velocity from Zscaler and land safely with Cloudflare. You won’t regret this interaction come renewal time.
3. Zero Trust roadmap assessment. Going from zero to Zero Trust means looking ahead to what’s next with a concrete understanding of where you are today. For business leaders, that means using resources like our vendor-agnostic Zero Trust Roadmap to map out future initiatives today with help from architects, engineers and other business leaders.

If your Internet pipes are all clogged up then use The Descaler Program to get a faster flow:

Why migrating from Zscaler to Cloudflare One just makes sense

More and more organizations are choosing Cloudflare over Zscaler to modernize security, and when they do, they typically cite our strengths across a few key evaluation criteria:

1. User experience: IT and security administrators have found our services easier to deploy and simpler to manage. End users benefit from faster performance across security services. Whereas Zscaler’s fragmented clouds and piecemeal services add management complexity over time, Cloudflare offers a single, unified control plane that keeps your organization progressing quickly towards its security goals.
2. Connectivity: Customers value the reliability and scalability of our larger global network footprint to secure any traffic. Plus, unlike Zscaler, Cloudflare’s network is designed to run every service in every location to ensure consistent protections for users around the world.
3. Agility for the future: Customers recognize that progressing towards Zero Trust and SASE require long-term partnerships. For that journey, they trust in Cloudflare’s track record of rapid innovation and value our flexible architecture to adopt new security standards and technologies and stay ahead of the curve.

These are just a few reasons why organizations choose Cloudflare – and if you’re looking for even more reasons and customer stories, we encourage you to check out this recent blog post.

If you’re looking to motivate your colleagues to take advantage of the Descaler Program, we encourage you to explore more direct comparisons with this infographic or our website.

How to get started

Joining the Descaler Program is 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 Zscaler deployments, ongoing challenges and your future Zero Trust or SASE goals we’ll be able to hit the ground running.

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.

Via Cloudflare.com