UPDATED 09:02 EST / JUNE 27 2017

CLOUD

Cloudflare launches an app store for websites, plus a $100M developer fund

Cloudflare Inc. is increasingly looking beyond the content delivery market for growth opportunities.

The provider today pulled back the curtains on Cloudflare Apps, a new marketplace where customers of its platform can access third-party services for enhancing their sites. It’s based on technology that the company obtained through the acquisition of a startup called Eager Platform Co. last year.  The store serves the same basic purpose as the extension catalog included in the popular WordPress content management system, but it targets a broader market.

Cloudflare Apps includes a visual installer that provides the ability to integrate third-party services into a website regardless of what platform it’s running on. Adding a Google Maps chart to a page, for example, only requires the user to select where they wish to embed the graph and customize the display settings via a straightforward toolbar. Cloudflare designed the console to avoid the need for coding, in a bid to attract non-technical customers.

The catch is that there are only about 50 or so services available on launch, but the lineup can be expected to expand significantly with time. Cloudflare has raised a $100 million cash pool from three of its institutional investors to spark the development of extensions for the marketplace.

The fund seems to be inspired by the venture-backed ecosystem program that Slack Inc. operates to foster the creation of chatbots for its team communications service. The difference is that Cloudflare also offers go-to-market support to developers who qualify for capital.

That’s on top of what the company sees as a strong commercial incentive for making a service accessible through its marketplace. Cloudflare Apps will enable developers to reach the more than 6 million website operators that rely on the provider’s platform. Among them are users who until now may not have been able to adopt certain extensions for lack of technical know-how, and will gain the ability to do so thanks to the customizer.

Cloudflare’s push to expand beyond its home turf comes as rival Akamai Technologies Inc. also works to create new revenue streams through acquisitions. The company has made several strategic buyouts in recent quarters, most recently picking up SOSATA Inc., a Mountain View, California-based provider of tools for optimizing website usability.

Image: Cloudflare

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