Confluent Inc (CFLT) 2023 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Confluent Q3 2023 Earnings Conference Call. I'm Shane Xie from Investor Relations, and I'm joined by Jay Kreps, Co-Founder and CEO; and Rohan Sivaram, CFO.

大家好。歡迎參加 Confluence 2023 年第三季財報電話會議。我是投資者關係部的謝恩·謝（Shane Xie），共同創辦人兼執行長傑伊·克雷普斯（Jay Kreps）也加入其中。羅漢‧西瓦拉姆 (Rohan Sivaram)，財務長。

During today's call, management will make forward-looking statements regarding our business, operations, sales strategy, financial performance and future prospects, including statements regarding our financial guidance for the fiscal fourth quarter of 2023, fiscal year 2023 and fiscal year 2024. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated by these statements. Further information on risk factors that could cause actual results to differ is included in our most recent Form 10-Q filed with the SEC. We assume no obligation to update these statements after today's call, except as required by law.

在今天的電話會議中，管理層將就我們的業務、營運、銷售策略、財務業績和未來前景做出前瞻性陳述，包括有關我們2023 年第四季、2023 財年和2024 財年財務指引的陳述。這些前瞻性陳述- 前瞻性陳述存在風險和不確定性，這可能導致實際結果與這些陳述預期的結果有重大差異。有關可能導致實際結果不同的風險因素的更多資​​訊包含在我們最近向 SEC 提交的 10-Q 表格中。除非法律要求，否則我們沒有義務在今天的電話會議後更新這些聲明。

Unless stated otherwise, certain financial measures used on today's call are expressed on a non-GAAP basis, and all comparisons are made on a year-over-year basis. We use these non-GAAP financial measures internally to facilitate analysis of our financial and business trends and for internal planning and forecasting purposes. These non-GAAP financial measures have limitations and should not be considered in isolation from or as a substitute for financial information prepared in accordance with GAAP. A reconciliation between these GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures is included in our earnings press release and supplemental financials, which can be found on our IR website at investors.confluent.io.

除非另有說明，今天電話會議中使用的某些財務指標是在非公認會計準則基礎上表示的，所有比較都是在同比基礎上進行的。我們在內部使用這些非公認會計原則財務指標，以促進對我們的財務和業務趨勢的分析以及內部規劃和預測的目的。這些非公認會計原則財務指標具有局限性，不應孤立地考慮或取代根據公認會計原則準備的財務資訊。這些 GAAP 和非 GAAP 財務指標之間的調整包含在我們的收益新聞稿和補充財務資訊中，您可以在我們的 IR 網站 Investors.confluence.io 上找到這些資訊。

And with that, I'll hand the call over to Jay.

這樣，我就把電話轉給傑伊。

Thanks, Shane. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our third quarter earnings call. We delivered a solid Q3, exceeding the high end of total revenue, operating margin and EPS guided range and a still challenging macroeconomic environment. Total revenue grew 32% to $200 million. Non-GAAP operating margin improved 22 percentage points, and non-GAAP EPS turned positive for the first time, a key milestone.

謝謝，謝恩。大家下午好，歡迎參加我們第三季的財報電話會議。我們第三季的業績表現強勁，超出了總收入、營業利潤率和每股盈餘指引範圍的上限，而且宏觀經濟環境仍然充滿挑戰。總營收成長 32%，達到 2 億美元。非 GAAP 營業利潤率提高了 22 個百分點，非 GAAP 每股盈餘首次轉正，這是一個重要的里程碑。

We've now driven 36 percentage points of operating margin improvement over the last 2 years. I want to thank our entire employee base for the tremendous progress here. The Confluent Cloud remains the fastest-growing part of our business, with revenue up 61% to $92 million. It fell slightly below our guidance. Our Q4 revenue outlook is impacted as well. We expect revenue growth of 21% to 22% with Cloud revenue sequential add of $6 million, representing growth of 43%.

過去 2 年來，我們的營業利潤率提高了 36 個百分點。我要感謝我們的全體員工在這裡取得的巨大進步。 Confluence Cloud 仍然是我們業務中成長最快的部分，營收成長 61% 達到 9,200 萬美元。它略低於我們的指導。我們第四季的營收前景也受到影響。我們預計營收成長 21% 至 22%，雲端收入環比增加 600 萬美元，成長 43%。

The lower Cloud revenue this quarter, impact to guidance for Q4 is primarily driven by 2 factors: First, the impact from 2 large digital native customers. One online gaming company moved workloads back to their own data center, and 1 of our largest customers ramped slower as they are in the process of being acquired. We believe consumption from these 2 customers was impacted by their company-specific events and accounts for roughly 50% of the expected consumption shortfall for Q4.

本季雲端收入較低，對第四季度指引的影響主要由兩個因素驅動：首先，來自兩家大型數位原生客戶的影響。一家線上遊戲公司將工作負載移回自己的資料中心，而我們最大的客戶之一由於正在被收購，因此成長速度較慢。我們認為，這兩家客戶的消費受到其公司特定事件的影響，約佔第四季預期消費缺口的 50%。

Second, the continuing macro pressure, including the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, where Israel is a top 10 country for us and the possible U.S. government shutdown, both of which add uncertainty and disruption in particular segments. Specifically, we've seen slower organic consumption resulting from a slower rate of new use case additions in some part of our customer base. Rohan will provide more details on our resulting guidance in the later section of the call.

其次，持續的宏觀壓力，包括中東持續的衝突（以色列是我們前十名的國家）以及美國政府可能關閉，這兩者都增加了特定領域的不確定性和破壞。具體來說，我們發現部分客戶群中新用例添加速度較慢導致有機消費放緩。羅漢將在電話會議的後面部分提供有關我們最終指南的更多詳細資訊。

I want to spend some time now focusing on a critical change we're making to drive growth. Beyond just the friction in the current market environment, the critical project for Confluent is to capture the massive market opportunity in streaming. This is a $60 billion market where we are still just scratching the surface as even the existing open source Kafka usage. And we have additional expansion opportunities from Flink, our connectors and data governance, as I outlined in the earnings call last time.

我現在想花一些時間關注我們為推動成長所做的關鍵變革。除了當前市場環境中的摩擦之外，Confluence 的關鍵項目是抓住串流媒體領域的巨大市場機會。這是一個價值 600 億美元的市場，即使是現有的開源 Kafka 使用，我們仍然只是觸及表面。正如我在上次財報電話會議中所概述的那樣，我們從 Flink、我們的連接器和資料治理中獲得了額外的擴展機會。

Critical to our execution against this opportunity is leveraging our go-to-market engine to rapidly land new customers, expand new workloads and ensure the adoption of our full set of product capabilities. To this end, we'll be completing the transition to orient our Cloud business around consumption. This will make Cloud revenue rather than bookings or committed spend the primary goal of the go-to-market organization for Confluent Cloud. This was a planned transition. Indeed, we began changes in this direction this year, but it's a transition we'll be significantly accelerating heading into 2024.

我們抓住這一機會的關鍵是利用我們的上市引擎來快速吸引新客戶、擴大新工作負載並確保採用我們的全套產品功能。為此，我們將完成轉型，將雲端業務定位於消費。這將使雲端收入而不是預訂或承諾支出成為 Confluence Cloud 上市組織的主要目標。這是有計劃的過渡。事實上，我們今年開始朝這個方向進行改變，但到 2024 年我們將大幅加速這一轉變。

To explain what this means, let me start with a little background. In the traditional world of on-premise software, customers would make big upfront commitments. Salespeople worked with the customer to scope these commitments and were paid as a percentage of the resulting bookings. The marketing organization measured pipeline based on these commitments and every internal system and process was oriented around measuring and managing the bookings that resulted. There was some misalignment between customer and vendor because customer might end up over purchasing, but this was masked by the fact that the rest of the stack, such as servers that ran the software, we're also fundamentally upfront and inelastic purchases.

為了解釋這意味著什麼，讓我先介紹一些背景。在傳統的本地軟體世界中，客戶會做出大量的預先承諾。銷售人員與客戶合作確定這些承諾的範圍，並以最終預訂的一定比例獲得報酬。行銷組織根據這些承諾來衡量管道，每個內部系統和流程都以衡量和管理由此產生的預訂為導向。客戶和供應商之間存在一些不一致，因為客戶最終可能會過度購買，但這被以下事實所掩蓋：堆疊的其餘部分，例如運行軟體的伺服器，我們基本上也是預先且無彈性的購買。

With the advent of the cloud and the elasticity and flexibility it offered to customers, this model had to evolve. Cloud has a utility-like model where services are metered as they are used. However, in the early days, the go-to-market engine for cloud infrastructure software largely remained as it was previously, selling customer commitments or credits that overlaid this dynamic usage.

隨著雲端的出現及其為客戶提供的彈性和靈活性，這種模式必須不斷發展。雲端有一個類似實用程式的模型，其中服務在使用時進行計量。然而，在早期，雲端基礎設施軟體的上市引擎基本上保持不變，銷售涵蓋這種動態使用的客戶承諾或信用。

Alignment between customer and vendor improved somewhat, but the vendor still had an incentive to maximally scope customer commitments. Over the last couple of years, businesses like MongoDB, Snowflake, Datadog and hyperscalers have all transitioned their go-to-market to a fully consumption-based model. In this model, the customer and the go-to-market organization are both oriented around the actual service usage, not the upfront commitment. This fully aligns the customer value realization with the vendor's revenue.

客戶和供應商之間的一致性有所改善，但供應商仍有動力最大限度地擴大客戶承諾。在過去幾年中，MongoDB、Snowflake、Datadog 和超大規模企業等企業都已將其上市模式轉變為完全基於消費的模式。在此模型中，客戶和上市組織都以實際服務使用為導向，而不是預先承諾。這使客戶價值實現與供應商收入完全一致。

Less obvious from the outside is how this completely upends the sales and marketing model. Pipeline is no longer oriented around maximum customer commitment, but rather new logos and new workloads. Salespeople aren't compensated for getting an upfront booking, but rather for what a customer actually uses, finding new workloads and driving new product adoption. This is an absolute win for customers and also a huge win for vendors, who are actually able to grow faster by removing much of the uncertainty and risk from customer purchasing.

從外部來看，不太明顯的是這如何徹底顛覆了銷售和行銷模式。管道不再以最大客戶承諾為導向，而是以新徽標和新工作負載為導向。銷售人員不會因為提前預訂而獲得報酬，而是因為客戶實際使用的產品、尋找新的工作負載以及推動新產品的採用而獲得報酬。這對客戶來說絕對是一個勝利，對供應商來說也是一個巨大的勝利，他們實際上能夠透過消除客戶採購中的大部分不確定性和風險來實現更快的成長。

With Confluent Cloud now at nearly 50% of our revenue, having NRR over 140% and continuing rapid growth, it's time for Confluent to complete our transition to this fully consumption-based model. We've already made the transition to usage-based pricing that bills for what is used. But today, our go-to-market is still primarily oriented around booking customer commitments. The final step in our consumption journey is to now fully align our go-to-market operations to the consumption motion. This directly attaches our go-to-market efforts to Cloud revenue and to our customers' value realization. This is one of the most important possible growth levers for Confluent.

目前，Confluence 雲端占我們收入的近 50%，NRR 超過 140%，並且持續快速成長，現在是 Confluence 完成向這種完全基於消費的模式的過渡的時候了。我們已經過渡到基於使用量的定價，即按使用量計費。但今天，我們的市場推廣仍然主要圍繞預訂客戶承諾。我們消費之旅的最後一步是現在使我們的市場運作與消費運動完全一致。這直接將我們的市場推廣工作與雲端收入和客戶價值實現連結起來。這是 Confluence 最重要的可能成長槓桿之一。

It is also necessary that we do this now. As we've seen across the industry this last year, economic pressure combined with the changing norm in Cloud means customers are increasingly reluctant to make large multiyear commitments ahead of their usage. This means over the course of this year, the misalignment between our subscription-based go-to-market and the natural buying behavior of customers has increased, creating a drag in our Cloud growth.

我們現在也有必要這樣做。正如我們去年在整個行業中所看到的那樣，經濟壓力加上雲端規範的變化意味著客戶越來越不願意在使用之前做出大量的多年承諾。這意味著今年以來，我們基於訂閱的上市與客戶自然購買行為之間的不一致有所增加，從而拖累了我們的雲端成長。

This is shown up in the dislocation between RPO and Cloud revenue, but ultimately affects both as our interaction with customers are directed in a way that is out of sync with the customers' natural buying behavior. We believe this change will turn what is currently a drag into a tailwind.

這體現在 RPO 和雲端收入之間的錯位中，但最終會影響兩者，因為我們與客戶的互動方式與客戶的自然購買行為不同步。我們相信這項改變將把目前的阻力變成順風。

This is not a new plan for Confluent, we'd originally planned to make this shift over a 3-year period beginning with steps this year. However, in light of the change we've seen in buying behavior will be accelerating this and completing the transition next year.

對 Confluence 來說，這並不是一個新計劃，我們最初計劃從今年開始，在 3 年內完成這項轉變。然而，鑑於我們在購買行為中看到的變化，這個過程將加速並在明年完成轉變。

In practical terms, here's what this means. First, beginning in Q1 of FY '24, we're shifting from our current model where 10% to 15% of Cloud sales compensation is based on consumption to a model where 100% of Cloud sales compensation is based on incremental consumption in new logo acquisition. We will keep the vast majority of our customer revenue under a committed contract as we do today. However, we will not be attempting to get commitments ahead of the usage. Rather committed amounts will be customer-driven as customers choose to commit in exchange for greater discounts. Second, we're fully orienting our field-facing teams towards landing new customers and driving new workloads with customers. Third, we'll be adapting our product and pricing to enable customers to frictionlessly try and adopt new products, enabling easier lands and adoption of new features.

實際上，這就是這意味著什麼。首先，從 24 財年第一季開始，我們將從當前 10% 到 15% 的雲端銷售薪酬基於消費的模型轉變為 100% 的雲端銷售薪酬基於新商標中的增量消費的模型獲得。我們將像今天一樣，將絕大多數客戶收入保留在承諾合約之下。但是，我們不會嘗試在使用之前獲得承諾。相反，承諾金額將由客戶驅動，因為客戶選擇承諾以換取更大的折扣。其次，我們正在全面引導我們的現場團隊爭取新客戶並與客戶一起推動新的工作負載。第三，我們將調整我們的產品和定價，使客戶能夠順利地嘗試和採用新產品，從而更容易登陸和採用新功能。

Finally, we'll be undergoing a significant reworking of our systems for planning, growth, building and measuring pipeline and forecasting performance as all shifts to drive directly off Cloud revenue. A number of our cloud-oriented peers have made this transition to a very positive effect. So the path and benefits are clear. Like the transition to the cloud we began several years ago, we expect to emerge stronger on the other side, more aligned with our customers and better positioned to capture the $60 billion opportunity in front of us.

最後，我們將對規劃、成長、建構和衡量管道以及預測效能的系統進行重大改造，因為所有這些都將直接推動雲端收入的轉變。我們的許多面向雲端的同行已經使這種轉變產生了非常積極的效果。所以路徑和好處是明確的。就像我們幾年前開始的向雲端的過渡一樣，我們期望在另一方面變得更強大，與我們的客戶更加一致，並更好地抓住我們面前的 600 億美元的機會。

In September, we held Current 2023, the only industry event dedicated to the data streaming ecosystem. It was a high-energy event and a fantastic illustration of the excitement and innovation around data streaming. The event included speakers from BMW, NASA, Nationwide, Snowflake and Uber and many others, as well as thousands of practitioners who gathered to discuss the state of the art in data streaming.

9 月，我們舉辦了 Current 2023，這是唯一專注於資料流生態系統的產業活動。這是一次充滿活力的活動，完美地展示了數據流的興奮和創新。這項活動包括來自 BMW、NASA、Nationwide、Snowflake 和 Uber 等許多公司的演講者，以及數千名從業者聚集在一起討論資料流的最新技術。

One of the things I'm most proud of is the velocity of product innovation the team has sustained over this last year, and I think our announcements at Current are a great illustration of this. We announced a new tier of Kafka cluster, enterprise clusters which offer many of the advantages of our dedicated clusters like private networking and enhanced security, but include instant elasticity and our served multi-tenant of our Kora stack. This allows a better price point for customers and significantly lowers serving costs for Confluent. These lower cost clusters are perfectly aligned to our consumption transformation, since they lower the entry point price but scale up automatically as you need them.

我最引以為傲的事情之一是團隊在去年持續保持的產品創新速度，我認為我們在 Current 上的公告很好地說明了這一點。我們發布了新的 Kafka 集群層，即企業集群，它提供了專用集群的許多優勢，例如專用網路和增強的安全性，但包括即時彈性和 Kora 堆疊的多租戶服務。這為客戶提供了更好的價格點，並顯著降低了 Confluence 的服務成本。這些成本較低的集群與我們的消費轉型完美契合，因為它們降低了入門價格，但會根據您的需求自動擴展。

Data portal is an important new addition to our Stream Governance suite that brings our vision for discoverable and reusable data streams to the forefront of Confluent Cloud.

資料入口網站是我們的串流治理套件的重要新增功能，它將我們對可發現和可重複使用資料流的願景帶到了 Confluence Cloud 的最前沿。

The excitement around Flink at Current was palpable. Flink sessions were among the highest rated and most attended sessions at the entire conference, highlighting the hunger Kafka users have for Flink. That's why we're so pleased with the launch of Flink public preview in Confluent Cloud. Since the announcement, we've seen incredible uptake with hundreds of customers opting into the preview and trying out our cloud-native and serverless Flink offering.

Current 對 Flink 的興奮是顯而易見的。 Flink 會議是整個會議中評價最高、參與人數最多的會議之一，凸顯了 Kafka 用戶對 Flink 的渴望。這就是為什麼我們對 Confluence Cloud 中 Flink 公共預覽版的推出感到非常高興。自發布以來，我們看到了令人難以置信的採用率，數百名客戶選擇加入預覽版並嘗試我們的雲端原生和無伺服器 Flink 產品。

The addition of Flink strengthens our position as the only complete data streaming product. We bring Flink together with the connectors that capture streaming data, the stream itself in Kafka and the governance capabilities to manage streaming data across an organization. Each of these capabilities strengthens the other, and the combination comprise what we believe will be the most important data platform in a modern company.

Flink 的加入鞏固了我們作為唯一完整資料流產品的地位。我們將 Flink 與捕獲流資料的連接器、Kafka 中的流本身以及管理整個組織的流資料的治理功能結合在一起。這些功能中的每一項功能都相互增強，我們相信這些功能的結合將構成現代公司中最重要的資料平台。

And finally, we introduced data streaming for AI, a set of new partnerships that span vector databases, CSPs and SIs. It also includes new product capabilities, including the Confluent AI assistant that will turn natural language inputs into helpful suggestions and code. We expect this initiative to address the demand we're seeing across our customers who are building innovative new AI applications.

最後，我們引入了人工智慧資料流，這是一組涵蓋向量資料庫、CSP 和 SI 的新合作夥伴關係。它還包括新的產品功能，包括 Confluence AI 助手，可以將自然語言輸入轉換為有用的建議和程式碼。我們希望這項舉措能夠滿足我們在建立創新人工智慧應用程式的客戶中看到的需求。

A great example of this is Notion. Notion is an AI-powered connected workspace where modern teams can create and share documents, take notes, manage projects and organize knowledge, all in one place. Given Notion's strong growth, a new data streaming platform was needed to meet its rapidly expanding needs. However, due to the lean engineering team, they required a fully managed service to focus on product development rather than managing Kafka. They began using Confluent Cloud for real-time data flows for internal analytics pipelines and to supply data into data lakes. After realizing the value it provided, Notion expanded the usage of Confluent Cloud to enhance product features, including search automation and Notion AI.

Notion 就是一個很好的例子。 Notion 是一個由人工智慧驅動的互聯工作空間，現代團隊可以在其中建立和共享文件、做筆記、管理專案和組織知識，所有這些都在一個地方完成。鑑於 Notion 的強勁成長，需要一個新的資料流平台來滿足其快速成長的需求。然而，由於工程團隊精益化，他們需要完全託管的服務來專注於產品開發而不是管理 Kafka。他們開始使用 Confluence Cloud 為內部分析管道提供即時資料流，並向資料湖提供資料。在意識到其提供的價值後，Notion 擴大了 Confluence Cloud 的使用範圍，以增強產品功能，包括搜尋自動化和 Notion AI。

Now notions customers can automate tasks in real time, such as adding summaries, extracting key points and consolidating action items in meeting notes. This is only the beginning as Notion continues to innovate and actively explore how data streaming can power new AI applications.

現在，客戶可以即時自動執行任務，例如新增摘要、提取關鍵點以及合併會議記錄中的行動項目。這只是一個開始，Notion 不斷創新並積極探索資料流如何為新的人工智慧應用提供動力。

Before turning things over to Rohan, I wanted to reiterate a couple of key points. We're incredibly excited about the tailwinds to the business, Flink, data governance, AI and the rest of the data streaming platform components add to our business. And while it may cause some short-term headwinds, I firmly believe our accelerated transformation to a fully consumption-oriented business will put us in an incredibly strong position to drive the monetization of these new offerings. I've never been more confident in our ability to be the leader in the emerging $60 billion data streaming market.

在將事情交給 Rohan 之前，我想重申幾個關鍵點。我們對業務的順風車、Flink、資料治理、人工智慧和其他資料流平台元件添加到我們的業務感到非常興奮。雖然這可能會帶來一些短期阻力，但我堅信，我們向完全消費導向業務的加速轉型將使我們在推動這些新產品的貨幣化方面處於極其有利的地位。我對我們成為價值 600 億美元的新興資料流市場領導者的能力充滿信心。

With that, I'll turn things over to Rohan.

這樣，我就把事情交給Rohan了。

Thanks, Jay, Q3 demonstrates our ability to drive efficient growth in a challenging macroeconomic environment. Key highlights include robust subscription revenue growth, coupled with proactive management of rate and pace of investments which drove record high gross margin, 20-plus point of operating margin improvement and our first positive non-GAAP EPS quarter. I'd like to take a moment to thank our employees and partners for their contributions in delivering these key milestones for the company.

謝謝傑伊，第三季展示了我們在充滿挑戰的宏觀經濟環境中推動高效成長的能力。主要亮點包括訂閱收入的強勁增長，加上對投資率和投資節奏的主動管理，推動了創紀錄的高毛利率、營業利潤率提高了20 個多點，以及我們第一個積極的非公認會計準則每股盈餘季度。我想花一點時間感謝我們的員工和合作夥伴為公司實現這些關鍵里程碑所做的貢獻。

Turning to Q3 results. Total revenue grew 32% to $200.2 million, exceeding our guidance. Subscription revenue grew faster up 36% to $189.3 million. Within subscription, Confluent Platform revenue growth reaccelerated to 19%, ending the quarter at $97.7 million or 49% of total revenue, and was driven by continued strength in regulated industries as companies in those industries are still early in their journey of moving to the cloud.

轉向第三季的結果。總收入成長 32%，達到 2.002 億美元，超出了我們的預期。訂閱收入成長更快，達到 1.893 億美元，成長 36%。在訂閱業務中，Confluence 平台營收成長重新加速至19%，本季末達到9,770 萬美元，佔總營收的49%，這是受到受監管產業持續強勁推動的，因為這些產業的公司仍處於遷移到雲的早期階段。

Confluent Cloud revenue grew 61% to $91.6 million, slightly below our guidance of $92.2 million and ended the quarter at 46% of revenue compared to 38% of revenue a year ago and 44% last quarter. As Jay called out earlier, Cloud revenue performance in the quarter was modestly impacted by 2 large customers. One large online gaming customer who moved workloads back to their own data center from the public cloud as part of a broad internal cloud strategy review. And one of our largest customers who ramped slower than expected as they are currently in the process of being acquired.

Confluence Cloud 營收成長 61%，達到 9,160 萬美元，略低於我們 9,220 萬美元的指導，本季末佔營收的 46%，而去年同期為 38%，上季為 44%。正如 Jay 早些時候指出的那樣，本季的雲端收入表現受到 2 個大客戶的輕微影響。作為廣泛的內部雲端策略審查的一部分，一家大型線上遊戲客戶將工作負載從公有雲移回自己的資料中心。我們最大的客戶之一的成長速度比預期慢，因為他們目前正處於被收購的過程中。

Additionally, we saw lower-than-expected consumption in a few other large U.S. digital native customers. While these select customers did have an impact on Q3, especially in the last few weeks of the quarter, we expect to see a greater impact throughout Q4 and next year. I'll cover more on this in a second.

此外，我們也看到其他一些美國大型數位原生客戶的消費低於預期。雖然這些精選客戶確實對第三季產生了影響，特別是在本季的最後幾週，但我們預計整個第四季和明年都會產生更大的影響。我稍後會詳細介紹這一點。

Turning to the geographical mix of revenue. Revenue from the U.S. grew 25% to $119.4 million. Revenue from outside the U.S. grew 43% to $80.8 million. We continue to be pleased with the relative balance of our business around the world.

轉向收入的地理組合。來自美國的收入成長了 25%，達到 1.194 億美元。來自美國以外的收入成長了 43%，達到 8,080 萬美元。我們對全球業務的相對平衡仍然感到滿意。

Moving on to rest of the income statement. I'll be referring to non-GAAP results unless otherwise stated. Total gross margins reached a record high of 76.4%, up 540 basis points. This translates to 80.1% subscription gross margin, up 320 basis points despite a continued revenue mix shift to Cloud. Gross margin outperformance was driven by continued improvement in the unit economics and in product optimizations of our cloud business and our R&D investments in Kora, the cloud-native engine of our Confluent Cloud offering.

繼續看損益表的其餘部分。除非另有說明，我將指的是非公認會計準則的結果。總毛利率達到76.4%的歷史新高，上升540個基點。儘管收入結構持續轉向雲，但這意味著訂閱毛利率為 80.1%，成長了 320 個基點。毛利率的優異表現是由於我們雲端業務的單位經濟效益和產品優化的持續改善以及我們對 Kora 的研發投資（我們 Confluence 雲端產品的雲端原生引擎）所推動的。

Turning to profitability and cash flow. Operating margin improved 22 percentage points to negative 5.5%, representing our fifth consecutive quarter of more than 10 points in improvement. Q3 operating margin outperformance was driven by disciplined spending and ROI-focused investment philosophy across every function of the company. And we are pleased to achieve our first positive net income per share of $0.02 for Q3, using 303.9 million basic and 347 million diluted weighted average shares outstanding. Fully diluted share count under the treasury-stock method was approximately 355.4 million. Free cash flow margin improved 24 percentage points to negative 6.5%. We ended the third quarter with $1.87 billion in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities.

轉向獲利能力和現金流。營業利潤率提高了 22 個百分點，達到負 5.5%，這是我們連續第五個季度實現超過 10 個百分點的改善。第三季營業利益率的優異表現是由公司各職能部門嚴格的支出和以投資報酬率為中心的投資理念所推動的。我們很高興在第三季首次實現每股正淨利潤 0.02 美元，使用 3.039 億股基本股和 3.47 億股稀釋加權平均流通股。庫存股法下的完全稀釋股份數量約為3.554億股。自由現金流利潤率提高了 24 個百分點，至負 6.5%。第三季末，我們擁有 18.7 億美元的現金、現金等價物和有價證券。

Turning now to other business metrics. In Q3, we added 80 net new customers, 41 customers with $100,000 or more in ARR and 8 customers with $1 million or more in ARR, bringing our total customer count to approximately 4,910 up 16%. Our $100,000-plus customer count to 1,185, up 25% and our $1 million-plus customer count to 155, up 38%.

現在轉向其他業務指標。第三季度，我們淨增加了80 名新客戶，其中41 名客戶的ARR 為100,000 美元或以上，8 名客戶的ARR 為100 萬美元或以上，使我們的客戶總數達到約4,910 名，增長了16 %。我們的 10 萬美元以上客戶數量達到 1,185 家，成長 25%；100 萬美元以上客戶數量達到 155 家，成長 38%。

NRR in the quarter was healthy, just under 130%, NRR for hybrid and Cloud were both comfortably above 130% with Cloud NRR continuing to be the highest. Gross retention rate remained strong and was above 90%.

本季的 NRR 健康，略低於 130%，混合和雲端的 NRR 均輕鬆高於 130%，其中雲端 NRR 繼續保持最高。毛保留率依然強勁，達到90%以上。

Consistent with Jay's comments about the drivers behind the shift to consumption, RPO was $824.1 million, up 24%. Current RPO, estimated to be 65% of RPO was $535.1 million, up 31%. RPO growth was impacted by a decline in both average deal sizes and average contract duration. A continuation of the trends we had called out last quarter. In the current macro environment, we believe customers have less appetite for larger upfront commitments and prefer consumption against smaller commits, reflecting a consumption-first trend in how our customers derive value from Confluent.

與 Jay 關於消費轉向背後驅動因素的評論一致，RPO 為 8.241 億美元，成長了 24%。目前的 RPO（估計為 RPO 的 65%）為 5.351 億美元，成長了 31%。 RPO 成長受到平均交易規模和平均合約期限下降的影響。這是我們上個季度指出的趨勢的延續。在當前的宏觀環境下，我們認為客戶對較大的前期承諾的興趣較小，並且更喜歡消費而不是較小的承諾，這反映了我們的客戶如何從 Confluence 中獲取價值的消費優先趨勢。

Now turning to our Q4 outlook. We have factored in our guidance the impact of the following: First, we expect to have a full quarter impact from the 2 large customers mentioned earlier, whose consumption is impacted by their company-specific events around the shift of workloads back to on-prem and an acquisition. We estimate that these 2 customers account for roughly 50% of the expected consumption shortfall in Q4.

現在轉向我們的第四季展望。我們在指導中考慮了以下因素的影響：首先，我們預計前面提到的兩家大客戶會對整個季度產生影響，他們的消費受到公司特定事件的影響，這些事件涉及工作負載轉移回本地和收購。我們估計這兩位客戶約佔第四季預期消費缺口的 50%。

Second, the macro uncertainty, including the ongoing geopolitical tensions will likely persist, impacting new use case deployments into production and driving lower-than-expected consumption. As Jay discussed earlier, the current macro has increased the misalignment between our subscription-based go-to-market and the new buying behavior of customers, which creates a drag in our consumption growth. We believe our accelerated move to a fully consumption-oriented comp model for Confluent Cloud will turn this drag into a tailwind for our business.

其次，宏觀不確定性，包括持續的地緣政治緊張局勢，可能會持續存在，影響新用例的生產部署，並導致消費低於預期。正如傑伊之前討論的那樣，當前的宏觀經濟加劇了我們基於訂閱的行銷與客戶新的購買行為之間的錯位，這對我們的消費成長造成了拖累。我們相信，我們加速轉向 Confluence Cloud 完全以消費為導向的補償模式將把這種阻力變成我們業務的順風車。

Turning now to guidance. For the fourth quarter of 2023, we expect revenue to be in the range of $204 million to $205 million, representing growth of 21% to 22%. Cloud revenue to be approximately $97.5 million, a sequential add of $6 million, representing growth of 43% and accounting for approximately 48% of total revenue based on the midpoint of our guide. Non-GAAP operating margin to be in the range of 0% to 1% and non-GAAP net income per share to be approximately $0.05. Additionally, we expect the free cash flow margin to be in the range of 0% to 1%.

現在轉向指導。 2023 年第四季度，我們預計營收將在 2.04 億美元至 2.05 億美元之間，成長 21% 至 22%。雲端收入約 9,750 萬美元，季增 600 萬美元，成長 43%，占我們指南中位數總收入的約 48%。非 GAAP 營業利潤率為 0% 至 1%，非 GAAP 每股淨利潤約為 0.05 美元。此外，我們預計自由現金流利潤率將在 0% 至 1% 之間。

For the full year 2023, we expect revenue to be in the range of $768 million to $769 million, representing growth of 31%. Non-GAAP operating margin to be approximately negative 9%, and non-GAAP net loss per share in the range of negative $0.01 to $0.00.

2023 年全年，我們預計營收將在 7.68 億美元至 7.69 億美元之間，成長 31%。非 GAAP 營業利潤率約為負 9%，非 GAAP 每股淨虧損為負 0.01 美元至 0.00 美元。

Looking ahead, I'd like to provide an early read into our outlook for next year. Our fiscal year '24 preliminary outlook assumes the impact of a continued volatile macroeconomic and geopolitical environment. The dynamics mentioned earlier for Q4 continuing into 2024, and risk associated with our transformation to a fully consumption-oriented business. If macro were to improve, we would expect to benefit from it, but it is too early to tell. Given these factors for the full year 2024, we expect revenue to grow approximately 22% year-over-year, non-GAAP operating margin to breakeven, improving approximately 9 percentage points year-over-year.

展望未來，我想提前解讀我們對明年的展望。我們的 24 財年初步展望假設了持續波動的宏觀經濟和地緣政治環境的影響。前面提到的第四季的動態將持續到 2024 年，以及與我們轉型為完全消費導向業務相關的風險。如果宏觀經濟改善，我們預計會從中受益，但現在下結論還為時過早。考慮到 2024 年全年的這些因素，我們預計營收將年增約 22%，非 GAAP 營業利潤率將實現盈虧平衡，年增約 9 個百分點。

This is despite a 2- to 3-point headwind associated with our move to a consumption-based sales commission plan, resulting in higher upfront expense recognition and we expect free cash flow margin to breakeven.

儘管我們轉向基於消費的銷售佣金計劃存在 2 到 3 個百分點的阻力，導致前期費用確認更高，而且我們預計自由現金流利潤率將實現盈虧平衡。

I'd like to highlight a few things about our consumption transformation. Despite potential near-term top line impacts on our fiscal year '24 outlook, we expect the transformation will enhance our ability to drive durable and efficient growth over both the midterm and long term, and will put us in a stronger position to capture our $60 billion market opportunity.

我想強調一些關於我們消費轉型的事情。儘管短期內可能對我們 24 財年的前景產生影響，但我們預計這一轉型將增強我們在中長期推動持久和高效增長的能力，並使我們處於更有利的地位，以獲取 60 美元的收入。億元市場機會。

We believe subscription revenue, which captures ACV from Confluent Platform and consumption from Confluent Cloud will be the best indicator of our success. Starting Q1 next year, we will include subscription revenue in our key financial metrics and move our quarterly and annual revenue guidance metric to subscription revenue. And consistent with that, RPO and cRPO will be less relevant as a forward-looking indicator given the greater emphasis on consumption over ACV-based commits for cloud.

我們相信訂閱收入（從 Confluence 平台獲取 ACV 和從 Confluence 雲端獲取消費）將是我們成功的最佳指標。從明年第一季開始，我們將把訂閱收入納入我們的關鍵財務指標，並將我們的季度和年度收入指導指標轉移到訂閱收入。與此一致的是，考慮到雲端的消耗比基於 ACV 的承諾更加強調，RPO 和 cRPO 作為前瞻性指標的相關性將會降低。

We expect our non-GAAP operating margin midterm target of 5% to 10% and long-term target of greater than 25% to be firmly intact and for free cash flow margin to continue to trend roughly in line with operating margin.

我們預計我們的非公認會計準則營業利潤率中期目標為 5% 至 10%，長期目標為超過 25%，且自由現金流利潤率將繼續與營業利潤率大致保持一致。

In closing, we are pleased with delivering a solid Q3 in a challenging environment. Our net and gross retention rates remain strong, reflecting the durability and resiliency of our growth. We remain committed to driving growth and improving profitability while transforming our Cloud business to be fully consumption oriented, and we are excited about capturing our market opportunity ahead.

最後，我們很高興在充滿挑戰的環境中實現了堅實的第三季。我們的淨保留率和毛保留率仍然強​​勁，反映出我們成長的持久性和彈性。我們仍然致力於推動成長和提高獲利能力，同時將我們的雲端業務轉變為完全以消費為導向，我們很高興能夠抓住未來的市場機會。

Now, Jay and I will take your questions.

現在，傑伊和我將回答你們的問題。

Thanks, Rohan. (Operator Instructions) And today, our first question will come from Sanjit Singh with Morgan Stanley followed by Deutsche.

謝謝，羅漢。 （操作員說明）今天，我們的第一個問題將來自摩根士丹利的 Sanjit Singh，其次是德意志銀行。

I had 2, I guess, 1 for Jay and 1 for Rohan. Jay, the spending environment hasn't been particularly great kind of all year. And so I wanted to just get a sense of outside of those 2 customers that may be a little bit idiosyncratic, like what's changed in the environment? When did you start to see the change in the quarter? And how much of that would you attribute to macro versus just sales execution?

我猜我有 2 個，1 個給 Jay，1 個給 Rohan。傑伊，這一整年的消費環境都不是特別好。所以我想了解這兩個客戶之外可能有點特殊的情況，例如環境發生了什麼變化？您什麼時候開始看到本季的變化？您認為這在多大程度上歸因於宏觀而非銷售執行？

Yes. Yes, it's a great question. So obviously, the 2 customers are kind of a significant impact, but particular circumstances in each. I do think we've felt kind of pressure on the number of net new software projects that are just getting funded throughout the year, and we've talked about that kind of building over time, that's the motivation for this full shift to consumption that I talked about.

是的。是的，這是一個很好的問題。顯然，這兩位客戶都會產生重大影響，但每個客戶都有特定的情況。我確實認為，我們對全年剛剛獲得資助的淨新軟體項目的數量感到了某種壓力，並且我們已經討論了隨著時間的推移而進行的這種建設，這就是全面轉向消費的動機我談到了。

I think when I think about our execution, there's always something in one customer or another that could be done better, but the biggest systematic thing is really making sure we're lining up to drive the adoption in new projects, making sure that we're attaching to each thing that's happening. This is something we've watched in peer companies, and it's worked really well for them. And I think just because we're a younger organization, we're maybe a year or 2 behind in that journey.

我認為，當我考慮我們的執行時，一個或另一個客戶總是有一些事情可以做得更好，但最大的系統性事情實際上是確保我們排隊推動新專案的採用，確保我們「重新依戀正在發生的每件事。這是我們在同行公司中看到的，而且對他們來說效果非常好。我認為，僅僅因為我們是一個年輕的組織，我們在這過程中可能落後了一、兩年。

And what we saw over the course of the year is definitely customers adapted to this environment, the combination of pressure on IT budgets, along with the switch and the behavior of our peers has really led people to kind of consume and then commit as it were. And you really want to have then your go-to-market motion focused on the consumption side of things like really driving the adoption and the use cases that becomes extra important. And so on the execution side, I think that's absolutely the biggest change we can make. And we're just very excited about the impact that can have.

在這一年中，我們看到的肯定是客戶已經適應了這種環境，IT 預算壓力以及同行的轉變和行為確實導致人們開始消費，然後做出承諾。 。然後，您確實希望將上市動議集中在消費方面，例如真正推動採用和用例變得格外重要。因此，在執行方面，我認為這絕對是我們可以做出的最大改變。我們對它可能產生的影響感到非常興奮。

I mean, obviously, there's some adjustment period as you go through switching all your internal systems and a number of the different definitions from pipeline to comp, et cetera. And of course, even adjusting some of the sales motions. But if you think about why we're doing it, it really is to be able to align that to attaching to the next new project, making sure that, that has streaming and Confluent as part of it, making sure that these new components of the data streaming platform, Flink and the connectors and the governance capabilities, making sure that, that gets adopted and the customers are really consuming that, that's far and away the biggest lever we feel like we have to drive additional growth.

我的意思是，顯然，當您切換所有內部系統以及從管道到組件等的許多不同定義時，會有一些調整期。當然，甚至還調整了一些銷售動作。但如果你考慮我們為什麼這樣做，它實際上是為了能夠將其與附加到下一個新項目保持一致，確保將流和 Confluence 作為其中的一部分，確保這些新組件資料流平台、Flink 和連接器以及治理功能，確保這些被採用並且客戶真正使用它們，這無疑是我們認為必須推動額外成長的最大槓桿。

Understood. And then Rohan, for you. I guess the question is in terms of your initial view into calendar 2024, I guess my question is that for Q4 of 2023, you're guiding to 21% to 22%, and then for next year, you're guiding essentially sustained growth? And how did you come up with the 22% number? And do you see any risk or sustained growth going into 2024, given what you're calling out from a sales force transition perspective, from a macro perspective. Just would love a little clarity on how you set up the 2024 guidance.

明白了。然後是羅漢，給你的。我想問題在於您對 2024 年日曆的初步看法，我想我的問題是，對於 2023 年第四季度，您將指導增長 21％ 至 22％，然後在明年，您將指導基本上持續增長？ 22%這個數字是怎麼得來的？鑑於您從銷售團隊轉型的角度和宏觀角度提出的要求，您認為進入 2024 年會出現任何風險或持續成長嗎？我只是想了解你們如何制定 2024 年指導方針。

Great question, Sanjit, yes, when thinking about our 2024 guide, I kind of put it into 3 buckets. Starting off with, we called out the 2 large customers that had impact, although customer specific implications, but that will have an impact into Q4 as well as 2024. The second category is around the macro, which, I'd say, a combination of geopolitical exposure to Israel, coupled with the slowdown in the new cases that we've been seeing.

很好的問題，Sanjit，是的，在思考我們的 2024 年指南時，我將其分為 3 個桶子。首先，我們列出了有影響力的2 個大客戶，雖然是針對特定客戶的影響，但這將對第四季度以及2024 年產生影響。第二類是圍繞宏觀的，我想說，這是一個組合以色列的地緣政治風險，加上我們看到的新病例數放緩。

And the third category is the consumption transformation. And as Jay just called out, any time you go through a transformation like this, there's going to be this adjustment factor. And we are trying to prudently bake in that -- impact of that into our guidance.

第三類是消費轉型。正如傑伊剛才所說，任何時候你經歷這樣的轉變，都會有這個調整因素。我們正在努力謹慎地將其影響納入我們的指導中。

So taking a step back, these are the 3 drivers that impacted our guidance. But when you think about the first half versus second half, we expect like the second half to be better off slightly than the first half, clearly because the consumption transformation will have, I would say, a larger impact in the first half of the year.

退一步來說，這些是影響我們指導的 3 個驅動因素。但當你考慮上半年和下半年時，我們預計下半年會比上半年稍好一些，顯然是因為消費轉型將在上半年產生更大的影響。

I mean I also want to call out, Sanjit, that as we are exiting 2024, there will be a decent amount of tailwinds. First of all, the consumption transformation, which we expect will be behind us, and which will reduce the friction between our go-to-market teams as well as how our customers want to buy our products. Second, I mean, we'll have a decent amount of product tailwind behind us. We'll have Flink, we'll have GA-ed about 6 months in and a couple of other unlocks from the data streaming platform perspective, coupled with FedRAMP and AI. So we feel that exiting 2024, we feel pretty good with where we are and just in general, from a long-term perspective.

我的意思是，Sanjit，我還想指出，隨著我們即將退出 2024 年，將會有相當多的順風車。首先，我們預計消費轉型將會成為過去，這將減少我們的行銷團隊之間的摩擦以及客戶購買我們產品的方式。其次，我的意思是，我們後面將有相當多的產品順風車。我們將擁有 Flink，我們將在大約 6 個月後進行 GA，並從資料流平台的角度進行其他一些解鎖，再加上 FedRAMP 和 AI。因此，我們認為，從長遠角度來看，2024 年結束後，我們對自己的現狀感到非常滿意，總體而言。

We'll take our next question from Brad Zelnick with Deutsche followed by Goldman. Brad?

我們將接受德意志銀行的布拉德·澤爾尼克（Brad Zelnick）和高盛的下一個問題。布拉德？

Thank you so much, Shane. And it certainly is tough out there. and really appreciate the disclosure and granularity that you've given us. I wanted Jay to hone in on the one customer that you said is moving back into their own data center. Because that's not something we typically hear. We've heard about this notion of repatriating cloud workloads, but it's hard to actually find it. So any context that you can add as to why on earth that might be happening, why that particular customer wouldn't then use Confluent platform at that point? And any reason to believe that this is the beginning of a trend.

非常感謝你，謝恩。那裡的情況確實很艱難。非常感謝您向我們提供的披露和詳細資訊。我希望 Jay 專注於您所說的一位客戶，該客戶正在搬回他們自己的資料中心。因為這不是我們通常聽到的。我們聽說過遣返雲工作負載的概念，但實際上很難找到它。因此，您可以添加任何背景資訊來說明為什麼會發生這種情況，為什麼特定客戶當時不使用 Confluence 平台？並有任何理由相信這是一種趨勢的開始。

Yes, it's a great question. So yes, like you always hear a little bit about this like move out of the cloud. And by and large, we don't see it. Maybe in the history of the company I could cite 1 or 2 examples where that's happened. But yes, I don't think it's a broad-based trend. It's definitely motivated by cost. When you think about the kind of pressure on IT budgets, it's far and away the most significant in the digital-native sector. These are companies that, in some cases, are cutting 30% of spend. And so that means very significant adjustments.

是的，這是一個很好的問題。所以是的，就像你總是聽到一些關於這方面的事情，例如走出雲。總的來說，我們沒有看到它。也許在公司的歷史上我可以舉一兩個發生過這種事的例子。但是，是的，我不認為這是一個廣泛的趨勢。這絕對是出於成本的考量。當您考慮 IT 預算面臨的壓力時，您會發現它無疑是數位原生領域中最重要的壓力。在某些情況下，這些公司削減了 30% 的支出。因此，這意味著非常重大的調整。

In this particular company that is coupled with a strategy of moving stuff out of the cloud into their data centers. And Kafka and Confluent kind of gets dragged along with that. We're in discussions with them on Confluent Platform, but that kind of overall shift is not something that's Confluent specific, it's part of a broader strategy.

在這家特定的公司中，也採取了將資料從雲端轉移到資料中心的策略。 Kafka 和 Confluence 也隨之拖累。我們正在與他們就 Confluence 平台進行討論，但這種整體轉變並不是 Confluence 特有的，而是更廣泛策略的一部分。

And maybe just a follow-up for both yourself and perhaps Rohan. The new enterprise cluster that you announced at Current, sounds like it's really powerful. How much might this present a headwind to consumption as it seems you're making customers way more efficient, requiring fewer reserve instances. And is that something that you contemplated in the guide that you've given us?

也許只是你自己和羅漢的後續行動。您在 Current 上宣布的新企業集群聽起來非常強大。這可能會為消費帶來多少阻力，因為您似乎正在使客戶變得更有效率，需要更少的預留實例。您在給我們的指南中考慮過這一點嗎？

Yes. I mean, of course, that and all these other factors are baked into what we've given, but we think that's a tailwind. So when we think about aligning to the consumption transformation, a lot of that is on the go-to-market side, but it's also about the product. We want people to be able to land with the least amount of friction possible. And then we want to make expansion as easy and automatic as possible.

是的。我的意思是，當然，所有這些其他因素都融入我們所提供的內容中，但我們認為這是一個順風車。因此，當我們考慮適應消費轉型時，許多都是在進入市場方面，但也與產品有關。我們希望人們能夠以盡可能少的摩擦力著陸。然後我們希望盡可能使擴展簡單和自動化。

And so it's hard to stress how much better it is when we move things from an instance of Kora that's running dedicated to that customer to something multi-tenant, what happens is the customer experience gets much better because the cluster is just expand instantly as you need it. There's no kind of manual invocation you have to make. And secondly, it's obviously very positive for Confluent in terms of the efficiency. So it allows us to do something that's a better deal for the customer, but really a much better deal for Confluent as well. So it's kind of positive on both sides.

因此，很難強調當我們將事物從專門為該客戶運行的Kora 實例轉移到多租戶實例時，情況會好得多，所發生的情況是客戶體驗會變得更好，因為叢集會隨著您的需要而立即擴展。需要它。您無需進行任何手動調用。其次，就效率而言，這對 Confluence 來說顯然是非常正面的。因此，它使我們能夠做一些對客戶來說更划算的事情，對 Confluence 來說也確實是更划算的事情。所以這對雙方來說都是正面的。

And our goal in this is to take a lot of this friction out of the system in adoption and expansion. Make it as easy as possible to land the first use case and make it as automatic as possible for customers to expand. So yes, we expect it's a tailwind, even though you may be starting at a lower initial price point.

我們的目標是消除系統在採用和擴展過程中的大量摩擦。盡可能輕鬆地實現第一個用例，並儘可能自動地讓客戶進行擴展。所以，是的，我們預計這是一個順風車，即使您可能以較低的初始價格點開始。

We'll take our next question from Kash Rangan with Goldman followed by Wells Fargo. Kash?

我們將接受高盛和富國銀行的卡什·蘭根提出的下一個問題。卡什？

It's always tough to go after Brad Zelnick, who asked such good questions, but I'll try my best. Jay, I think there was a comment made that as you exit this transition the company is going to be in a better position. So can you just recap for us how structurally you're able to prosecute a better TAM more easily because of the switch in your go-to-market model?

追隨 Brad Zelnick 總是很困難，他提出瞭如此好的問題，但我會盡力而為。傑伊，我認為有人評論說，當你退出這一過渡時，公司將處於更好的位置。那麼，您能否為我們回顧一下，由於您的進入市場模式的轉變，您在結構上如何能夠更輕鬆地起訴更好的 TAM？

And secondly, just to pose the devil's advocate, is the cloud platform missing certain things that you have to lower the barrier by giving an alternative to go easy on the consumption. Because I wonder what did this customer -- gaming customers saw that they felt compelled to put it in the data center and not get the benefits of the cloud. Is there something missing on the cloud platform side itself by way of functionality, whatnot that this customer might have seen, that we might be missing here that you plan to introduce in the functionality so it becomes less of a friction point going forward.

其次，我想說的是，雲端平台是否缺少某些東西，你必須透過提供替代方案來降低消費門檻。因為我想知道這個客戶——遊戲客戶看到他們覺得有必要把它放在資料中心而不是獲得雲端的好處，他們做了什麼。雲端平臺本身在功能方面是否缺少某些東西，該客戶可能已經看到的東西，我們可能在這裡缺少您計劃在功能中引入的東西，以便它成為未來的摩擦點。

Yes. Let me address both. The first, I think, is more bigger picture, like, "Hey, how does this change the market or our ability to address the market, how and why." So I'll start with that big picture question. So like, yes, I think the opportunity in streaming is as big as ever, probably better even than it was a year ago. I mean if you just talk to customers, the level of excitement in this space, the adoption of stream processing. All of that is really at the forefront of people's minds. We just had Current, our conference, had a number of customer conversations there. This is something people are absolutely thinking about.

是的。讓我談談這兩個問題。我認為，第一個是更大的圖景，例如，“嘿，這如何改變市場或我們應對市場的能力，如何以及為什麼。”所以我將從那個大局問題開始。所以，是的，我認為串流媒體的機會和以往一樣大，甚至可能比一年前更好。我的意思是，如果您只是與客戶交談，那麼這個領域的興奮程度以及流處理的採用情況。這一切確實是人們最關心的事。我們剛剛召開了 Current 會議，在那裡進行了許多客戶對話。這是人們絕對在思考的事情。

In the current environment, all of these forward-looking transformations in our customers, they have to moderate the pace, right? So whether it's cloud adoption, the move to real-time streaming, all of this stuff is happening a little slower. But this is absolutely right at the top of their agenda. So I don't think any aspect of that changes.

在當前的環境下，所有這些前瞻性的變革都發生在我們的客戶身上，他們必須放慢腳步，對吧？因此，無論是雲端的採用，還是向即時串流媒體的轉變，所有這些事情都發生得有點慢。但這絕對是他們議程的首要任務。所以我認為這方面沒有任何改變。

And then, yes, exiting '24, what are kind of the tailwinds. I think Rohan did a good job of speaking to this. So you want it to be the case that the energy we're devoting in our go-to-market organization is about finding these use cases, making sure they're adopting the full part of the product, really consuming all the aspects of the data streaming platform Flink, the connectors, our Kafka offering all of it. And you're doing that as rapidly as possible across the organization. And so the -- what's important to get right and that is get all the systems pointing in that direction. And then that really becomes a driver for growth.

然後，是的，退出 24 年，什麼樣的順風順水。我認為羅漢在這一點上做得很好。因此，您希望我們在進入市場組織中投入的精力是尋找這些用例，確保它們採用產品的完整部分，真正消耗產品的所有方面資料流平台 Flink、連接器、我們的 Kafka 提供了所有這些。您將在整個組織內盡快做到這一點。因此，重要的是要讓所有系統都指向這個方向。然後這才真正成為成長的動力。

What you don't want is something where you're very focused on the amount of the commitment, and trying to get customers to commit ahead of these projects that kind of puts them into too much of an analysis paralysis of trying to scope out every new application you're going to build, how much is it going to consume exactly, commit exactly to that amount, that ends up being effectively wasted time versus just getting them going and getting them to use the product.

你不想要的是，你非常關注承諾的數量，並試圖讓客戶在這些項目之前做出承諾，這會讓他們陷入太多的分析癱瘓，試圖找出每個項目的範圍。你要建立的新應用程序，它到底要消耗多少，準確地承諾這個數量，這最終會有效地浪費時間，而不僅僅是讓他們開始使用該產品。

I think you've seen this change in effectively all the peer companies. For those that start with an on-premise offering as we do, they have to introduce it gradually as they have enough cloud revenue to really make it make sense. As we do now, right? For those who were kind of born with a cloud-only offering, this is perhaps the native thing they started with or perhaps there was some adjustment earlier in the life cycle. So that's the change. That's why we're doing it. It's had positive impact for all the peers. We expect it will have that exact same impact for us.

我想您已經在所有同行公司中看到了這種變化。對於那些像我們一樣從本地產品開始的人來說，他們必須逐步引入它，因為他們有足夠的雲端收入才能真正有意義。就像我們現在所做的那樣，對嗎？對於那些天生只提供雲端產品的人來說，這可能是他們開始時的本機，或者可能在生命週期的早期進行了一些調整。這就是變化。這就是我們這樣做的原因。這對所有同行都產生了積極的影響。我們預計它會對我們產生完全相同的影響。

And of course, as we prosecute that, we want to make sure we get the impact as soon as possible, right? So we've -- I think, prudently baked some impact into the first half of the year that, hey, we think as we kind of change all our systems, there's some adjustment period involved in that. But yes, as we're exiting the year, we think that's absolutely a tailwind. And that combines with and in many ways, accelerates these new product offerings that we're adding, the connectors, governance, Flink offerings, they're really coming to maturity throughout the course of that year.

當然，當我們採取行動時，我們希望確保盡快產生影響，對吧？因此，我認為，我們謹慎地在今年上半年產生了一些影響，嘿，我們認為，當我們改變所有系統時，其中涉及一些調整期。但是，是的，隨著我們即將結束這一年，我們認為這絕對是一股順風。這與我們添加的這些新產品（連接器、治理、Flink 產品）相結合並以多種方式加速，它們將在這一年中真正成熟。

Some of the security unlocks that like the work that we're doing on FedRAMP, also being able to address other kind of regulated industries. That's a significant unlock. Those things are really powerful in allowing us to take on more use cases, more completely with less work from customers. And of course, these are mostly line items that customer purchases directly. So allowing us to increase the spend with customers.

有些安全解鎖就像我們在 FedRAMP 上所做的工作一樣，也能夠解決其他類型的受監管行業的問題。這是一個重大的解鎖。這些東西確實非常強大，讓我們能夠以更少的客戶工作量更全面地處理更多用例。當然，這些大多是客戶直接購買的訂單項目。因此，我們可以增加與客戶的支出。

And then yes, is there something missing that we would make changes like this? I don't think so. I mean if you look at peer companies, of course, there's always more we can do in our product, and we continue to invest and innovate. But this idea of just aligning to consumption, trying to make that as low friction as possible, that's actually really important for us. And especially the shift of workloads into multi-tenancy it's kind of just net positive, even though that entry price can be a little bit lower, the cost to us is so much lower than it's just disproportionately much better. It's exactly what you want to have happen. And that takes a lot of the friction out of the conversation.

然後是的，我們是否會做出這樣的改變？我不這麼認為。我的意思是，如果你看看同行公司，當然，我們的產品總是可以做更多的事情，並且我們會繼續投資和創新。但這種與消費保持一致、盡量減少摩擦的想法對我們來說其實非常重要。尤其是工作負載向多租戶的轉變，這完全是積極的，儘管入門價格可能會低一些，但對我們來說，成本要低得多，而不是好得多。這正是您希望發生的事情。這可以消除談話中的許多摩擦。

And this is really important in tighter environments where customers have to think not just about the TCO and the payoff. But exactly that transition cost in time and do they have the ability to get from here to there. You want to make that a no-brainer. So the customers can just get up and get going. That to us is key when we look at all the open source usage, we want to go scoop that up as quickly as possible.

這在更嚴格的環境中非常重要，客戶必須不僅僅考慮 TCO 和回報。但這種轉變確實需要時間，而且他們是否有能力從這裡到達那裡。你想讓這變得理所當然。這樣顧客就可以起身出發了。當我們查看所有開源使用情況時，這對我們來說是關鍵，我們希望盡快了解這一點。

And Kash, just to add to what Jay said, the customer we referenced that was not a Confluent-specific decision. That was just a broad, I would say, an architectural decision that they made, and we happen to be impacted by it. Just wanted to share that color.

Kash，只是補充一下 Jay 所說的，我們提到的客戶並不是 Confluence 特有的決定。我想說，這只是他們做出的一個廣泛的架構決策，而我們恰好受到了它的影響。只是想分享這種顏色。

Yes, yes. In case that's not clear, like the decision to start moving workloads into your data center is typically something much broader than Confluent itself.

是的是的。如果不清楚的話，例如開始將工作負載轉移到資料中心的決定通常比 Confluence 本身要廣泛得多。

And do you have some obstacles set for other customers who might be contemplating this [nutty] kind of thing to make sure that they don't do it in the future?

您是否為其他可能正在考慮這種[瘋狂]事情的客戶設置了一些障礙，以確保他們將來不會這樣做？

I just don't think it's a -- like every year, you hear about 1 or 2 companies that do something like this. And every year, the total spend on cloud as a percentage of IT spend goes up and so I just don't think it's a broad-based trend. That what I do think is a specific instance in that customer.

我只是不認為這是——就像每年，你都會聽到一兩家公司做這樣的事情。每年，雲端總支出佔 IT 支出的百分比都會上升，因此我認為這不是一個廣泛的趨勢。我確實認為這是該客戶的一個特定實例。

If you think about what's the kind of overall pressure that causes stuff like that, it is this kind of pressure on efficiency and spend, and companies do different things to try and get that. This is what they happen to pursue. So the right adjustment to us is not something where we advocate for customers not to move back into their data centers. The right adjustment is this consumption transformation, like really line up, make it as easy as possible to expand and attach to projects. That's going to be the thing that really drives us forward kind of broadly across the customer base.

如果你想想是什麼整體壓力導致了這樣的事情，那就是這種對效率和支出的壓力，而公司會採取不同的措施來嘗試實現這一目標。這正是他們所追求的。因此，對我們來說正確的調整並不是我們提倡客戶不要搬回他們的資料中心。正確的調整是這種消費轉型，就像真正的排隊一樣，使其盡可能輕鬆擴展和附加到專案上。這將真正推動我們在客戶群中廣泛前進。

We'll take our next question from Michael Turrin with Wells Fargo followed by JPMorgan. Michael?

我們將接受富國銀行的邁克爾特林 (Michael Turrin) 和摩根大通 (JPMorgan) 的下一個問題。麥可？

Jay, I want to go back to some of the comments on just the cost side of customer discussions. I appreciate the details you're breaking out. Is there anything new that you're seeing from an optimization standpoint that's impacting the spend profiles of existing customers? And you made some reductions to storage costs at Current. So I'm wondering if that's something that will -- impacts customer spend and expectations in subsequent periods.

傑伊，我想回到一些關於客戶討論的成本方面的評論。我很欣賞你所透露的細節。從最佳化的角度來看，您是否看到任何影響現有客戶支出狀況的新變化？您也降低了 Current 的儲存成本。所以我想知道這是否會影響後續時期的客戶支出和期望。

Yes. Yes. I mean customers continually optimize their environments. I would say what we're kind of reacting to more is making sure we get all the new projects, right? So if you think about 2 forces that are happening in cloud right now, 1 is more about optimization of existing usage. There's, of course, some of that in our customers at all times. But the other thing is just how many net new workloads are there.

是的。是的。我的意思是客戶不斷優化他們的環境。我想說的是，我們對更多的反應是確保我們獲得所有新項目，對吧？因此，如果您考慮目前雲端中發生的 2 種力量，第 1 種力量更多的是關於現有使用的最佳化。當然，我們的客戶始終都有這樣的想法。但另一件事是有多少淨新工作負載。

For a production system like ours, I think it's more about the new workloads than it is about optimization of environments. And so that's kind of where our focus is. When you think about what we're doing. It really is this consumption motion is really about making sure you land and attached to everything that's going on in the organization.

對於像我們這樣的生產系統，我認為更多的是新的工作負載，而不是環境的最佳化。這就是我們的重點。當你想到我們在做什麼。這種消費運動實際上是為了確保你專注並專注於組織中正在發生的一切。

And then on the storage side, yes, similar to the enterprise clusters, these are efforts that are designed to accelerate consumption, particularly when you think about Flink and stream processing, it becomes important to not just process the data once, but if you change your logic, be able to go back and reprocess it again. So the incentive to want to store data becomes much higher in Confluent and we want to make sure that it doesn't become cost prohibitive as customers go after that. So in part, we're trying to set ourselves up for this preview release of Flink that we just did as that becomes GA. We want to have a cost structure that makes sense with the stream processing capabilities. And we think the result is going to be net positive in terms of how much data companies are storing.

然後在儲存方面，是的，與企業叢集類似，這些都是旨在加速消耗的努力，特別是當你考慮 Flink 和串流處理時，重要的是不僅僅是處理一次數據，但如果你改變你的邏輯，能夠回去重新處理它。因此，在 Confluence 中儲存資料的動機變得更高，我們希望確保隨著客戶的追求，它不會變得成本過高。因此，在某種程度上，我們正​​在嘗試為 Flink 預覽版做好準備，我們剛剛在正式發佈時就這樣做了。我們希望有一個對流處理能力有意義的成本結構。我們認為，就公司儲存的資料量而言，結果將是淨正的。

Okay. That's helpful. Just a follow on, if I may, on the go-to-market changes you're making around consumption. Can you just help characterize how big or natural the change that is from the sales side? And maybe, Rohan, if you have a view on if that impacts visibility into the cloud trends you'd expect going forward, either favorably or less favorably that's also useful.

好的。這很有幫助。如果可以的話，請繼續關注您圍繞消費所做的進入市場的改變。您能幫忙描述一下銷售方面的變化有多大或自然嗎？ Rohan，如果您知道這是否會影響您期望的未來雲端趨勢的可見性，無論是有利還是不利，這也是有用的。

Yes, it is a big change, right? So if you think about how an enterprise software company works, in this traditional model, everything really is organized around booking of commitments. That's what pipeline is, that's what the sales motion tracks, that's the line item in sales force. And you kind of are changing all that, where the thing you're going after is the use case, the thing that you're driving is consumption, the definition of pipeline is different. So it is a big change.

是的，這是一個很大的變化，對嗎？因此，如果您考慮企業軟體公司的運作方式，在這種傳統模式中，一切實際上都是圍繞承諾預訂來組織的。這就是管道，這就是銷售活動追蹤的內容，這就是銷售隊伍中的行項目。你正在改變這一切，你要追求的是用例，你要驅動的是消費，管道的定義是不同的。所以這是一個很大的改變。

Now it's not like the cloud transition we went through, that was a really big change. This is an adjustment that we're kind of factoring into the first half of the year. Our desire and the thing we're working towards is hit that as smoothly as possible. Like we're doing this because we think this is absolutely a positive, right? It's a thing that will allow us to grow faster. But when you make a bunch of changes all at once, you want to factor that in. You want to be prudent about how you do that, and that's why we've made the adjustment.

現在，這與我們經歷的雲端轉型不同，這是一個非常大的變化。這是我們在今年上半年考慮的調整。我們的願望和我們正在努力實現的目標是盡可能順利地實現。就像我們這樣做是因為我們認為這絕對是正面的，對吧？這是一件能讓我們成長得更快的事。但是，當您同時進行大量更改時，您需要將其考慮在內。您需要謹慎對待如何做到這一點，這就是我們進行調整的原因。

This wasn't a new plan like we're not doing this purely in a reactive way, where we got halfway through the year, and we were like, "Oh, let's change everything." We had laid out a 3-year plan for how we were going to do that. We were in year 1, and we were going to do a little bit more next year and then a little bit more the year after.

這不是一個新計劃，就像我們不會純粹以被動的方式來做這件事一樣，我們在今年過半的時候，我們就想，“哦，讓我們改變一切。”我們已經制定了一個三年計劃來說明如何做到這一點。我們正處於第一年，我們打算明年做更多的事情，然後再下一年做更多的事情。

But realistically, when we just looked at what had happened to customer buying behavior, like how are customers behaving with regard to these consumption models and then how are we set up to work with them. We just realized, hey, this is not aligned. It does not make sense to slow roll it. We should just do it fast. Maybe it's a little bit more disruptive at the beginning of the year, but I think you get to something net positive, much, much faster in that world. And it's in some sense, easier than having 1 leg on each horse for an extended period of time.

但實際上，當我們只關注客戶購買行為發生了什麼時，例如客戶在這些消費模式方面的行為如何，然後我們如何與他們合作。我們剛剛意識到，嘿，這並不一致。慢滾動是沒有意義的。我們應該快點做。也許在今年年初會更具破壞性，但我認為在那個世界裡你會更快獲得一些正面的東西。從某種意義上說，這比長時間讓每匹馬只用一條腿更容易。

And Michael, to your question around visibility, I'd say that when you look at the view of the world in an old scenario where customers are still committing ahead. Obviously, you have the visibility of RPO and cRPO, but in a world of consumption, it's always trying to predict what the customer is going to do. It's not ratable revenue. It's always it follows a curve, you need to predict what your customer needs to do. And how do companies solve it? They're essentially trying to do some predictive models by multiple factors, that predict that curve.

邁克爾，對於你關於可見性的問題，我想說的是，當你在舊場景中看待世界時，客戶仍然會做出承諾。顯然，您可以了解 RPO 和 cRPO，但在消費世界中，它總是試圖預測客戶將要做什麼。這不是應評稅所得。它總是遵循一條曲線，您需要預測客戶需要做什麼。而企業又如何解決呢？他們本質上是試圖透過多個因素建立一些預測模型來預測該曲線。

In the new world, of course, what we are expecting and what we think is going to happen is the customer commitment is still going to be there, but they're not going to be committing ahead of time. They're just going to be committing to our existing levels. So how do we get the predictability? As Jay alluded to, like we get the predictability by understanding what are the use cases they're going to drive. So the consumption transformation and all the work that we are going to do here will provide us, I would say, added visibility into the work streams, which will help us predict revenue in a much better manner. And that's one of the reasons why I called out in my prepared remarks that going forward, subscription revenue will probably be a better indicator of the health of the business.

當然，在新世界中，我們所期望的以及我們認為將會發生的情況是客戶承諾仍然存在，但他們不會提前做出承諾。他們只會致力於我們現有的水平。那我們要如何獲得可預測性呢？正如傑伊所提到的，我們透過了解他們將要驅動的用例來獲得可預測性。因此，我想說，消費轉型和我們要做的所有工作將為我們提供工作流程的可見性，這將幫助我們以更好的方式預測收入。這就是為什麼我在準備好的演講中指出，展望未來，訂閱收入可能會成為衡量業務健康狀況的更好指標的原因之一。

And you can see exactly why it is, right? Like if we work with a customer, we're trying to scope out every workload over the next 2 years and commit to lock that in. Of course, there's some predictability like in the 2 years, we know what the minimum they have to spend is. But if we're successful, they should be growing their consumption much faster than that curve anyway, and the effort of trying to really think of each application and how it's going to be used and the exact usage pattern and all the uncertainty that pushes on to the customer is actually just really high.

你可以明白為什麼會這樣，對吧？就像我們與客戶合作一樣，我們會嘗試確定未來 2 年內的每項工作負載，並承諾將其鎖定。當然，有一些可預測性，例如在 2 年內，我們知道他們必須花費的最低費用是多少是。但如果我們成功了，他們的消費成長速度應該比這條曲線快得多，並且努力真正考慮每個應用程式及其將如何使用、確切的使用模式以及所有推動的不確定性對客戶來說實際上非常高。

And so taking that more out of the equation and just having customers really do it in a customer-driven way, where the customer locks in the right level of commitment based on what they know they're doing. That's effectively what all the peer companies have done. It's worked very successfully for them. And that allows you to then really orient the go-to-market organization around finding those use cases rather than getting people that kind of pre-commit to them.

因此，要從這個等式中考慮更多，讓客戶真正以客戶驅動的方式來做這件事，客戶根據他們知道自己在做什麼來鎖定適當水平的承諾。這實際上是所有同行公司所做的事情。這對他們來說非常成功。這使您能夠真正引導市場進入組織圍繞尋找這些用例而不是讓人們預先做出承諾。

We'll take our next question from Pinjalim Bora with JPMorgan, followed by Bank of America. Pinjalim?

我們將接受摩根大通的 Pinjalim Bora 提出的下一個問題，然後是美國銀行。平賈林？

One clarification on the gaming company that you're talking about. Can you help me understand was that company on committed contracts that moved to open source? Committed contract moved to Confluent self-managed? What was the transition exactly?

關於您所談論的遊戲公司的一項澄清。您能否幫助我了解該公司是否已簽訂承諾合約並轉向開源？承諾合約轉移到 Confluence 自我管理？轉變到底是什麼？

Yes, yes. So this was a set of applications running out of the cloud -- running on Confluent Cloud. That's moving into their data center initially on open source Kafka.

是的是的。所以這是一組在雲端外運行的應用程式——在 Confluence Cloud 上運行。最初遷移到他們的資料中心的開源 Kafka 上。

Got it. Understood. Okay. That's clear. One question on Flink in general. We have spoken to a lot of your partners. And it sounds like without Flink, and this is more of a high-level question, people are using Kafka streams on AWS with a Java-based application which is squaring into your Confluent clusters, right? That's a compute that is not being captured by Confluent today. I'm assuming Flink kind of allows you to capture those compute. But then we're also seeing AWS kind of coming up with their managed Flink service, right? I'm trying to understand Confluent being able -- now that you have -- you own the data persistence layer and the processing layer as a whole, can you actually provide or offer something which is more than a point product Flink service that might be in the market?

知道了。明白了。好的。很清楚。一個關於 Flink 的一般問題。我們已經與您的許多合作夥伴進行了交談。聽起來好像沒有 Flink，這更是一個高級問題，人們正在 AWS 上使用 Kafka 流以及基於 Java 的應用程序，該應用程式與您的 Confluence 叢集相匹配，對吧？目前 Confluence 尚未捕捉這種計算。我假設 Flink 允許您捕獲這些計算。但隨後我們也看到 AWS 推出了他們的託管 Flink 服務，對吧？我試圖理解 Confluence 能夠——現在你擁有了——你擁有數據持久層和整個處理層，你能真正提供或提供比 Flink 服務點產品更多的東西嗎？在市場上？

Yes, we absolutely can, right? The challenge in the streaming world has been for a long time, customers are left kind of piecing together the parts on their own to build a data streaming platform. So you get Kafka and then maybe you add on some Flink thing, you get somewhere else. And then the parts don't work together, like the security models are different. The governance and catalogs of data are different, it's all different. So it's kind of left as an exercise to the reader to put those things together. That's not the recipe for success, right? We think in this area, customers want it integrated.

是的，我們絕對可以，對吧？長期以來，串流媒體世界面臨的挑戰是，客戶只能自己拼湊各個部分來建立資料流平台。所以你得到了 Kafka，然後也許你添加了一些 Flink 的東西，你得到了其他的東西。然後這些部分就不能一起工作，就像安全模型不同一樣。資料的治理和目錄是不同的，一切都不同。因此，這算是留給讀者的練習，將這些東西放在一起。這不是成功的秘訣，對嗎？我們認為在這個領域，客戶希望將其整合。

So just in what we demonstrated at Current already. I think we've taken amazing steps. So unified security model across all of this, it handles all on connectivity. Unified model of data. If you go and create a new stream in Kafka, it's available there for you in Flink. You don't have to go and recreate it in Flink again. The ability to actually just seamlessly use these 2 together and do it without having to pre-allocate anything. You can go issue a query against your Kafka cluster. It will scale up and run that processing and scale back down to 0 cost if it finishes.

我們已經在 Current 上展示了這一點。我認為我們已經採取了驚人的步驟。因此，跨所有這些的統一安全模型，它可以處理所有連接性問題。資料的統一模型。如果您在 Kafka 中建立一個新串流，它就可以在 Flink 中使用。您不必再次在 Flink 中重新建立它。實際上能夠無縫地將這兩者一起使用，並且無需預先分配任何內容。您可以對 Kafka 叢集發出查詢。它將擴展並運行該處理，並在完成後縮減至 0 成本。

So already, that integration is leaps and bounds further than anything that's been out there, I think, in the streaming world, integrating both the stream and the processing. And so if you think about, hey, what are our advantages in doing this, like stepping back to the question behind the question.

因此，我認為，這種整合已經比串流媒體世界中任何現有的整合都取得了飛躍性的進步，整合了串流和處理。因此，如果你想一想，嘿，我們這樣做的優勢是什麼，例如回到問題背後的問題。

I think the reason we feel like we have a lot of ability to succeed in this beyond any other competition. First of all, Flink is this platform that has been incredibly successful, that everybody wants. Second, we have the ability to integrate that stream with the processing. And if you think about the model for data systems, that's just much easier. You could buy a database in parts where the query layer was separate from the storage engine, you can piece it together yourself, but that just doesn't seem like the winning formula. And it's obviously and very concretely a hassle today.

我認為這就是我們覺得我們有能力在這方面取得超越任何其他競爭的成功的原因。首先，Flink 這個平台非常成功，是每個人都想要的。其次，我們有能力將該流與處理整合。如果您考慮資料系統的模型，那就容易多了。您可以購買查詢層與儲存引擎分離的部分資料庫，您可以自己將其拼湊在一起，但這似乎不是一個成功的公式。今天這顯然是一個非常具體的麻煩。

And then finally, one of the things we're seeing is that people are thinking about this processing and streaming together, and that's moving upstream in organizations. And so when we think about any competition in this space, most of it tends to come from different destination systems, but increasingly, the processing is kind of happening at the source and going out to all the destinations.

最後，我們看到的一件事是，人們正在考慮這種處理和串流，這正在組織中向上游發展。因此，當我們考慮這個領域的任何競爭時，大多數競爭往往來自不同的目的地系統，但越來越多的處理發生在源頭並傳到所有目的地。

So structurally, those are the 3 factors that we think give Confluent a unique advantage in this. Our expertise in Flink in just the fact that we have the core people driving that forward, the ability to combine it with Kafka, the kind of de facto standard for the stream and really provide synergy between those things. And then structurally, the fact that the processing of data is moving upstream to the source where the stream is created, which allows us to bring together that combination at the right time.

因此，從結構上來說，我們認為這 3 個因素使 Confluence 在這方面具有獨特的優勢。我們在 Flink 方面的專業知識在於，我們擁有推動這一發展的核心人員，能夠將其與 Kafka（流的事實上的標準）相結合，並真正在這些事物之間提供協同作用。然後從結構上講，資料處理正在向上游移動到創建流的來源，這使我們能夠在正確的時間將這種組合整合在一起。

We'll take our next question from Brad Sills with Bank of America, followed by William Blair.

我們將接受美國銀行的布拉德·希爾斯（Brad Sils）提出的下一個問題，然後是威廉·布萊爾（William Blair）。

I just wanted to ask a question here on this transition here, maybe one for you, Rohan. Should we think about this headwind, if you will, subsiding in the 1-year anniversary from the change? Or is there some other way to think about the timing of when that headwind kind of bottoms out, if you will?

我只是想在這裡問一個關於這個轉變的問題，也許是為你而設的，Rohan。如果你願意的話，我們是否應該考慮一下這種逆風在變革一週年之際消退？或者，如果您願意的話，是否有其他方法可以考慮逆風何時觸底？

Yes, Brad, that's a great question. And as I shared in the prepared remarks, there are a couple of headwinds heading into 2024 and which we spoke about, the couple of customers, macro and the consumption transformation. And as you think about the shape for next year, we feel that the consumption transformation will have a bigger impact from an adjustment perspective in the first half of the year than the second half of the year. So that's 1 data point.

是的，布拉德，這是一個很好的問題。正如我在準備好的演講中所分享的那樣，進入 2024 年，我們談到了一些不利因素，即客戶、宏觀經濟和消費轉型。而且從明年的格局來看，我們覺得從調整的角度來看，上半年消費轉型的影響會比下半年更大。這是 1 個數據點。

And I think Jay and I touched on it, exiting Q4 of next year, we'll have a few tailwinds, and I'll just reiterate a couple of them. The first one is the consumption transformation will be behind us. And what that means is how our customers want to consume Confluent's product and services will be very aligned with how we are going to market. So that's number 1.

我認為傑伊和我談到了這一點，明年第四季度結束後，我們將迎來一些順風車，我將重申其中的一些。第一個是消費轉型將成為過去。這意味著我們的客戶想要如何消費 Confluence 的產品和服務將與我們的行銷方式非常一致。所以這是第一。

Number 2, with respect to the product unlocks, of course, we'll have Flink which will be in GA, coupled with other unlocks on the DSP side, that's going to be FedRAMP, exiting Q4 '24, and there's going to be tailwinds from AI. So overall, we feel that there are a decent amount of tailwinds exiting 2024, which gives us confidence that we'll get back to our 30%. It's just timing. We just want to get -- don't want to get into '25 guidance and specific timing, but that's a trajectory that we are thinking through.

第二，關於產品解鎖，當然，我們將在 GA 中擁有 Flink，再加上 DSP 方面的其他解鎖，即 FedRAMP，退出 24 年第 4 季度，並且將會有順風車來自人工智慧。因此，總體而言，我們認為 2024 年將會有相當大的有利因素，這讓我們有信心回到 30% 的水平。這只是時機。我們只是想得到——不想進入 25 年的指導和具體時間安排，但這是我們正在思考的軌跡。

And then maybe that leads into my next question here. You mentioned a few potential tailwinds exiting next year. Maybe to you, Jay, the Flink opportunity, FedRAMP, AI? What are you most excited about when you look at the pipeline and some of these initiatives' potential to accelerate growth?

也許這會引出我的下一個問題。您提到了明年出現的一些潛在的有利因素。也許對你來說，Jay，Flink 機會、FedRAMP、AI？當您看到這些管道以及其中一些舉措加速成長的潛力時，您最興奮的是什麼？

Yes. I mean, I think probably what's most exciting, big picture, is actually just -- if anything, there's been an acceleration in interest in streaming, I would think about this in stages where this is a market that went from kind of very early nascent kind of evangelical to something that now just increasingly very senior people and organizations believe in and see happening and are trying to adjust to it and figuring out what does this mean for us and how do we take advantage of it. I mean I think that's probably the biggest thing overall.

是的。我的意思是，我認為可能最令人興奮的大局實際上只是——如果有的話，那就是人們對串流媒體的興趣正在加速，我會分階段考慮這個問題，這是一個從非常早期的新生階段發展而來的市場。現在越來越多的資深人士和組織相信並看到正在發生的事情，並且正在努力適應它，並弄清楚這對我們意味著什麼以及我們如何利用它，這有點像福音派。我的意思是，我認為這可能是最重要的事情。

In terms of our products, I love them all. So that's why we're putting all the energy into it. That's why even in a year of a lot of efficiency, we really made sure that we had sufficient investment to bring together the rest of this data streaming platform, and we just weren't willing to cut that stuff.

就我們的產品而言，我都很喜歡它們。這就是我們投入所有精力的原因。這就是為什麼即使在效率很高的一年裡，我們也確實確保我們有足夠的投資來整合這個資料流平台的其餘部分，而我們只是不願意削減這些東西。

I think probably the biggest thing for us in terms of transformation of what we do is the Flink offering. I mean that's what brings these application workloads directly into our platform now. It's what makes it so much easier to build some of these things that actually capitalize on streaming to kind of run the logic of the business.

我認為，就我們所做的轉變而言，對我們來說最重要的事情可能是 Flink 產品。我的意思是，這就是現在將這些應用程式工作負載直接引入我們平台的原因。這使得建立一些實際上利用流來運行業務邏輯的東西變得更加容易。

In some sense, that's the most exciting, but they actually all play together, without the connectors that get the data, you don't have the streams to process. Without the innovation in Kora, you don't have the ability to really handle the streaming data across a big organization. Without the governance stuff, it's actually just hard to use this and have correct guarantees around data and reason about it. So they all kind of play together to form the platform. So I think they're all kind of a powerful part of that story. And I think that story is why people are so excited about this space.

從某種意義上說，這是最令人興奮的，但它們實際上都是一起發揮作用的，如果沒有獲取數據的連接器，您就沒有要處理的流。如果沒有 Kora 的創新，您就沒有能力真正處理跨大型組織的串流資料。如果沒有治理的東西，實際上很難使用它並圍繞數據和推理提供正確的保證。所以他們一起合作形成了一個平台。所以我認為它們都是這個故事的重要組成部分。我認為這個故事就是人們對這個領域如此興奮的原因。

I'll take our next question from Jason Ader with William Blair, followed by TD Cowen. Jason?

我將回答 Jason Ader 和 William Blair 提出的下一個問題，然後是 TD Cowen。傑森？

Jay, I know you said you haven't seen this in the past, but why wouldn't repatriation be a trend in the digital native space, if you can save 30% on costs? And then what percentage of your revenue actually comes from digital natives today?

Jay，我知道您說過您過去沒有見過這種情況，但如果您可以節省 30% 的成本，為什麼匯回不會成為數位原生領域的趨勢呢？那麼，今天您的收入實際上來自數位原住民的百分比是多少？

Yes. So I should clarify the comment I made. What I was saying is if you look at the amount of kind of operating margin savings that companies are targeting, it's often a very large percent. I'm not saying that moving into your data center saves you 30%, I'm just saying, if you're trying to save 3% -- 3% operating margin improvement, you move some things around in a little small ways. 30%, you're going to do something big, right?

是的。所以我應該澄清我發表的評論。我想說的是，如果你看看公司的目標是節省多少營業利潤，你會發現它通常是一個非常大的百分比。我並不是說搬進資料中心可以節省 30% 的成本，我只是說，如果您想節省 3% - 3% 的營運利潤率改進，那麼您可以透過一些小的方式進行一些調整。 30%，你要做大事，對嗎？

For Confluent, we've made really substantial improvements that came out of a combination of growth, structural improvements, optimization of cloud, a whole bunch of things. But it was a bunch of moving parts to make it happen. If you look at other digital native companies, they're also doing big things. I think for 99.5% of companies moving into your own data center is going to be a lot more expensive. But that's up to them to model it out and figure it out. But I'm not saying that you'll see 30% savings from that. Does that make sense?

對於 Confluence，我們透過成長、結構改進、雲端優化等一系列措施的結合，取得了實質的改進。但這需要一系列活動部件才能實現。如果你看看其他數位原生公司，他們也在做大事。我認為對於 99.5% 的公司來說，遷移到自己的資料中心將會更昂貴。但這取決於他們來建模並找出答案。但我並不是說您會因此省下 30%。那有意義嗎？

Well, I mean, there's -- I guess there's just more examples. I know CrowdStrike moved back on-prem, right? And they save, I think, 2 or 3 points of gross margin. So it seems like its material that some of the digital natives are getting significant savings, maybe not 30%, but significantly.

嗯，我的意思是，我想還有更多的例子。我知道 CrowdStrike 已遷回本地，對嗎？我認為，它們可以節省 2 或 3 個百分點的毛利率。因此，看起來有些數位原住民獲得了顯著的節省，也許不是 30%，但卻是顯著的。

Yes. I mean, look, we can speculate either way. I guess I feel like we hear about this every couple of years really. We heard about with Dropbox doing it. Every year, you hear about some example in -- or the company is selling private cloud stuff, putting it on the front page of everything to make a big deal to how -- oh, the cloud is over. That's not really what we see, like broadly, when we talk to our customer base, including the digital natives, I don't see a big movement there. I do think you see a lot more optimization of cloud, the usage of public cloud, that's certainly happening.

是的。我的意思是，看，我們可以推測任何一種方式。我想我覺得我們每隔幾年就會聽到這個消息一次。我們聽說 Dropbox 正在這樣做。每年，你都會聽到一些例子——或者公司正在銷售私有雲產品，將其放在所有內容的首頁上，以大肆宣揚——哦，雲已經結束了。這不是我們真正看到的，就像廣泛的那樣，當我們與我們的客戶群（包括數位原住民）交談時，我沒有看到那裡有大的變化。我確實認為您會看到更多的雲端優化、公有雲的使用，這肯定正在發生。

But I don't see a big move out as being realistic. I just don't think it makes sense. But we'll see for us, we obviously sell across both cloud and on-premise. So to some extent, we're like a little bit agnostic. I personally as a technologist, just don't see it as a likely trend. I did this analysis internally when I worked at LinkedIn. I didn't think it made any sense, we were using the public cloud. Public cloud has gotten cheaper since that time. So I don't think it's likely, but obviously, either way, we're happy to work with the customers.

但我認為大幅退出並不現實。我只是覺得這沒有道理。但我們會看到，我們顯然在雲端和本地進行銷售。所以某種程度上，我們有點不可知論。我個人作為技術專家，只是不認為這是可能的趨勢。我在 LinkedIn 工作時在內部做過這個分析。我認為這沒有任何意義，我們使用的是公有雲。從那時起，公有雲變得越來越便宜。所以我認為這不太可能，但顯然，無論哪種方式，我們都很高興與客戶合作。

And then what percentage of your revenue -- maybe for Rohan, a percentage of revenue comes from digital natives and then what percentage of your revenue comes from Israel?

然後你的收入的百分比是多少——也許對於 Rohan 來說，收入的百分比來自數字原住民，然後你的收入的百分比來自以色列？

Yes. Israel happens to be a top 10 country, Jason. And so that's baked into the outlook that we shared both for Q4 and 2024. The digital native piece, I think it's an opportunity for us. I feel that where we have more opportunity to take share in the digital native. So that's obviously something that's ahead of us versus behind us. So although we are seeing a couple of digital native customers that have been impacted by slower than expected use cases, but the bigger opportunity is ahead of us from a digital native perspective.

是的。傑森，以色列恰好是前十名的國家。因此，這已融入我們對第四季和 2024 年的展望中。數位原生部分，我認為這對我們來說是一個機會。我覺得我們有更多機會在數位原生代中分享。所以這顯然是我們前面和後面的事。因此，儘管我們看到一些數位原生客戶受到了比預期慢的用例的影響，但從數位原生的角度來看，更大的機會就在我們面前。

And if that sounds weird, the thing about Confluent is we kind of came back to tech like open source Kafka started in tech. But in terms of our sales, we actually started with more kind of traditional enterprises and as our cloud got to large scale, came back to tech.

如果這聽起來很奇怪，那麼 Confluence 的特點是我們回到了科技領域，就像開源 Kafka 開始涉足科技領域一樣。但就我們的銷售而言，我們實際上是從更多類型的傳統企業開始的，隨著我們的雲端規模擴大，又回到了科技領域。

So it's on one hand, it's a sector that's a little turbulent right now. On the other hand, we're kind of underpenetrated relative to the Kafka usage. And so there's kind of 2 counter-beaming forces. That does make it a little bit of a less predictable area. But like how Rohan said, we actually think there's a lot of opportunity there.

因此，一方面，這個行業現在有點動盪。另一方面，相對於 Kafka 的使用，我們的滲透率還不夠。因此存在兩種反作用力。這確實使它成為一個不太可預測的領域。但正如羅漢所說，我們實際上認為那裡有很多機會。

Thanks, Jason. We'll take our last 2 questions from Derrick with Cowen and Raimo with Barclays. Derrick you go first.

謝謝，傑森。我們將回答 Derrick 和 Cowen 以及 Raimo 和 Barclays 提出的最後兩個問題。德瑞克，你先走。

Jay, when you go through such big go-to-market and sales comp changes, this is likely to be disruptive from a -- kind of from a sales attrition standpoint. Are you able to talk about what -- how much proactive change you need to make to the makeup of the sales structure and what that may mean for churn?

傑伊，當你經歷如此大的上市和銷售補償變化時，從銷售流失的角度來看，這可能會造成破壞。您能否談談您需要對銷售結構的組成做出多少積極主動的改變，以及這對客戶流失意味著什麼？

And then in kind of consumption, go-to-market model, do you feel like you need less sales coverage than in the old go-to-market model?

然後，在消費、進入市場模式中，您是否覺得需要比舊的進入市場模式更少的銷售覆蓋範圍？

Yes, that's a great question. So yes. I don't think it's going to be that disruptive because we did start the process this year. So we're measuring consumption. There's a portion of compensation that's already dedicated to it. We've kind of taught our team a little bit of this. So it's not like we haven't dipped our toes in the water, and that I think takes a lot of the risk out of it. We kind of know that people can be successful with this. So that's kind of what gives us I guess, the confidence to jump in with both feet.

是的，這是一個很好的問題。所以是的。我認為這不會造成那麼大的破壞，因為我們今年確實開始了這個過程。所以我們正在衡量消費。有一部分報酬已經專門用於它。我們已經向我們的團隊傳授了一些這一點。因此，我們並不是沒有嘗試過，而且我認為這可以消除很多風險。我們知道人們可以透過這一點取得成功。我想這就是給我們雙腳投入的信心。

I think realistically, if we were trying to do this from a cold start last year, I think it would have been quite disruptive and highly risky. I feel pretty good about what we're doing. Now, it's still a big change. It does mean that those primary metrics are all shifting and are kind of all shifting together. I think -- when I think about it from the team's point of view, I think it's actually exciting. I think people feel this friction today and how they're working with customers I think doing the thing the customer wants is actually great when you're in a go-to-market organization. And if you look at the kind of growth in Cloud revenue, we've done really well, right? The pressure has been on RPO. It has been on bookings. It has been on these kind of big upfront commitments.

我認為現實地說，如果我們從去年的冷開始就嘗試這樣做，我認為這將是相當具有破壞性和高風險的。我對我們正在做的事情感覺很好。現在看來，改變還是很大的。這確實意味著這些主要指標都在變化，而且都在一起變化。我認為——當我從團隊的角度思考時，我認為這實際上是令人興奮的。我認為人們今天感受到了這種摩擦以及他們與客戶合作的方式，我認為當你在一個進入市場的組織時，做客戶想要的事情實際上很棒。如果你看看雲端收入的成長情況，我們做得非常好，對吧？ RPO 面臨壓力。已經在預約了。這是基於這些重大的預先承諾。

So part of this is about making Confluent grow faster. Part is also making sure our field team is really successful. And those 2 things kind of go together. So yes, I actually think it's pretty exciting. And it's -- for a lot of people in go-to-market organizations, these consumption motions is kind of an opportunity. It's the new thing that's happening across a lot of these companies if you kind of know that and have done it, you're kind of in a better position in what you're set up to do.

因此，其中一部分是為了讓 Confluence 成長得更快。一部分還在於確保我們的現場團隊真正成功。這兩件事是相輔相成的。所以是的，我實際上認為這非常令人興奮。對於進入市場組織中的許多人來說，這些消費動議是一種機會。這是很多公司正在發生的新事情，如果你知道這一點並且已經做到了，那麼你在你要做的事情上就會處於一個更好的位置。

And Jay, I'll just add to what you said. Derrick, if you look at just the health of our installed base today, the retention rates -- the gross retention rates have been consistently above 90%. I think that's one area which we feel pretty -- very good about.

傑伊，我將補充你所說的內容。 Derrick，如果你只看一下我們今天安裝基礎的健康狀況，你會發現保留率——總保留率一直高於 90%。我認為這是我們感覺非常好的一個領域。

And just looking ahead, of course, with this transformation and the one-off cases that we said, we expect the NRR probably to dip a little bit. It will still be about 120% as we go through next year. But exiting next year as we exit the transition, we expect that to the 125-plus percent range that we set for our medium-term goal from an NRR perspective. So the health of the installed base is also very solid. That's something that I wanted to share.

當然，展望未來，隨著這一轉變和我們所說的一次性案例，我們預計 NRR 可能會略有下降。到明年，這一比例仍將維持在 120% 左右。但明年隨著我們退出轉型，我們預計會達到我們從 NRR 角度為中期目標設定的 125% 以上的範圍。因此，安裝基礎的健康狀況也非常穩固。這就是我想分享的。

That's helpful. And Rohan, just a quick -- a couple of modeling questions. The -- how much of Cloud revenue is consumption based today? And how long will it get to be majority? And I guess on the flip side, with the go-to-market change away from on-prem, any color to get a sense for what the bleed-off of Platform revenue is going to look like next year?

這很有幫助。 Rohan，請快速回答幾個建模問題。如今，雲端收入中有多少是基於消費的？多久才能成為多數？我想，另一方面，隨著市場走向遠離本地部署，有什麼顏色可以了解明年平台收入的流失嗎？

Yes. For Cloud revenue, 100% of our Cloud revenue is consumption. And that's the motion that we've been driving. And to Jay's earlier points, that's why we are excited with respect to the reduction in friction with how our customers are buying and how we are selling. So that's on the cloud side. On your second question...

是的。對於雲端收入來說，我們的雲端收入 100% 都是消費。這就是我們一直在推動的運動。對於傑伊先前的觀點，這就是為什麼我們對客戶購買方式和銷售方式之間摩擦的減少感到興奮。這是在雲端方面。關於你的第二個問題...

It's like the pricing is a usage-based model. The go-to-market is still strongly oriented around commitments, credits as other companies would call it.

這就像定價是基於使用的模型。進入市場仍然以承諾為導向，其他公司稱之為信用。

That's correct. Yes. And on Confluent Platform, of course, I'm not going to double-click and provide guidance for 2024. But just broad brush, if you look at our platform business over the last 12 months, we've been very happy with the performance, especially we've seen strength in the industries like financial services as well as the federal space. So we're in a good position as we exit next year -- as we enter next year rather.

這是正確的。是的。當然，在 Confluence 平台上，我不會雙擊並提供 2024 年的指導。但只是粗略地看一下，如果你看看過去 12 個月我們的平台業務，我們對錶現非常滿意，特別是我們看到了金融服務以及聯邦太空等產業的實力。因此，當我們明年退出時，當我們進入明年時，我們處於有利的位置。

All right. Thanks, Derrick. Raimo, you got the last question, go for it.

好的。謝謝，德里克。 Raimo，你有最後一個問題，請回答。

So at the conference, you could see the excitement around Flink. And I was kind of -- the rooms were full, I didn't get a seat et cetera. How do you think about the adoption curve as you go kind of GA next year? Do you think there's going to be like a couple of kind of reference customers and everyone is going to look and see how that's working? Or do you think that's going to be more broad-based? Just to get an idea about the excitement for next year for the Flink kind of rollout.

所以在會議上，你可以看到圍繞 Flink 的興奮。我的感覺是──房間已經滿了，我沒有座位等等。當你明年正式發佈時，你如何看待採用曲線？您是否認為會有幾種參考客戶，每個人都會看看它是如何運作的？或者您認為這會具有更廣泛的基礎？只是為了了解明年 Flink 推出的興奮程度。

I think it will definitely be more broad-based than a couple of customers. Yes, I mean, this is out there in preview mode today. We've had great early adoption of people trying it. It takes a little bit more before people really put the kind of mission-critical production workloads on it. That's that kind of ramp up to GA. But yes, we expect to see great adoption over the course of the next year. We're very excited about it.

我認為它肯定會比幾個客戶更廣泛。是的，我的意思是，今天已經以預覽模式發布了。人們很早就採用了我們的嘗試。人們還需要花費更多的時間才能真正將關鍵任務的生產工作負載放在上面。這就是 GA 的升級過程。但是，是的，我們預計明年會被廣泛採用。我們對此感到非常興奮。

All right. That concludes today's earnings call. Thanks again for joining us. Have a good one, everyone. Take care. We'll talk soon.

好的。今天的財報電話會議到此結束。再次感謝您加入我們。祝大家過得愉快。小心。我們很快就會談。

Thanks, everyone.

感謝大家。