Businessmodel of Skyhigh Networks

Customer Segments

Skyhigh has a niche market business model, with a specialized customer segment. The company targets its offerings at firms using cloud services that want enhanced security.

Value Proposition

Skyhigh offers four primary value propositions: innovation, risk reduction, convenience, and brand/status.

The company places a strong emphasis on innovation. It pioneered the cloud access security broker (CASB) market, which directly addresses the security, governance, and compliance challenges posed to firms transitioning to the cloud. It maintains Skyhigh Cloud Security Labs (CSL), a program focused on combatting new threats from the cloud and speeding up its adoption. Specific CSL initiatives include the following:

• Cloud Threat Intelligence – CSL studies activity across its user base to identify usage patterns that compromise corporate information security. It creates behavioral models based on this information.
• Cloud Service Intelligence – CSL studies cloud services in real-time in order to provide clients with a comprehensive view of available offerings, and regularly audits them for new vulnerabilities.
• Cryptography Research and Development – CSL works with the Skyhigh Cryptography Advisory Board, a group consisting of five top cryptography academics from Georgia Tech, University of London, Cornell Tech, and University of California, San Diego. The team collaborates on groundbreaking research in order to identify and deploy cryptographic solutions for the cloud security market. It has developed and marketed cloud cryptography innovations such as, order-preserving encryption, searchable symmetric encryption, and format-preserving encryption. The company reduces risk by being thorough. While most security offerings analyze only 30-90 days of cloud usage data, Skyhigh analzyes 12 months of data, enabling it to identify more usage trends and threats. Every day it analyzes over two billion events per customer.

The company creates convenience through ease of implementation. Its solution is cloud-based, requiring no hardware or software implementation. Also, it integrates with clients‘ existing firewalls/proxies, endpoint agents, and SIEMS, making them cloud-aware. This deployment approach avoids infrastructure changes, reducing friction and costs for customers.

The company has established a strong brand as a result of its success. It bills itself as the leading cloud access security broker, used by over 27 million people at over 600 enterprises worldwide. They represent 40% of the Fortune 100 and 25% of the *Fortune *500, with clients such as Aetna, Western Union, Sony, and Viacom. Lastly, it has won many honors, including recognition as one of Gartner’s “Cool Vendors“, a “Most Innovative Companies Award“ (RSA), and a Sinet 16 Innovator Award.

Channels

Skyhigh’s main channel is its direct sales team. The company promotes its offering through its website, social media pages, and participation in summits and conferences.

Customer Relationships

Skyhigh’s customer relationship is primarily of a self-service nature. Customers utilize the service through the main platform while having limited interaction with employees. The company’s website features a “Resources” section that includes reports, case studies, “cheat sheets”, data sheets, videos, Slideshares, webcasts, and templates.

The site also features “Cloud Security University“, a section designed to provide IT security professionals with education on cloud computing, including best practices and the controls needed for secure cloud usage. It offers detailed articles and research. There is also a personal assistance component in the form of phone and e-mail support.

Key Activities

Skyhigh’s business model entails maintaining a robust software platform for its clients.

Key Partners

Skyhigh maintains the following types of partnerships:

• Cloud Service Partners – The company maintains a cloud registry that identifies thousands of cloud services that customers can use. It invites cloud service providers to add themselves to the database.
• Resellers and Distributors – The company expands its reach by working with resellers and distributors who promote and sell its services to their customers. It invites firms with industry expertise and/or strong geographic coverage to contact it about opportunities.
• Technology Partners – The company works with firms (particularly cloud service firms) that have complementary technology to develop joint solutions that can benefit its customers. ### Key Resources

Skyhigh’s main resource is its proprietary software platform, which serves over 600 enterprises worldwide.

The company depends on human resources in the form of technology employees to maintain and update the platform as well as sales staff to sell it.

Lastly, as a new startup it has relied heavily on funding from outside parties, raising $66.5 million from four investors as of June 2014.

Cost Structure

Skyhigh has a cost-driven structure, aiming to minimize expenses through significant automation and low-price value propositions. Its biggest cost driver is likely sales/marketing, a fixed cost.

Other major drivers are in the areas of customer support/operations and administration, both fixed costs.

Revenue Streams

Skyhigh has one revenue streams: the subscription fees it charges for access to its cloud-based software platform. Sales staff must be contacted directly for pricing quotes.