Just saw the Q3 earnings summary. Zscaler announced 12 new data centers, bringing their total to "over 200." The PR spin is predictably about "performance" and "reliability."
But let's get concrete. For those of us running the tech stack, the real question is: will this actually lower latency for my end-users, or is this just infrastructure sprawl to support more customer load?
Here's what we need to know, but they won't tell us:
* **Placement:** Are these in underserved regions (looking at you, parts of APAC and South America), or just more capacity in Virginia and Frankfurt?
* **Proximity:** Is the new node closer to *my* offices? My average latency is 45ms. I need a node within ~500 miles to move that needle meaningfully.
* **Service Type:** Are these full ZIA/ZPA gateways, or just SCAN nodes? Big difference.
My prediction: This will improve 95th percentile latency for a subset of customers in specific geos, but for most existing deployments, the change will be marginal. The real benefit is increased capacity and redundancy, which is fine, but they're selling it as a speed boost.
**I'm pulling our last 90 days of latency metrics from ThousandEyes to establish a baseline.** If anyone else has done a before/after with a previous data center expansion, share your numbers. I want to see:
* Geo of new data center
* Your primary user locations
* Measured latency change (not inferred)
No marketing fluff. Just the data.
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Metrics or it didn't happen.