Confluent Inc (CFLT) 2021 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Hi, everyone. Welcome to The Confluent Q3 2021 Earnings Conference Call. I'm Shane Xie from Investor Relations, and I'm joined by Jay Kreps, Co-Founder and CEO; and Steffan Tomlinson, CFO. During today's call, management will make forward-looking statements, including statements regarding our financial outlook for fiscal fourth quarter of 2021, fiscal year 2021, fiscal first quarter and fiscal year 2022, increased adoption of our platform, our ability and position to capitalize on the shift to cloud, growth in revenue, total customers, remaining performance obligations and dollar-based net retention rate, our market opportunity and our overall future prospects. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, some of which are beyond our control, 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 SEC filings, including our Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2021 and Form 10-K for the quarter ended September 30, 2021, that will be filed with the SEC. We assume no obligation to update these statements after today's call, except as required by law. As a reminder, certain financial measures used on today's call are expressed on a non-GAAP basis. We use these non-GAAP financial measures in generally to facilitate the analysis of financial and business trends and for internal planning and forecasting purposes. These non-GAAP financial measures have limitations. They should not be considered in isolation from or as a substitute for financial information prepared in accordance with GAAP. Our 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 Investor Relations website at investors.confluent.io. And with that, I'll hand the call over to Jay.

大家好。歡迎參加 Confluent 2021 年第三季財報電話會議。我是投資者關係部的 Shane Xie，和我一起的是共同創辦人兼執行長 Jay Kreps；以及財務長 Steffan Tomlinson。在今天的電話會議上，管理層將做出前瞻性陳述，包括有關我們對 2021 財年第四季度、2021 財年、2022 財年第一季度和 2022 財年的財務前景的陳述、我們平台的採用率的提高、我們利用向雲轉變的能力和地位、收入的增長、總客戶數、剩餘市場的客戶數、基於我們的年存率這些前瞻性陳述受風險和不確定性的影響，其中一些超出我們的控制範圍，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​​訊包含在我們向美國證券交易委員會提交的文件中，包括我們將向美國證券交易委員會提交的截至 2021 年 6 月 30 日的季度的 10-Q 表和截至 2021 年 9 月 30 日的季度的 10-K 表。除非法律要求，否則我們不承擔今天電話會議後更新這些聲明的義務。提醒一下，今天電話會議上使用的某些財務指標是以非 GAAP 為基礎表示的。我們通常使用這些非公認會計準則財務指標來促進財務和業務趨勢的分析以及用於內部規劃和預測目的。這些非公認會計準則財務指標有其限制。它們不應被孤立地看待或取代根據 GAAP 編制的財務資訊。這些 GAAP 和非 GAAP 財務指標之間的對帳包含在我們的收益新聞稿和補充財務報表中，可在我們投資者關係網站 investors.confluent.io 上找到。說完這些，我會把電話交給傑伊。

Thanks, Shane. Welcome, everyone, to our third quarter earnings call. I'm pleased to say our third quarter results exceeded our expectation and our guidance on all metrics, the outperformance we've seen is a result of great product markets fit and secular tailwinds driving the adoption of data in motion and cloud and a lot of hard work by our team. I'll get into these drivers in a moment. But first, let me touch on the numbers. Revenue in the third quarter totaled $102.6 million. This is significant for 2 reasons. First, this is our first quarter ever, achieving over $100 million in quarterly revenue, and we've managed to hit this milestone in less than 7 years. And second, revenue growth of 67% year-over-year represents a further acceleration from the growth we saw last quarter. Growth in Confluent Cloud revenue also accelerated, coming in at 245% year-over-year, while outpacing the growth of the overall business. Confluent Cloud represents 26% of total revenue in the quarter.

謝謝，肖恩。歡迎大家參加我們的第三季財報電話會議。我很高興地說，我們第三季的業績超出了我們的預期和所有指標的指導，我們所看到的優異表現是由於出色的產品市場契合度和推動行動數據和雲端運算採用的長期順風，以及我們團隊的大量辛勤工作。我馬上就會討論這些驅動程式。但首先，讓我來談談這些數字。第三季總收入為1.026億美元。這很重要，原因有二。首先，這是我們有史以來第一個季度收入超過 1 億美元的成績，而且我們在不到 7 年的時間內就實現了這一里程碑。其次，營收年增 67%，比上個季度的成長有了進一步加速。 Confluent Cloud 營收的成長也加速，年增 245%，同時超過了整體業務的成長。 Confluent Cloud 佔本季總營收的 26%。

Our team has continued to execute well, and we feel very good about our position heading into the fourth quarter, which is reflected in our increased guidance for the balance of 2021. Steffan will elaborate further on the financials in a moment.

我們的團隊繼續表現良好，我們對進入第四季度的狀況感到非常滿意，這反映在我們對 2021 年餘額的預期增加。

First, I want to use the opportunity to talk a little bit more about our space. We have a very technical product. And I imagine many of you are still relatively new to our story. So I'll spend a little time today on the data in motion paradigm and our platform before we get into more of the specifics from the third quarter. I think the underlying macro change that's driving Confluent's success is that virtually all businesses are becoming defined end-to-end in software. It isn't just that there are more software applications but increasingly the core activities of the business. The production and distribution of goods and services and interactions with customers are driven by software. To do this, these software systems must connect end-to-end to the different parts of the business and operate in real-time as the business executes out in the real world. This transformation is really being driven by customer demand. In today's world, consumers expect the best digital experiences from the organizations that they interact with. These experiences go beyond simply a user interface or app, but touch everything from logistics to operations to back-end processes that together creates a customer experience. At the core of all the software that drives this is data. Data management has traditionally been about storage, that is, data at rest. Databases have long been the mainstay of data management and storage is exactly what they're built to do. They help you safely store your data and look up or process the right bits as you need it. But now the explosion of software and data means that there are more databases, applications, analytics, platforms and SaaS layers. And increasingly, all of these systems need to work together in real-time to help operate the business. It isn't enough anymore to have all these systems existing as disconnected storage silos. They all have to integrate in real time. Confluent's role is extending support in the infrastructure layer to cover the other half of data management, the management of data in motion. The databases have traditionally ignored. This problem is very different from a world with data at rest. It isn't about storing piles of data for individual disconnected applications. Data in motion requires a platform that helps support the real-time flow and processing of data between applications as it is generated to help drive the operations of the business. This new platform forms a key component of the emerging next-gen data architecture, which we think, over time, will be a requirement for every company. By using data in this way, companies can make it far easier to tap into data from any part of the company and operate on it in real time. The streams of data both trigger custom applications to take action as well as enabling real-time processing and enrichment of the data and integration into other data systems. Data in motion makes it possible to do this in a decoupled way because of the published subscriber nature of the usage. Any part of the business can publish the real-time stream of data at its own operation. And any other part of the business can choose to tap into that stream to react or processing. As a result, these capabilities are critical for companies to be able to build around software and data, which is, in turn, critical for their success in the modern competitive landscape. In this sense, the rise of data in motion is right at the heart of digital transformation. This kind of real-time architecture has long been desirable. What was long believed to be too difficult for all but the most critical applications. However, our platform makes real-time easy. Indeed, our goal is to make processing real-time data streams as easy and ubiquitous as the infrastructure around storage and batch process.

首先，我想藉此機會進一步談談我們的空間。我們有一個非常技術性的產品。我想你們中的許多人對我們的故事還比較陌生。因此，在我們討論第三季的更多具體細節之前，今天我將花一點時間討論運動數據範例和我們的平台。我認為推動 Confluent 成功的根本宏觀變化是幾乎所有業務都正在透過軟體進行端到端的定義。這不僅僅是軟體應用程式的增多，而且業務的核心活動也日益增多。商品和服務的生產和分配以及與客戶的互動由軟體驅動。為此，這些軟體系統必須端到端連接到業務的不同部分，並在業務在現實世界中執行時即時運作。這種轉變其實是由客戶需求所推動的。在當今世界，消費者期望從與其互動的組織中獲得最佳的數位體驗。這些體驗不僅僅是用戶介面或應用程序，還涉及從物流到營運到後端流程的一切，共同創造客戶體驗。所有驅動這一進程的軟體的核心都是數據。資料管理傳統上是關於存儲，即靜態資料。資料庫長期以來一直是資料管理的支柱，而儲存正是它們的目的所在。它們可以幫助您安全地儲存資料並根據需要查找或處理正確的位元。但現在軟體和數據的爆炸性增長意味著有更多的資料庫、應用程式、分析、平台和 SaaS 層。而且，所有這些系統越來越需要即時協作來幫助業務運作。讓所有這些系統作為斷開連接的儲存孤島存在已經遠遠不夠了。它們都必須即時整合。 Confluent 的角色是擴展基礎設施層的支援以涵蓋資料管理的另一半，即行動資料管理。資料庫傳統上一直忽略這一點。這個問題與靜態資料的世界非常不同。它並不是為單一斷開連接的應用程式儲存大量資料。行動數據需要一個平台來支援應用程式之間資料的即時流動和處理，以推動業務運作。這個新平台構成了新興的下一代資料架構的關鍵組成部分，我們認為，隨著時間的推移，它將成為每家公司的必備條件。透過以這種方式使用數據，公司可以更輕鬆地利用來自公司任何部門的數據並即時操作。資料流既可以觸發自訂應用程式採取行動，也可以實現資料的即時處理和豐富以及與其他資料系統的整合。由於已發布的訂閱者使用特性，行動數據使得以解耦的方式實現這一點成為可能。企業的任何環節都可以在自己的營運過程中發佈即時的資料流。並且業務的任何其他部分都可以選擇利用該流來做出反應或進行處理。因此，這些能力對於公司能夠圍繞軟體和數據進行建構至關重要，而這反過來對於他們在現代競爭環境中取得成功也至關重要。從這個意義上來說，行動數據的興起正是數位轉型的核心。這種即時架構長期以來一直受到人們的青睞。人們長期以來認為，除了最關鍵的應用之外，其他所有應用都太困難。然而，我們的平台讓即時變得簡單。事實上，我們的目標是使處理即時資料流變得像儲存和批次基礎設施一樣簡單和普遍。

Our product strategy is laser-focused on this goal. To do this, we're building around 3 key pillars; being cognitive, being a complete offering for data in motion and being everywhere. These 3 pillars represent key aspects of making this new paradigm, the new default standard as well as key aspects of differentiation to separate us from competitors. We think this differentiation is key to our success in driving Confluent's high growth, and in particular, is the driving factor behind the outsized growth of our cloud offering.

我們的產品策略專注於此目標。為了實現這一目標，我們圍繞著三大關鍵支柱進行建構；具有認知性、為動態資料提供完整解決方案且無所不在。這三大支柱代表了建立這個新範式、新預設標準的關鍵方面以及使我們有別於競爭對手的差異化關鍵方面。我們認為這種差異化是我們成功推動 Confluent 高成長的關鍵，特別是我們雲端產品超額成長的驅動因素。

Let me go through each of these 3 pillars in more depth. First, being cloud-native. Confluent Cloud was architected from the ground up to operate as the last rescalable multi-tenant cloud service. These capabilities can sound superficial, but a true cloud-native service is far more than just putting open source Apache Kafka in the cloud. Cloud services are fundamentally different from solutions that might have been designed for an on-premise environment and different in a way that is transformative for the customers who adopt them. This flexibility gets customers out of the world in which their infrastructure dictates their pace of innovation. What's more of this difference isn't just added features. It cuts right to the heart of how these systems are designed and built. By being cloud-native we're able to offer the same protocol of Kafka on a platform that is completely serverless and elastic and also integrates natively with

讓我更深入地闡述這三個支柱。首先，雲端原生。 Confluent Cloud 的架構從一開始就被設計為最後的可擴展多租戶雲端服務。這些功能聽起來可能很膚淺，但真正的雲端原生服務遠不止於將開源 Apache Kafka 放到雲端。雲端服務與為內部環境設計的解決方案有著根本的不同，並且對於採用它們的客戶來說具有變革性的不同。這種靈活性使客戶擺脫了由基礎設施決定其創新步伐的困境。更重要的是，這種差異不僅僅是增加了功能。它直擊這些系統的設計和建構方式的核心。透過雲端原生，我們能夠在完全無伺服器且具有彈性的平台上提供與 Kafka 相同的協議，並且能夠與

with many other software solutions and technologies on the major cloud providers to help customers manage their data easily and secure. Developing these capabilities required some of our deepest R&D investments and has enabled us to add a feature set that is a generation ahead of any competitor. Our cloud-native capabilities are particularly relevant for customers in tech who are often operating at large scale. Two great examples are Square and Gainsight, both of which have turned to Confluent Cloud for their data streaming platform. Square is a rapidly growing financial services software and payments organization with an ever-increasing volume of payments new customers joining daily. They needed a scalable, reliable and secure data streaming solution. When a merchant receives customer's order through their website or they need to process payroll, a lot needs to happen in real time. We're helping power Square's seller business with a number of use cases that connect the point-of-sale to payment processing to reporting.

與主要雲端供應商的許多其他軟體解決方案和技術合作，幫助客戶輕鬆、安全地管理他們的資料。開發這些功能需要我們進行最深入的研發投資，並使我們能夠添加領先任何競爭對手一代的功能集。我們的雲端原生功能對於經常大規模營運的技術客戶尤其重要。兩個很好的例子是 Square 和 Gainsight，他們都已將 Confluent Cloud 作為其資料流平台。 Square 是一家快速發展的金融服務軟體和支付組織，每天加入的新支付客戶數量不斷增加。他們需要一個可擴展、可靠且安全的資料流解決方案。當商家透過其網站收到客戶的訂單或需要處理薪資單時，很多事情需要即時發生。我們正在透過多種用例幫助 Square 的賣家業務發展，將銷售點與支付處理和報告連接起來。

Gainsight, a SaaS service that helps businesses build long-lasting relationships with customers uses Confluent for real-time data integration to bring together the insights to help maximize the customer experience and trigger actions to ensure their success. Our cloud-native foundation isn't just a factor for larger companies though. Confluent Cloud is seeing success across customers of all sizes. Our cloud-focused commercial sales organization was one of our fastest-growing segments of this quarter, which further speaks to the strong product market fit of Confluent Cloud for digital-native organizations. A great example of this is iFood, a mobile food delivery leader in Brazil, which has recently migrated to our fully managed cloud service running on AWS. They now manage more than 4 million orders per month. Everything from order placement to payment processing to delivery ETAs are handled with Confluent to make sure the right food gets to the right customer as fast as possible.

Gainsight 是一種 SaaS 服務，可幫助企業與客戶建立長期關係，它使用 Confluent 進行即時資料集成，匯集見解，幫助最大限度地提升客戶體驗並觸發行動以確保他們的成功。然而，我們的雲端原生基礎不僅僅是大型公司所考慮的因素。 Confluent Cloud 正在幫助各種規模的客戶取得成功。我們以雲端為中心的商業銷售組織是我們本季成長最快的部門之一，這進一步證明了 Confluent Cloud 對數位原生組織的強大產品市場契合度。一個很好的例子是巴西行動食品配送領導者 iFood，它最近遷移到了我們在 AWS 上運行的完全託管的雲端服務。他們現在每月處理的訂單超過400萬份。從下訂單到付款處理到預計交貨時間的所有環節都由 Confluent 處理，以確保正確的食物盡快送到正確的客戶手中。

The second pillar of our product differentiation is completeness. In order for customers to be able to truly harness the power of data in motion, they need a complete offering that makes developing in this new paradigm easy. Kafka is a great foundational layer for building around data streams, but it's just one layer in a modern data and motion stack. Trying to assemble the stack in bitsy pieces and operate all of these is a huge challenge for companies. And that is why we've brought together the essential elements of this stack into a complete unified product. Our product gives customers a robust set of connectors that allow them to plug into the many systems holding data in their organization. We also give them a rich streaming SQL layer, KSQL, which allows them to extend the database skill set their team already has to the new world of real-time streaming. One solution, which brings together many of these capabilities is helping customers migrate and modernize their analytics platform. We recently launched our first priority partner solution focused on cloud data warehouse modernization. A key challenge for organizations is feeding these modern warehouses with data that may come from cloud environments or legacy systems on-premise. As part of that, organizations need a solution that connects data from any system while maintaining the flexibility and security to work across multi-cloud and hybrid environments. Our cloud data warehouse modernization solution enables customers to extract data in real time, transform it into the right structures to support analytics and transport it across cloud environments and regions to any one of a number of next-generation analytics technologies, including Google BigQuery, AWS Redshift, Snowflake or Azure Synapse. This solution truly illustrates the completeness of our platform. It is built on our ecosystem of over 120 connectors and our stream processing capabilities that make it easy to capture, transform and transparently deliver real-time data streams from existing databases, infrastructure layers and SaaS APIs. How we take this solution to market is a great example of our partnership with the major cloud providers. The ability to unlock data for ingestion into these next-generation data warehouses is a key blocker for the growth of these next-generation analytics services and a great point of collaboration and joint go-to-market between Confluent and the cloud providers.

我們的產品差異化的第二個支柱是完整性。為了讓客戶能夠真正發揮行動數據的力量，他們需要一個完整的產品，讓這個新模式的開發變得簡單。 Kafka 是圍繞著資料流建構的一個很好的基礎層，但它只是現代資料和運動堆疊中的一層。嘗試將堆疊組裝成零碎並進行操作對於公司來說是一個巨大的挑戰。這就是我們將這個堆疊的基本元素整合成一個完整統一的產品的原因。我們的產品為客戶提供了一套強大的連接器，使他們能夠插入其組織中保存資料的許多系統。我們還為他們提供了豐富的串流 SQL 層 KSQL，這使他們能夠將團隊已有的資料庫技能擴展到即時串流的新世界。其中一個解決方案將把這些功能整合在一起，幫助客戶遷移和現代化他們的分析平台。我們最近推出了專注於雲端資料倉儲現代化的首要合作夥伴解決方案。企業面臨的一個關鍵挑戰是向這些現代倉庫提供來自雲端環境或內部遺留系統的資料。作為其中的一部分，組織需要一種能夠連接任何系統的資料的解決方案，同時保持在多雲和混合環境中工作的靈活性和安全性。我們的雲端資料倉儲現代化解決方案使客戶能夠即時提取數據，將其轉換為正確的結構以支援分析，並將其跨雲端環境和區域傳輸到多種下一代分析技術中的任何一種，包括 Google BigQuery、AWS Redshift、Snowflake 或 Azure Synapse。這個解決方案真正體現了我們平台的完整性。它建立在我們擁有超過 120 個連接器的生態系統和我們的串流處理功能之上，可以輕鬆地從現有資料庫、基礎設施層和 SaaS API 捕獲、轉換和透明地交付即時資料流。我們如何將該解決方案推向市場是我們與主要雲端供應商合作的一個很好的例子。解鎖資料以供這些下一代資料倉儲攝取的能力是這些下一代分析服務成長的關鍵障礙，也是 Confluent 和雲端供應商之間合作和聯合上市的一個重要點。

Our third pillar is being everywhere. And in Q3, we have continued to strengthen the capabilities to support this pillar, most recently with the launch of cluster linking for Confluent Cloud. Organizations today are becoming increasingly geographically distributed with data living in a number of different heterogeneous environments throughout the business. Managing data securely across these environments is a huge challenge. Cluster linking introduces a new way to transparently link together Kafka clusters in different geographies, cloud providers or environments to create a unified fabric for data in motion that seamlessly spans all the parts of the company. An early user of this functionality is Namely. Namely is a fast-growing HR software company, and they have architectural requirements that span geographies in multiple cloud environments to serve their diverse customer base. Cluster linking makes real-time global data sharing, disaster recovery and workload migrations easy for them. A great example that puts all 3 of these pillars together is Instacart. Instacart experienced record growth at the onset of the pandemic, which required them to be able to scale elastically to meet the need. They evaluated a handful of different data and motion options and selected Confluent Cloud due to the combination of cloud-native capabilities that would let them scale elastically to support the growth of their business, the completeness of our offering and our ability to be everywhere, spanning the environments and availability zones their product required. They have complex problems to solve in real time with inventory, customer service and stacking.

我們的第三個支柱是無所不在。在第三季度，我們繼續加強支持這一支柱的能力，最近推出了 Confluent Cloud 的集群連結。當今組織的地理分佈越來越分散，資料儲存在整個企業的許多不同的異質環境中。在這些環境中安全地管理資料是一項巨大的挑戰。集群連結引入了一種新方法，可以透明地將不同地理位置、雲端提供者或環境中的 Kafka 集群連結在一起，從而為無縫跨越公司所有部分的行動數據創建統一的結構。該功能的早期用戶是 Namely。 Namely 是一家快速成長的人力資源軟體公司，他們的架構要求跨越多個雲端環境的地域，以服務多樣化的客戶群。叢集連結使他們可以輕鬆實現即時的全球資料共享、災難復原和工作負載遷移。 Instacart 就是將這三個支柱結合在一起的一個很好的例子。疫情爆發之初，Instacart 經歷了創紀錄的成長，這要求他們能夠彈性擴展以滿足需求。他們評估了一些不同的數據和運動選項，最終選擇了 Confluent Cloud，因為它結合了雲端原生功能，可以讓他們彈性擴展以支持業務成長、我們產品的完整性以及我們無處不在的能力，涵蓋了他們的產品所需的環境和可用區域。他們需要即時解決庫存、客戶服務和堆放等複雜問題。

We believe our platform and the larger movement around data in motion represents a significant step change in making data accessible across an organization. But in order to truly unlock customers' data, it isn't enough just to make it easy, we also have to make it safe. As data powers more of the operations of a company, the quality, correctness, compliance and lineage of data becomes an existential concern. This is a difficulty that is compounded by the explosion of new data types as well as an explosion in the level of regulation and risk around data. When organizations had one monolithic team, they did everything and only a few places where data resided, it was much easier to control data integrity and governance. Customers now need to do this across a diverse organization that is innovating and changing in many areas in parallel, which is a substantial challenge. The key to addressing this challenge is a product offering we announced in Q3 called Stream Governance. This takes the best practices for decentralized federated data governance and applies it automatically with Confluent. Stream Governance is offered as a fully managed cloud solution and delivers a simple self-service experience that enables customers to discover, understand and trust their data flows. This new suite of capabilities establishes trust in the real-time data moving throughout our customers' businesses and empowers teams across any organization to quickly put event streams to work.

我們相信，我們的平台和圍繞動態數據的更大運動代表著在整個組織內存取數據的重大變革。但為了真正解鎖客戶的數據，僅僅讓它變得簡單是不夠的，我們還必須讓它變得安全。隨著數據為公司的營運提供更多支持，數據的品質、正確性、合規性和沿襲性已成為一個生存問題。新數據類型的激增以及數據監管和風險水平的激增進一步加劇了這一困難。當組織擁有一個龐大的團隊，他們做所有事情，並且只在資料所在的幾個地方，控制資料完整性和治理就容易得多。現在，客戶需要在一個多元化的組織中完成這項任務，該組織正在多個領域同時進行創新和變革，這是一個巨大的挑戰。解決這項挑戰的關鍵是我們在第三季推出的名為「Stream Governance」的產品。這採用了分散聯合資料治理的最佳實踐，並透過 Confluent 自動應用它。 Stream Governance 作為完全託管的雲端解決方案提供，並提供簡單的自助服務體驗，使客戶能夠發現、理解和信任他們的資料流。這套新功能建立了對客戶業務中即時數據的信任，並使任何組織內的團隊能夠快速地將事件流投入使用。

There are 3 key capabilities of stream governance. The first is our stream catalog, which helps users find the data they need. This allows individuals across teams to collaborate within a centralized, organized digital library for data in motion, which allows any user at any skill level to put data to use right away. Our customers like Care.com really value this. When it comes to finding, managing and paying for family care, data confidence is critical. Next is stream lineage. This is like Google Maps for your data flows, created in real time of the actual flow of data. It provides an always up-to-date version of how data is flowing in the organization and who is consuming it. With a better understanding of where data originated and where it's going, how it's transformed and when it arrives, developers can move projects forward with assurance, their work won't cause negative or unexpected downstream impact. Take Ritchie Brothers., for example, the global industrial asset auctioneer and one of our great customers, depends on stream lineage for their real-time online bidding system. It makes buying and selling industrial equipment like giant earthmoving trucks easier. And finally, stream quality, which helps us avoid bad data, enforces schemas and ensures compatibility, which enables organizations to scale data integrity without adding operational complexity. We believe that standardizing around well-defined and agreed upon schema structures allows teams to develop resilient data in motion pipelines, prepared for safe compatible evolution over time.

流治理有3個關鍵能力。第一個是我們的流目錄，它可以幫助使用者找到他們需要的資料。這樣，跨團隊的個人就可以在集中的、有組織的動態資料數位庫內進行協作，從而允許任何技能水平的使用者立即使用資料。我們的客戶（例如 Care.com）非常重視這一點。在尋找、管理和支付家庭照護費用時，數據信心至關重要。接下來是流系。這就像為您的資料流提供的谷歌地圖，即時創建實際資料流。它始終提供有關資料在組織內流動方式和使用者的最新版本資訊。透過更了解資料的來源、去向、如何轉換以及何時到達，開發人員可以放心地推進項目，他們的工作不會對下游造成負面或意外的影響。以全球工業資產拍賣商和我們的大客戶之一利氏兄弟 (Ritchie Brothers) 為例，該公司依靠流程譜系實現即時線上競價系統。它使得購買和銷售大型土方卡車等工業設備變得更加容易。最後，流程品質幫助我們避免不良數據，強制執行模式並確保相容性，使組織能夠在不增加操作複雜性的情況下擴展資料完整性。我們相信，圍繞明確定義和一致認可的模式結構進行標準化，可以讓團隊開發運動管道中的彈性數據，為隨著時間的推移實現安全相容的演變做好準備。

We're really excited about Stream Governance as it extends the completeness of our platform with capabilities that are essential for a successful data in motion strategy. It represents one of the single most requested features from our customers. With better visibility into and control over data governance, customers can leverage our data and motion platform for mission-critical use cases without having to invest scarce software engineering resources into building tools for monitoring and managing the quality of their data.

我們對 Stream Governance 感到非常興奮，因為它擴展了我們平台的完整性，其功能對於成功的運動數據策略至關重要。它是我們客戶最需要的功能之一。透過更了解和控制資料治理，客戶可以利用我們的資料和運動平台來處理關鍵任務案例，而無需投入稀缺的軟體工程資源來建立用於監控和管理資料品質的工具。

Stream Governance also serves to illustrate a more general point I'd like to make about our space. Data in motion is a genuinely new category. And though building a new category and paradigm comes with a number of challenges, it has one very big advantage, which is that unlike most of the data stack, all the white space around data in motion is not yet filled in. There are literally hundreds of use cases and product opportunities around data in motion that we see our customers and the larger ecosystem development. And because that ecosystem is just coming into being, Confluent has an enormous opportunity to expand our position and scope into these additional capabilities. This is quite different from a more mature space where all these niches have been filled in by at-scale mature competitors. This is something that for me makes our future product road map very exciting. You can ask yourself the question, if there was a central nervous system, which captured the real-time flow of data in a company, what else would naturally grow in and around that stack. The possibilities are endless. And if we execute quickly and effectively, many of the key elements of this ecosystem can be Confluent products. Stream governance is one small step into this larger problem of helping companies rebuild around real-time data. But it's a good illustration of how we can go beyond the raw infrastructure of moving and processing bytes and deeper into the larger problem of managing and using data in motion.

流治理也可以說明我想關於我們的空間的更普遍的觀點。動態資料是一個真正新的類別。儘管建立新的類別和範式面臨著許多挑戰，但它有一個非常大的優勢，那就是與大多數數據堆疊不同，運動數據周圍的所有空白都尚未填補。而且由於這個生態系統剛剛形成，Confluent 有巨大的機會擴展我們的地位並擴大其範圍，實現這些附加功能。這與更成熟的領域截然不同，在更成熟的領域中，所有這些空白都已被成熟的競爭對手填補。對我來說，這使得我們未來的產品路線圖非常令人興奮。你可以問自己一個問題，如果有一個中樞神經系統，可以捕捉公司中的即時資料流，那麼在這個堆疊內部和周圍還有什麼會自然生長。可能性是無窮無盡的。如果我們快速有效地執行，這個生態系統的許多關鍵元素都可以成為 Confluent 產品。流治理是幫助公司圍繞即時數據進行重建這一更大問題的一小步。但它很好地說明了我們如何能夠超越行動和處理位元組的原始基礎設施，更深入地解決管理和使用行動數據的更大問題。

As we continue to build a market-leading product in a new category, we've made a number of key hires to support our expansion. One of the recent notable hires was Chad Verbowski, our new SVP of Engineering, who joined us from Google. Chad was Head of BigQuery Engineering at Google and had extensive experience leading and scaling Google's cloud data analytics platforms, tools and machine learning services. Together with Ganesh Srinivasan, our Chief Product Officer, the team will continue to innovate and build great products for our customers to set their data in motion.

隨著我們繼續在新的類別中打造市場領先的產品，我們已經招募了許多關鍵員工來支持我們的擴張。最近最引人注目的員工招募之一是 Chad Verbowski，他是我們新任工程資深副總裁，他來自Google。 Chad 曾擔任 Google 的 BigQuery 工程主管，在領導和擴展 Google 的雲端資料分析平台、工具和機器學習服務方面擁有豐富的經驗。與我們的首席產品長 Ganesh Srinivasan 一起，團隊將繼續創新並為我們的客戶打造優秀的產品，以使他們的數據得以運作。

And finally, I'm really pleased with the interest and participation we've seen at Kafka Summits around the world. More than 51,000 people registered to attend the 3 summits we held in America, EMEA and APAC this year, an increase of over 40% year-over-year. This momentum is also evident in the talent market. According to LinkedIn Talent Insights, more than 60,000 job hostings globally today are targeting those skilled in Kafka. This has been noted by industry observers as well. ThoughtWorks, a premier technology consultancy and analyst recently noted in their radar publication on tech trends that "Kafka continues towards its status as the de facto standard for asynchronous published subscribed messaging at volume." They further noted that they were seeing increasing standardization around these key platforms like Kafka, Kubernetes and the cloud service providers and far less interest in newer challengers to these emerging standards. This matches our observations. We think it's a very positive sign to the larger movement towards data in motion.

最後，我對世界各地對 Kafka 峰會的興趣和參與感到非常高興。今年我們在美洲、EMEA 和 APAC 舉辦的三場高峰會，報名人數超過 51,000 人，較去年同期成長超過 40%。這一勢頭在人才市場也顯而易見。根據 LinkedIn Talent Insights 統計，目前全球有超過 60,000 個招募網站瞄準那些能夠熟練使用 Kafka 的人才。產業觀察家也注意到了這一點。頂級技術諮詢和分析公司 ThoughtWorks 最近在其技術趨勢雷達出版物中指出：“Kafka 繼續朝著批量異步發布訂閱消息的事實標準的地位邁進。”他們進一步指出，他們看到圍繞 Kafka、Kubernetes 和雲端服務供應商等關鍵平台的標準化日益增強，而對於這些新興標準的新挑戰者的興趣則大大降低。這與我們的觀察相符。我們認為這對於更廣泛的行動數據運動來說是一個非常積極的信號。

With that, I'll turn the call over to Steffan to walk through the financials.

說完這些，我將把電話轉給史蒂芬 (Steffan) 來介紹一下財務狀況。

Thanks, Jay. Good afternoon, everyone. Q3 was another strong quarter as we exceeded the high end of our guidance on all metrics and continue to see accelerating growth in revenue, RPO and a robust net retention rate. These results underscore the power of our industry-leading platform for data in motion and our ability to execute and capture the large and growing market opportunity in front of us.

謝謝，傑伊。大家下午好。第三季度又是一個強勁的季度，因為我們所有指標都超出了預期的高端，並且營收、RPO 和強勁的淨留存率繼續加速成長。這些結果凸顯了我們領先業界的動態數據平台的強大功能以及我們執行和抓住眼前巨大且不斷增長的市場機會的能力。

Turning to our customer metrics. We added approximately 190 net new customers this quarter, bringing total customer count to approximately 3,020, up 75% year-over-year. Our growth in large customers continues to be robust. We ended the third quarter with 664 customers with at least $100,000 in ARR, up 48% year-over-year; and 74 customers with at least $1 million in ARR, up 90% year-over-year. The growth in our customers is driven by the complete cloud-native and everywhere aspects of our product differentiation, the network effects of data in motion and our continued improvement in go-to-market with broad-based momentum across enterprise and commercial segments, coupled with our strong partnership with cloud service providers, driven by strong gross retention and expansion across both of our product offerings. Q3 dollar-based net retention rate, or NRR, was greater than 130% for the second quarter in a row, exceeding our near-term target threshold of 120% and was in line with our long-term target of above 130%. Our thesis is that over time, Confluent Cloud with its elasticity and consumption-based model should have a higher NRR than Confluent Platform. The thesis played out nicely this quarter. As we noted in our last earnings call, we expect fluctuation in NRR to continue. With that said, we're pleased with the progress we've made in increasing NRR, and we remain operationally focused on driving it consistently above our near-term threshold and long-term target.

轉向我們的客戶指標。本季我們淨增約 190 名新客戶，使客戶總數達到約 3,020 名，較去年同期成長 75%。我們的大客戶成長持續強勁。截至第三季度，我們擁有 664 名客戶的 ARR 至少為 10 萬美元，年成長 48%； 74 位客戶的 ARR 至少為 100 萬美元，較去年同期成長 90%。我們客戶數量的成長得益於我們產品差異化的完全雲端原生和無所不在的方面、行動數據的網路效應、以及我們在企業和商業領域廣泛的市場進入勢頭的持續改善，再加上我們與雲端服務供應商的牢固合作夥伴關係，這得益於我們兩種產品的強勁總保留率和擴展。第三季的美元淨留存率（NRR）連續第二季超過 130%，超過了我們 120% 的近期目標門檻，並與我們 130% 以上的長期目標一致。我們的論點是，隨著時間的推移，具有彈性和基於消費的模型的 Confluent Cloud 應該比 Confluent Platform 具有更高的 NRR。本季該論文進展順利。正如我們在上次收益電話會議中指出的那樣，我們預計 NRR 波動將持續下去。話雖如此，我們對在提高 NRR 方面取得的進展感到滿意，並且我們在營運上仍專注於推動其持續高於我們的近期門檻和長期目標。

Turning to revenue. Q3 total revenue was $102.6 million, growing 67% year-over-year, an acceleration from 64% in Q2. Subscription revenue was $92.4 million, accelerating to 70% growth year-over-year and it accounted for 90% of total revenue. The 2 components of our subscription revenue continued to exhibit strong growth. Confluent Platform revenue was $65.6 million, up 40% year-over-year and accounted for 64% of total revenue. Confluent Cloud revenue was $26.8 million, accelerating to 245% growth year-over-year and accounted for 26% of total revenue, up from 22% of total revenue last quarter and up from 13% in the year ago quarter. Our strong performance in Confluent Cloud revenue was driven by the themes Jay discussed earlier, including the secular trend of cloud migration, the enhancements and features we've added to our cloud product in recent quarters and great execution by our go-to-market team.

談到收入。第三季總營收為 1.026 億美元，年增 67%，高於第二季的 64%。訂閱收入為 9,240 萬美元，年增 70%，佔總收入的 90%。我們的訂閱收入的兩個部分繼續呈現強勁成長。 Confluent 平台營收為 6,560 萬美元，年增 40%，佔總營收的 64%。 Confluent Cloud 營收為 2,680 萬美元，年成長 245%，佔總營收的 26%，高於上一季的 22% 和去年同期的 13%。 Confluent Cloud 營收的強勁表現受到 Jay 先前討論的主題的推動，包括雲端遷移的長期趨勢、我們最近幾個季度添加到雲端產品中的增強功能和特性以及我們的行銷團隊的出色執行力。

Turning to the geographic mix of revenue. We saw robust demand for our data in motion platform worldwide, with revenues from outside the U.S. outpacing total revenue growth. Revenue from the U.S. grew 59% year-over-year to $66.3 million, representing 65% of total revenue. Revenue from outside the U.S. grew 82% year-over-year to $36.3 million, representing 35% of total revenue, up from 32% in the year ago quarter.

轉向收入的地理結構。我們發現全球對動態數據平台的需求強勁，美國以外地區的收入超過了總收入的成長。來自美國的營收年增59%至66​​30萬美元，佔總營收的65%。來自美國以外地區的營收年增 82% 至 3,630 萬美元，佔總營收的 35%，高於去年同期的 32%。

Turning to remaining performance obligations or RPO. We ended the third quarter with $385 million in RPO, up 75% year-over-year. Current RPO, which is estimated to be 67% of RPO, was approximately $256 million, up 65% year-over-year, an acceleration from 63% last quarter. The main driver of RPO growth was the broad-based strength across both of our subscription offerings. We also saw a modest increase in multiyear deals, which is an endorsement of how our value proposition is resonating with customers. Before turning to gross margins and profitability, I'd like to note that I'll be discussing non-GAAP results unless otherwise noted. Q3 total gross margin was 69.4%, down from 71.6% a year ago. Subscription gross margins were 76.8%, down from 78.9% a year ago. The decline in gross margin was anticipated due to the higher mix and strong growth in Confluent Cloud revenue. As discussed on our last earnings call, Confluent Cloud has a lower gross margin profile than Confluent Platform. We've seen continued improvement in our cloud gross margin, and we remain in our early days of achieving leverage and scale for the infrastructure that supports our cloud offering. As Confluent Cloud continues to scale and account for a larger share of total revenue, we anticipate total gross margin to fluctuate near our midterm target of approximately 70%.

轉向剩餘履約義務或RPO。截止第三季度，我們的 RPO 總額為 3.85 億美元，年增 75%。目前 RPO 估計為 RPO 的 67%，約為 2.56 億美元，年增 65%，高於上一季的 63%。 RPO 成長的主要驅動力是我們兩種訂閱產品的廣泛實力。我們也看到多年期交易略有增加，這證明了我們的價值主張得到了客戶的共鳴。在談到毛利率和盈利能力之前，我想指出，除非另有說明，我將討論非 GAAP 結果。第三季總毛利率為 69.4%，低於去年同期的 71.6%。訂閱毛利率為76.8%，低於一年前的78.9%。由於產品組合較高且 Confluent Cloud 收入強勁成長，毛利率預計會下降。正如我們上次財報電話會議所討論的，Confluent Cloud 的毛利率低於 Confluent Platform。我們的雲毛利率持續提高，並且我們仍處於實現支援我們雲端產品的基礎設施的槓桿和規模的早期階段。隨著 Confluent Cloud 不斷擴大規模並佔據總收入的更大份額，我們預計總毛利率將在約 70% 的中期目標附近波動。

Turning to profitability. Operating loss was $42.6 million, representing an operating margin of negative 41.6% compared to negative 32.1% a year ago. Free cash flow margin was negative 20.1% compared to negative 16.7% a year ago. Net loss per share was negative $0.17 using 259.2 million basic and diluted weighted average shares outstanding. As a reminder, our profitability in FY '21 is being impacted by our plan to catch up on hiring given the pause we prudently took in FY '20. Additionally, we're continuing to invest for growth driven by our robust competitive positioning in the large market and the strong unit economics in our model.

轉向盈利能力。營業虧損為 4,260 萬美元，營業利潤率為負 41.6%，去年同期為負 32.1%。自由現金流利潤率為負 20.1%，而一年前為負 16.7%。以 2.592 億股基本和稀釋加權平均流通股計算，每股淨虧損為負 0.17 美元。提醒一下，由於我們在20財年審慎地暫停了招聘，因此我們在21財年的盈利能力受到了我們追趕招聘計劃的影響。此外，我們將繼續投資成長，這得益於我們在大型市場中的強勁競爭地位以及我們模型中強大的單位經濟效益。

Moving on to the balance sheet. We ended the third quarter with $1.3 billion in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities.

繼續討論資產負債表。截至第三季度，我們的現金、現金等價物和有價證券總額為 13 億美元。

Turning now to guidance. For the fourth quarter of 2021, we expect revenue to be in the range of $108 million to $110 million, representing growth of 54% to 56% year-over-year; non-GAAP operating loss in the range of negative $59 million to negative $57 million; and non-GAAP net loss per share in the range of negative $0.23 to negative $0.21 using approximately 264 million weighted average shares outstanding. For fiscal year 2021, we are raising our guidance and now expect revenue to be in the range of $376 million to $378 million, representing growth of 59% to 60% year-over-year; non-GAAP operating loss in the range of negative $170 million to negative $168 million; and non-GAAP net loss per share in the range of negative $0.92 to negative $0.90 using approximately 189 million weighted average shares outstanding.

現在轉向指導。 2021年第四季度，我們預計營收在1.08億美元至1.1億美元之間，年增54%至56%；非公認會計準則經營虧損在負 5,900 萬美元至負 5,700 萬美元之間；以非公認會計準則計算，每股淨虧損在負 0.23 美元至負 0.21 美元之間，加權平均流通股數約為 2.64 億股。對於 2021 財年，我們上調了業績預期，目前預計營收在 3.76 億美元至 3.78 億美元之間，年增 59% 至 60%；非公認會計準則營業虧損在負 1.7 億美元至負 1.68 億美元之間；以非公認會計準則計算，每股淨虧損在負 0.92 美元至負 0.90 美元之間，採用約 1.89 億股加權平均流通股。

I'd also like to provide some modeling points which remain consistent with what we discussed last quarter. We expect FY '21 non-GAAP taxes to be in the range of $2 million to $3 million and FY '21 capital expenditures and amounts capitalized for internal use software costs to be approximately 2% to 3% of total revenue. And finally, while we're still early in the planning process for 2022, I'd like to provide an initial read on our expectations for revenue growth next year. For fiscal year 2022, we expect revenue to grow approximately 36% to approximately $511 million from our FY '21 revenue guidance, which has been raised to $377 million at the midpoint this afternoon. From a seasonality standpoint, we expect Q1 '22 sequential revenue growth to be roughly flat. As our business continues to grow, we expect to see more pronounced seasonality with Q4 '22 being our strongest sequential quarter.

我還想提供一些與我們上個季度討論的內容一致的建模點。我們預計 21 財年非 GAAP 稅額在 200 萬至 300 萬美元之間，21 財年資本支出和內部使用軟體成本資本化的金額約佔總收入的 2% 至 3%。最後，雖然我們仍處於 2022 年規劃過程的早期階段，但我想對我們對明年收入成長的預期提供初步解釋。對於 2022 財年，我們預計收入將比我們的 21 財年收入指引增長約 36% 至約 5.11 億美元，該指引已於今天下午中點上調至 3.77 億美元。從季節性的角度來看，我們預計 22 年第一季的連續營收成長將大致持平。隨著我們業務的持續成長，我們預計季節性因素將更加明顯，其中 22 年第四季是我們表現最強勁的連續季度。

In closing, we're pleased with our third quarter results, which reflect our team's ability to execute to capitalize on our significant opportunity, coupled with the growing market adoption and secular tailwinds for data in motion. We remain confident in our ability to build on our momentum in the quarters ahead. With that, Jay and I will take your questions.

最後，我們對第三季的業績感到滿意，這反映了我們團隊的執行能力，利用了我們的重要機遇，再加上不斷增長的市場採用率和數據動態的長期順風。我們仍然有信心在未來幾季繼續保持良好勢頭。下面，傑伊和我將回答大家的問題。

Thank you, Steffan. (Operator Instructions) We will now take our first question from Mark Murphy of JPMorgan followed by Morgan Stanley.

謝謝你，史蒂芬。 （操作員指示）現在我們將回答摩根大通的馬克墨菲提出的第一個問題，然後是摩根士丹利提出的問題。

Thank you, Shane. Congratulations on just a tremendous growth rate. Jay, I'm wondering if you're possibly seeing any effect from global supply chain issues on the positive side? What I mean by that is perhaps driving retailers to more continual or real-time processes to just try to get a better handle on inventories, right, which have been fluctuating so much, maybe reworking some of their distribution centers to try to handle these challenges out there in the environment.

謝謝你，肖恩。恭喜您取得了驚人的成長率。傑伊，我想知道您是否可能看到全球供應鏈問題帶來的正面影響？我的意思是，也許會促使零售商採取更連續或即時的流程，只是為了更好地控制庫存，對吧，庫存波動很大，也許會重新設計他們的一些配送中心，以試圖應對環境中的這些挑戰。

Yes, it's a great point. We definitely see a set of use cases around retail that have this much more real-time ability to know what's where, when, how and act faster off of it. We don't see any immediate impact from this in the short term, right? And this is generally the case, I think, with these infrastructure layers that it's not the next day after this that you rework all your inventory management, but it often does provoke a longer-term reaction and reflection on how this will be done going forward. We saw that with the pandemic, where maybe Zoom, you would buy it the day after. But Confluent in this larger investment and the infrastructure to support the digital side of the business, that comes a little bit later as you're really thinking through that strategy. It takes a little bit more time. But in some cases, can be a little bit longer lasting because even after people are back at work or even after the ports are unclogged, you still -- this is the architecture you want to have and build against going forward. So it's certainly possible that we'll see some positive impact from it, but nothing immediate.

是的，這是一個很好的觀點。我們確實看到了零售領域的一系列用例，這些用例具有更即時的能力，可以了解什麼在哪裡、何時發生、如何發生，並更快採取行動。短期內我們不會看到任何直接影響，對嗎？我認為，對於這些基礎設施層來說，通常情況是，你不會在第二天就重新制定所有的庫存管理，但它往往會引發對未來如何進行的長期反應和反思。我們發現，在疫情爆發後，人們可能會在第二天就購買 Zoom。但是，在這筆更大的投資和支援業務數位化的基礎設施中，這需要在你真正考慮這項策略的時候再考慮。這需要多一點時間。但在某些情況下，這種情況可能會持續更長時間，因為即使人們已經重返工作崗位，或者端口已經疏通，這仍然是您想要擁有並在未來構建的架構。因此，我們當然有可能看到一些正面影響，但不會立即產生影響。

Okay, great. Just as a quick followup. Steffan, is there any effect in these results where you would see someone who decided they don't want to run -- or they don't want to manage Kafka internally, you compelled them to migrate to Confluent Cloud? And if so, is there any type of conversion ratio or uplift that you're seeing, right, in terms of, I think, presumably their annual spend in that scenario would see some increase.

好的，太好了。只是作為快速的後續行動。史蒂芬，這些結果是否會產生影響？如果是這樣，您是否看到了任何類型的轉換率或提升，對嗎？

Well, we see a couple of different angles to that question. The first is we see our pay-as-you-go customers that, that contribution is robust. And those are folks who are typically Kafka users who then migrate to our platform for the first time. We make it easy, frictionless to sign up. And once we land those pay-as-you-go customers, we have a customer journey that we've outlined for our customer base and investors to see them progress. And that would naturally lead to more expansion dollars over time, and that's definitely a factor. For the other angle, which is customers who may be running some Kafka and some Confluent at the same time, in this environment, we are seeing folks migrate over to us from the free version to Confluent, mainly due to all of the product feature and functionality enhancements that the team has been working on, candidly, over the last 5 years, in particular, over the last year, all of the things we put into that Confluent Cloud product, in particular, is making it very easy for customers to come over to us and have a very valuable experience.

嗯，我們對這個問題有幾個不同的角度的看法。首先，我們看到我們的現收現付客戶貢獻強勁。這些人通常都是 Kafka 用戶，然後首次遷移到我們的平台。我們讓清單變得簡單、無阻礙。一旦我們獲得這些預付費客戶，我們就會為我們的客戶群和投資者制定一份客戶旅程，以了解他們的進步。隨著時間的推移，這自然會導致更多的擴張資金，這肯定是一個因素。從另一個角度來看，客戶可能會同時運行一些 Kafka 和一些 Confluent，在這種環境下，我們看到人們從免費版遷移到 Confluent，這主要是因為團隊在過去 5 年裡一直致力於增強產品特性和功能，坦率地說，特別是在過去的一年裡，我們投入到 Confluent Cloud 產品中的所有東西，都使客戶能夠獲得非常寶貴的體驗我們在這裡。

Thanks, Mark. Our next question comes from Sanjit Singh of Morgan Stanley followed by UBS.

謝謝，馬克。我們的下一個問題來自摩根士丹利的 Sanjit Singh，接著是瑞銀。

All right. Congrats to the team, Jay and Steffan on another really strong quarter. That 245% cloud growth is very impressive. My question was sort of thinking about where we are against what I think are the big opportunity. And correct me if I'm wrong, if I sort of bucket, Jay, the big sort of opportunity you're going for, I think one would be sort of reimagining the data pipeline with streaming data, that being one. The second, a whole new class of streaming apps on sort of the other side of Kafka, this downstream applications. And then third, maybe using Confluent as a data store and analytics engine as well. So the 2 questions is, one, do I have those buckets right, a? And then secondly, like which -- across those 3 buckets, where are you seeing the most traction today? And what do you think could be emerging opportunities as you guys advance the product road map.

好的。恭喜團隊、傑伊和史蒂芬又一個季度表現強勁。 245% 的雲端運算成長率非常令人印象深刻。我的問題是思考我們所處的位置以及我認為的巨大機會。如果我錯了，請糾正我，傑伊，如果我把你要尋找的巨大機會分類，我認為其中之一就是用流數據重新構想數據管道。第二，Kafka 的另一端出現了一種全新的串流應用程序，即下游應用程式。第三，也許可以使用 Confluent 作為資料儲存和分析引擎。所以有兩個問題：一，我有這些桶子嗎？其次，在這三個類別中，您認為目前哪個類別的吸引力最大？隨著你們推進產品路線圖，你們認為可能出現哪些新機會？

I think that's a great way of bucketing it. The first 2, I think, are very mainstream. So we see companies building out pipelines for real-time flow of data between data systems, SaaS layers, whatever needs to connect. We see a whole set of real-time applications being built. Those are very common in our customers. The prevalence might vary from one customer to another, but virtually anybody at scale has both use cases. So if you're -- if you have the stream of sales that are occurring in the business, there are both data systems that, that might need to be delivered to maybe your data warehouse. There's also real-time activity and processing applications that work off of that. And so those are very common. The newer thing is certainly what you described, which is we have in our platform the ability to store data indefinitely. And particularly for more kind of database data sets like the changes of all user profiles, really store that complete data set and be able to do not just real-time processing but actually load the historical data and work off of that. So that is a pattern that we see in customers. I would say that's kind of the -- maybe the second wave people start for the real time and then that retention and longer-term use case becomes very natural because you're just kind of turning the knob on what you're retaining and as use case is demanding.

我認為這是一種很好的分類方法。我認為前兩者非常主流。因此，我們看到公司在資料系統、SaaS 層以及任何需要連接的系統之間建立即時資料流的管道。我們看到一整套即時應用程式正在建置。這些在我們的客戶中很常見。不同客戶的情況可能有所不同，但幾乎任何大規模用戶都會同時遇到這兩種用例。因此，如果您 - 如果您擁有業務中發生的銷售流，那麼就有兩個資料系統可能需要傳送到您的資料倉儲。還有即時活動和處理應用程式可以在此基礎上運行。這些非常常見。較新的事物當然就是您所描述的，也就是我們的平台具有無限期儲存資料的能力。特別是對於更多類型的資料庫資料集，例如所有使用者設定檔的變化，真正儲存完整的資料集，並且不僅能夠進行即時處理，還能夠實際載入歷史資料並據此進行工作。這就是我們在客戶身上看到的一種模式。我想說的是——也許第二波人們開始即時地進行，然後保留和長期用例變得非常自然，因為你只是在根據用例的要求轉動你保留的東西。

Makes a total sense. And Jay you devoted a good part of your script talking about the new capabilities of platform. You mentioned the governance being a particular one of notable importance. And I wanted to get your particular view as what is this supposed to mean for the existing customer base as either as a conversion from Kafka to the paid Confluent and paid Confluent Cloud or just migrating from platform to cloud rather. How key are these developments in terms of that larger enterprise opportunity?

非常有道理。傑伊，你在劇本中用了很大一部分來講述平台的新功能。您提到治理是其中特別重要的一個。我想要聽聽您的具體看法，這對現有客戶群意味著什麼，是從 Kafka 轉換到付費的 Confluent 和付費的 Confluent Cloud，還是僅僅從平台遷移到雲端。對於更大的企業機會而言，這些發展有多重要？

Yes. I mean these are key features, right? So I mentioned cluster linking, virtually every company needs to span geographies, environments, cloud providers, hybrid setups. That's incredibly important. Stream governance, as I mentioned, is probably the most requested feature set in our customer base. And it makes very natural sense, if you're going to unlock data, you have to do it in a way that's safe. And by doing that, it actually encourages the use of this platform growth into central nervous system. It's only possible if the mechanism is really safe and well governed in the modern world. And so yes both of these capabilities are unique to Confluent and are great reasons to adopt our product, right? They are all under that complete and everywhere bucket. These are kind of key reasons with what we have. And so yes, we think it absolutely adds to that.

是的。我的意思是這些是主要特徵，對嗎？我提到了叢集鏈接，幾乎每個公司都需要跨越地域、環境、雲端供應商和混合設定。這非常重要。正如我所提到的，流治理可能是我們客戶群中最需要的功能集。這是很自然的事情，如果你要解鎖數據，你必須以安全的方式進行。透過這樣做，它實際上促進了該平台向中樞神經系統的延伸。只有在現代世界中該機制真正安全且得到良好管理的情況下，這才有可能。是的，這兩種功能都是 Confluent 獨有的，也是採用我們產品的很好的理由，對嗎？它們都在那個完整且無處不在的桶子下。這些就是我們所擁有的一切的關鍵原因。是的，我們認為這絕對有助於實現這一點。

Our next question comes from Karl Keirstead of UBS, followed by Barclays.

我們的下一個問題來自瑞銀的卡爾‧科爾斯特德 (Karl Keirstead)，其次是巴克萊銀行。

Okay. Great. Thanks, Shane. Steffan, maybe I'll direct this one to you and see if you might be able to elaborate on that comment you made when you were talking about seasonality next year about Q1 maybe being sequentially flat and maybe having a little bit more of a 4Q SKU. I think most people on the line are used to hearing that from the likes of Workday and Salesforce, much larger organizations. So I'm curious why you would be seeing it and whether the fact that you're hiring a lot of sales reps today and maybe they're hitting full productivity in the second half might be contributing to that dynamic? Or maybe it's the fact that you're signing a lot more multiyear deals and that sort of pushes you into a fourth quarter cadence. Anyway, I'd love to hear a little bit more color on that.

好的。偉大的。謝謝，肖恩。史蒂芬，也許我應該把這個問題引向您，看看您是否可以詳細說明您在談論明年的季節性時所做的評論，即第一季度的 SKU 可能會與上一季度持平，而第四季度的 SKU 可能會稍微多一些。我想，大多數打電話的人都習慣從 Workday 和 Salesforce 等規模更大的公司那裡聽到這樣的話。所以我很好奇你為什麼會看到這種情況，以及你今天僱用了很多銷售代表，而他們可能在下半年達到滿負荷生產率這一事實是否有助於這種動態？或者可能是因為你簽署了更多多年期合同，而這會將你推入第四季度的節奏。不管怎樣，我很想聽到更多關於此事的詳細資訊。

We're still in the early stages of planning for FY '22. But the way that our hybrid rev rec model works is we have a portion of our business for Confluent platform that gets recognized upfront, as folks know. And then the hybrid component of our model, we have consumption base that's coming off of Confluent Cloud. And depending on the deals structure and the deals that we have in the pipeline, Q4 tends to be a seasonally strong quarter for us, and that's applicable to both Confluent Platform and Confluent Cloud. And when you look at other companies in the enterprise space, even with the similar model of ours, like a MongoDB as an example, they see similar dynamics between a Q4 to Q1 bridge. But we'll see how Q4 ends and we'll give updated guidance post our Q4 earnings call around what obviously Q1 looks like in an update for the year.

我們仍處於 22 財年規劃的早期階段。但如大家所知，我們的混合收入確認模型的工作方式是，我們將 Confluent 平台的部分業務預先確認。然後，我們模型的混合元件是來自 Confluent Cloud 的消費基礎。根據交易結構和我們正在進行的交易，第四季度對我們來說往往是一個季節性強勁的季度，這對 Confluent Platform 和 Confluent Cloud 都適用。當您查看企業領域的其他公司時，即使採用與我們類似的模型，例如 MongoDB，他們也會看到 Q4 到 Q1 橋樑之間類似的動態。但我們將關注第四季度的收盤情況，並將在第四季度財報電話會議後提供最新指引，並預計今年第一季的業績將如何。

The second part of your question around seeing Q4 even being kind of more pronounced next year in terms of sequential growth, we have made a lot of investments in the sales organization. It does take roughly 4 quarters for folks to get fully productive. And as part of the modeling and capacity analysis that we do, we're basically kind of forecasting that to really see the seasonality pattern increase in Q4 of next year. And that's why we called it out on this call.

你問題的第二部分是關於明年第四季的連續成長是否會更加明顯，我們已經在銷售組織上進行了大量投資。人們確實需要大約 4 個季度才能完全發揮生產力。作為我們進行的建模和容量分析的一部分，我們基本上預測明年第四季的季節性模式將真正增加。這就是我們在這次電話會議中提出這一點的原因。

That seems pretty reasonable. And Steffan and Jay, congrats on the amazing numbers.

這看起來非常合理。史蒂芬和傑伊，祝賀你們取得如此驚人的成績。

Thanks so much, Karl.

非常感謝，卡爾。

Our next question comes from Raimo Lenschow of Barclays, followed by Goldman Sachs.

下一個問題來自巴克萊銀行的 Raimo Lenschow，然後是高盛。

Congrats from me as well. I have 2 quick questions. First for Jay.

我本人也對此表示祝賀。我有兩個簡單的問題。對傑伊來說這是第一次。

If you think about the real time as the kind of the emerging new normal, what's the appetite from your customers around all the kind of more established kind of use like kind of batch processing use cases to modernize that. So at the moment, when we're hearing a lot around like reimagining things around real time, et cetera, but like -- but there's a whole new world out there that is kind of crazy and grow over 20, 30 years, where you think like you could probably do it a lot better in the new way. So maybe speak to that one.

如果您將即時視為一種新興常態，那麼您的客戶對於所有更成熟的用途（例如批次使用案例）的興趣如何，以實現其現代化？因此，目前，我們聽到很多關於重新想像即時事物的說法，等等，但是——但是外面有一個全新的世界，它有點瘋狂，並且會在未來 20 到 30 年內不斷增長，你會認為用新的方式可能會做得更好。所以也許可以和那個人談談。

And then for Steffan, like if I look at the numbers, like everything accelerated this quarter, like kind of just the bookings smart as well, which looked like very, very strong. Just one simple question. Was there anything specific in terms of one large deal or anything that drove that? Because this is -- looks like a very, very amazing quarter all around.

對史蒂芬來說，如果我看數字，就會發現本季一切都加速了，預訂量看起來也非常非常強勁。只是一個簡單的問題。是否有某項具體的大交易或什麼因素推動了這項交易？因為從各方面來看，這都是一個非常非常令人驚嘆的季度。

Yes, I'll take the first part of that. The question that you're kind of getting at is around. Can you remind me...

是的，我將選擇第一部分。您要問的問題是關於。你能提醒我嗎…

Oh, yes. Like if you think about like there's a world of batch. Like what's the appetite to kind of think about kind of modernizing that world.

哦是的。就像如果你想想那就像有一個批量的世界。就像思考如何使這個世界現代化一樣。

It's a good question. So I would say there's really no reason you want things to be processed in batch. Like it doesn't -- there's nothing in the world that happens batch. Things in the world happen all the time, continuously and in real time. The migration happens as there's new demands. What's the new need that kind of drives this. And as it gets easier and easier to do it this way. So as this platform has gotten more mature, as the set of people who know how to use it expands, then more things get migrated. And then also the kind of driving force, I touched on this a little bit in the call, is it's kind of just the digitization of business, like as the actual operation of the business moves into software, not just the analysis, not just the report you get in the morning, but the actual carrying out of the business as it plugs into e-commerce things, as it drives operations out in the world, as IoT bridges into other parts of the world, as machine learning kind of closes the loop on some of the decision-making and processes, that's really where you have to do it. Like it's always better, but that's where you must, you must. And so it's a combination of both. And I think over time, yes, I think the majority of that will move.

這是個好問題。 因此我想說，你真的沒有理由希望批量處理事情。就好像它不存在一樣——世界上沒有任何事情是批量發生的。世間萬事萬物時時發生，連續不斷，即時不斷。由於有新的需求，遷移就會發生。推動這項進程的新需求是什麼？而且用這種方法做事會變得越來越容易。因此，隨著這個平台變得更加成熟，隨著知道如何使用它的人越來越多，就會有更多的東西被遷移。然後還有一種驅動力，我在電話會議中稍微提到了這一點，它就是業務的數位化，就像業務的實際運營轉移到軟體中一樣，不僅僅是分析，不僅僅是你早上收到的報告，而是業務的實際開展，因為它接入了電子商務，因為它推動了世界各地的運營，隨著物聯網連接到世界其他地方，隨著機器學習在某些決策和流程上形成真正閉環，這才是你真正必須做的事情。就像它總是更好，但那是你必須做的事，你必須做的事。所以這是兩者的結合。而且我認為隨著時間的推移，是的，我認為其中大部分都會改變。

And on the second question, we really saw broad-based strength across the board. There was not 1 large deal that came in and kind of swayed the numbers. You look across the details, Raimo, and you look at our commercial and enterprise segments, did incredibly well. They both did incredibly well. You look at our products, Confluent Cloud continues to really shine for us at 245% growth year-over-year. It basically doubled its revenue mix from a year ago. And that's really a testament to the investments we've made in those parts of the organization. The first is in our product. That team has delivered really great products and features and functionality that our customers want. So that's resonating. And then in our go-to-market organization, from sales to marketing, to field operations, we've been finally tuning the machine relative to how to pitch it, how to go in and win big business. And also win small. What we've seen in terms of dollar-based net retention rate being above 130% for a second quarter in a row is really a testament to the ecosystem working. And so we're very pleased with the broad-based strength.

關於第二個問題，我們確實看到了各方面的廣泛力量。並沒有出現什麼大交易來影響數據。雷莫，如果你看一下細節，看看我們的商業和企業部門，你會發現它們做得非常好。他們都表現得非常出色。看看我們的產品，Confluent Cloud 繼續為我們帶來巨大的成長，年成長 245%。其收入結構基本上比一年前翻了一番。這確實證明了我們對組織這些部分所做的投資。第一個是在我們的產品。團隊提供了我們的客戶想要的非常優秀的產品以及特性和功能。這引起了共鳴。然後在我們的行銷組織中，從銷售到行銷到現場運營，我們最終對機器進行了調整，以了解如何推銷它、如何進入並贏得大生意。並且還能小贏。我們看到，以美元計算的淨留存率連續第二季超過 130%，這充分證明了生態系統的運作。因此，我們對廣泛的實力感到非常滿意。

Our next question comes from Kash Rangan of Goldman Sachs followed by Wells Fargo.

我們的下一個問題來自高盛的卡什·蘭根 (Kash Rangan)，然後是富國銀行的。

So Jay, in your prepared remarks, there are 2 things that struck me among several things. One was how you're getting tied into the data warehousing ecosystem. Can you talk about what could likely be Confluent's involvement in that ecosystem? Do you see yourself ultimately being a data integrator of choice to that ecosystem, maybe even start with some light analytical workloads.

所以傑伊，在你準備好的發言中，有兩件事令我印象深刻。一是如何融入資料倉儲生態系。您能否談談 Confluent 可能參與該生態系哪些方面？您是否認為自己最終會成為該生態系統的首選資料整合商，甚至可能從一些輕量的分析工作量開始？

And also the other thing that caught my attention you had a chart on the left-hand side, there were data infrastructure use cases and business applications use cases. You had a very observation that you could see in one of these product and some of these could contribute to growth opportunities in the future. Can you just expand on that one? For Steffan, the long-term deferred revenue is certainly much better than expected. Despite the rise of the cloud value proportion, one would think that the opposite would happen, but long-term deferred revenues went up very nicely. What's driving that dynamic?

另外引起我注意的是左側的圖表，其中有資料基礎設施用例和業務應用程式用例。您透過觀察發現，其中一種產品可能有助於未來的成長機會。你能就這一點進一步闡述嗎？ 對Steffan來說，長期遞延收入肯定比預期好得多。儘管雲端價值佔比上升，人們會認為情況會相反，但長期遞延收入卻成長得非常好。是什麼推動了這種動態？

Yes to the first question, yes, we see it as very complementary. There's a number of really amazing next-generation data warehouse and analytics platforms. And there's actually a number of strong players there. And we partner with all of them. So any streams that go into Confluent, that can power not just real-time applications, not just the kind of operational side of the business. It can flow into some of the analytical systems as well. And that strengthens the value of our platform and the data that flows through. And it's obviously a huge win for these platforms, of course. Build themselves up with useful data and be able to drive analysis on top of that. So it's great. Obviously, as part of that, there is a fair amount of processing of data as it needs to land, and that's the stream processing component. And of course, some of those pipelines need to be purely real-time and live around our platform already today. And yes, there is a role for some real-time analysis as well. And we see customers building out solutions around that, that feed off of Confluent for sure. And there's actually a whole portfolio in the ecosystem of data stores that really specialize in trying to be by that. So yes, I think that's a fantastic area for us.

對於第一個問題，答案是肯定的，我們認為這是非常互補的。有許多真正令人驚嘆的下一代資料倉儲和分析平台。那裡確實有很多實力強勁的球員。我們與他們均是合作夥伴。因此，進入 Confluent 的任何串流不僅可以為即時應用程式提供支持，還可以為業務的營運方面提供支援。它也可以流入一些分析系統。這增強了我們的平台和流經資料的價值。當然，這對這些平台來說顯然是一個巨大的勝利。利用有用的數據來建立自己，並能夠在此基礎上推動分析。所以這很棒。顯然，作為其中的一部分，需要對大量資料進行處理，這就是流處理元件。當然，其中一些管道需要純實時的，並且今天已經在我們的平台上運行。是的，即時分析也發揮一定作用。我們看到客戶正在圍繞這一點建立解決方案，這些解決方案肯定依賴於 Confluent。實際上，在資料儲存生態系統中，有整個產品組合真正專注於實現這一點。所以是的，我認為這對我們來說是一個非常棒的領域。

And on the long-term revenue question, Kash, it was -- it grew 59% year-over-year. Some of the drivers that go back to large multiyear deals that we've done. And for Confluent Platform deals that are multiyear in nature, that will definitely positively impact long-term deferred revenue. To give you a sense, though, I mean, proportionately speaking, we have $202 million of total deferred revenue. And long-term deferred revenue is about $22.4 million. So it's a relatively small portion, but you see -- when we see more multiyear deals coming in for Confluent Platform, that's going to impact long-term deferred revs.

關於長期收入問題，Kash，年增了 59%。其中一些驅動因素可以追溯到我們曾經達成的大型多年期交易。對於多年期的 Confluent Platform 交易來說，這肯定會對長期遞延收入產生正面影響。不過，為了讓你有個大概的概念，我的意思是，按比例來說，我們的總遞延收入為 2.02 億美元。 長期遞延收入約2,240萬美元。因此，這只是相對較小的一部分，但你看——當我們看到更多針對 Confluent Platform 的多年期交易時，這將影響長期遞延收入。

The second part of your question, you asked a little bit about the growth into the ecosystem. Yes, it's a bit of a nuance point, but I think it's important, which is in an established category, everything that's adjacent to the category is filled in by a strong competitor. And in a new category, it's not. It's open. Historically, if you look at an older data platform like Oracle Databases, they could kind of jump relatively easily up into a lot of the business applications that were driving that. We have offerings in HR and financials and all kinds of other things, right? And now, of course, today, if you make a next-gen operational database, maybe you're MongoDB, you don't necessarily get to be working as there's already somebody doing that. And so that's the difference, I think, in a category that's emerging versus a category that's established. What's interesting in this space is there's so much excitement and use cases getting built in customers around data and motion, I think that's just a very target-rich environment for us to grow into. And I think it's something that's exciting about the space. It's something that makes me excited about the opportunities for the company. So I just wanted to share that point.

關於你問題的第二部分，你問了一些關於生態系的發展。是的，這是一個有點微妙的觀點，但我認為這很重要，即在既定的類別中，與該類別相鄰的所有內容都被強大的競爭對手填補。而在新的類別中，情況就不是如此了。它是開放的。從歷史上看，如果您查看像 Oracle 資料庫這樣的舊資料平台，它們可以相對輕鬆地跳到推動該平台發展的大量業務應用程式。我們提供人力資源、財務以及其他各種方面的服務，對嗎？現在，當然，今天，如果你製作下一代操作資料庫，也許你是 MongoDB，你不一定要工作，因為已經有人在做這件事了。所以，我認為，這就是新興類別與成熟類別之間的差異。這個領域有趣的地方在於，客戶圍繞著數據和運動建立瞭如此多的興奮點和用例，我認為這對我們來說是一個非常豐富的成長環境。我認為這是該領域令人興奮的事情。這讓我對公司的機會感到興奮。所以我只是想分享這一點。

Great. Thanks, Kash. Our next question comes from Michael Turrin of Wells Fargo, followed by JMP Securities.

偉大的。謝謝，卡什。 下一個問題來自富國銀行的邁克爾圖林 (Michael Turrin)，其次是 JMP 證券。

Congrats on another impressive quarter. On the retention rates, the long-term target of more than 130% is actually higher than the near-term target of 120%. Steffan, you mentioned the mix towards cloud as a key driver there. But can you also expand on the confidence that gives you and the durability of the revenue growth profile, given you're saying the long-term targets are more than 130%. It's not something we often see in software, and I think that's uniquely worth highlighting.

恭喜您又一個令人印象深刻的季度。就保留率而言，130%以上的長期目標實際上高於120%的近期目標。史蒂芬，您提到雲端運算的混合是其關鍵的驅動因素。但是，鑑於您所說的長期目標是超過 130%，您能否也詳細闡述您對此的信心以及收入成長狀況的持久性？這不是我們在軟體中經常看到的東西，我認為這是值得強調的。

Well, we are very pleased with the progress we've made over the last several quarters and operationally being focused on driving NRR higher. And if you recall, going back to even our IPO, the quarter in which we went public, our NRR for Q2 was 117%. -- sorry, for Q1 was 117%. And so we had work to do, and there were some crosscurrents that were going on back in those times when NRR was fluctuating in the lower levels. There was a transition from -- in our cloud business to usage-based billing. We had some timing of large initial deal sizes, not expanding within a 12-month time period. And there's a real testament to, I think, the go-to-market team and the product team on emphasizing operationally how we can get customers through the life cycle and journey of their deployment of Confluent. And so when we look at the near-term target of greater than 120%, we've been operating for 2 quarters in a row now above 120%. We're actually at our longer-term target of above 130% and the profile of like in the dynamics of NRR as it relates to our 2 main products, Confluent Platform and Confluent Cloud, our thesis is that Confluent Cloud will have a higher NRR profile over time because it's elastic, it's consumption-based and there's very little friction in terms of expansion, whereas with Confluent Platform, we're renegotiating deals, et cetera. And when we look at the profile of our revenue base and the durability of revenue growth for cloud, I don't think there is very much debate that cloud is where it's at going forward. But we also have to be mindful to be the central nervous system, we have to view both on-prem and in the cloud. So there's going to be a dynamic in play where we have both platform and cloud. We think cloud from a durability standpoint is going to be very strong, and that should be a tailwind for NRR, which is why we have all of that kind of sum up into basically saying we have this 120% near-term target. We've been above that for 2 quarters in a row. We want to be above 130% consistently, but it takes time. So before we set new benchmarks in place, we want to see, call it, 3, 4 quarters in a row of great performance in NRR before we look to revisit the targets.

嗯，我們對過去幾季取得的進展感到非常滿意，並且在營運上專注於提高 NRR。如果你還記得的話，回顧我們的 IPO，也就是我們上市的那個季度，我們第二季度的 NRR 為 117%。 ——抱歉，第一季的比例是 117%。因此，我們有很多工作要做，而且在 NRR 在較低水平波動的時候，也存在一些逆流。我們的雲端業務已從基於使用情況的計費轉變為基於使用情況的計費。我們對初始交易的規模進行了一些安排，並沒有在 12 個月的時間內擴張。我認為，這真正證明了行銷團隊和產品團隊在營運上強調如何幫助客戶完成 Confluent 部署的生命週期和歷程。因此，當我們看近期超過 120% 的目標時，我們已經連續兩個季度以超過 120% 的水平運作。實際上，我們已經達到了 130% 以上的長期目標，並且就我們兩款主要產品 Confluent Platform 和 Confluent Cloud 的 NRR 動態而言，我們的論點是，Confluent Cloud 隨著時間的推移將具有更高的 NRR 曲線，因為它具有彈性，基於消費，並且在擴展方面幾乎沒有摩擦，而對於 Confluent Platform，我們正在重新談判交易等等。當我們查看我們的收入基礎狀況以及雲端運算收入成長的持久性時，我認為對於雲端運算的未來發展方向沒有太多爭議。但我們也必須注意，作為中樞神經系統，我們必須同時查看本地和雲端。因此，我們既擁有平台，又擁有雲，這將形成一種動態局面。我們認為，從耐用性的角度來看，雲端將會非常強大，這應該是 NRR 的順風，這就是為什麼我們將所有這些總結為基本上說我們有 120% 的近期目標。我們已經連續兩季高於這個數字了。我們希望始終保持在 130% 以上，但這需要時間。因此，在製定新的基準之前，我們希望看到 NRR 連續 3 至 4 個季度表現優異，然後再重新審視目標。

And just to provide a little bit about the product space that I think kind of helps drive that, the question is like, okay, is that expansion, whether it's 120, 130 now? Can you have high expansion over a very long period of time in a customer base? I think one of the things to understand about this domain is infrastructure is a little bit slow. And we talked about this with the supply chain stuff, right? Like you don't just put it in tomorrow and you're done. In reality, what happens is usage is driven by each application that moves over. The batch process that moved into real time, right? And how quickly do enterprises turn over their set of applications? Well, it's -- I mean it's over decades in reality, right? Like a lot of these things end up lasting much, much longer than anyone would like. And so that does mean that the bad news is we can't just come in and install the central nervous system over the weekend. The good news is we can grow as long as we're successful and we remain the platform of choice in this space, we can grow in these customers over a very long period of time.

我只是想提供一些關於產品空間的信息，我認為這有助於推動這一點，問題是，好吧，這是擴張嗎，現在是 120 還是 130？您能否在很長一段時間內實現客戶群的高擴張？我認為需要了解的關於這個領域的事情之一是基礎設施有點慢。我們討論過供應鏈方面的問題，對嗎？就像你不只是明天把它放進去然後就完成了。事實上，使用情況是由每個移動的應用程式驅動的。批次流程已經轉為即時了，對嗎？企業交付其應用程式的速度有多快？嗯，事實上已經過去幾十年了，對吧？就像很多這樣的事情最終會持續很長時間，比任何人想像的都要長。所以，這確實意味著壞消息是我們不能在周末就來安裝中樞神經系統。好消息是，只要我們成功，我們就能成長，而且我們仍然是這個領域的首選平台，我們就能在很長一段時間內在這些客戶中成長。

That's great. Congrats to the team.

那太棒了。 祝賀這個團隊。

Our next question comes from Patrick Walravens of JMP Securities, followed by Cowen.

下一個問題來自 JMP Securities 的 Patrick Walravens，其次是 Cowen。

Great. So let me add my congratulations. And then, Jay, as you look out to 2022, what are your top 2 or 3 priorities for Erica to get done and for the sales organization to get done.

偉大的。因此，請允許我表達我的祝賀。然後，傑伊，展望 2022 年，您希望 Erica 和銷售組織完成的最重要的 2 到 3 個任務是什麼。

Well, Erica has her own fantastic list of priorities. There's a lot happening in our sales organization. I would say this move to a consumption model for our cloud product, which we undertook a little over a year ago, that's great. That's been a boon to us. It's something our customers love. It allows us to land and expand faster. But I think we're just in the very early days of taking advantage of that and really building out this journey from the lightest, lowest friction possible land in the product to expansion over time, the central nervous system vision that can take many years. And we've built a lot of supporting elements to that. What services do people need as they get to scale. What do we need to do at the very top of the funnel to land in volume and make that really easy to get going with, how do people progress and what are the trigger points. But I think despite all that, we're a young company, and there's a lot more we can do there. And as we do, I think we can land in higher volume. We can expand faster with customers. All of that is going to make us better and better. So that's certainly one of the areas that's really on all our minds is how to do that really well, along with just the continued expansion and tuning of the business as we go.

嗯，艾麗卡有她自己的一份很棒的優先事項清單。我們的銷售組織中發生了很多事情。我想說，我們在一年多前開始實施的雲端產品消費模式的轉變非常好。這對我們來說是一種福氣。這是我們的客戶喜愛的東西。它使我們能夠更快地著陸和擴張。但我認為，我們才剛開始利用這一點，並真正建立這趟旅程，從最輕、摩擦力最小的產品落地，到隨著時間的推移而擴展，而中樞神經系統的願景可能需要很多年的時間。我們已經為此構建了很多支援元素。隨著人們規模不斷擴大，他們需要什麼服務？我們需要在漏斗的最頂端做些什麼來獲得數量並使其真正容易地開始，人們如何進步以及觸發點是什麼。但我認為，儘管如此，我們還是一家年輕的公司，我們還有很多事情要做。而且我認為，當我們這樣做的時候，我們可以實現更高的銷售量。我們可以隨著客戶更快擴張。所有這些都會讓我們變得越來越好。因此，這確實是我們所有人真正關注的領域之一，那就是如何真正做好這件事，同時在發展過程中不斷擴展和調整業務。

And then can I just ask, I mean your international is growing faster than the U.S., right? Are there different requirements there from a market point of view.

然後我可以問一下，我的意思是你們的國際成長速度比美國快，對嗎？從市場角度來看，那裡是否有不同的要求？

Yes. I mean there's obviously a lot to operate in all these countries. I think we're lucky that we have a product which is inherently very international. And so Kafka usage is kind of everywhere. And so in many ways, it's really just on us and execution to get into all those areas and make sure that we have a sales team that speaks the language and is able to operate on the right accounts in those areas, and we're still in the early days of a lot of that expansion, which is why you see the faster growth there, and we would expect that to continue until monetization looks a little bit closer to the adoption that we see internationally.

是的。我的意思是，顯然在這些國家有很多事情要做。我認為我們很幸運，我們的產品本質上就非常國際化。因此 Kafka 的使用幾乎無所不在。因此，在很多方面，這實際上只是我們自己和執行者的事情，我們要進入所有這些領域，並確保我們擁有一支能夠講當地語言並能夠在這些領域處理正確帳戶的銷售團隊，而且我們仍處於許多擴張的早期階段，這就是為什麼你會看到那裡的增長更快，我們預計這種情況將持續下去，直到貨幣化看起來更接近我們在國際上看到的採用水平。

Our next question comes from Derrick Wood of Cowen followed by Bank of America.

我們的下一個問題來自 Cowen 公司的德里克伍德 (Derrick Wood)，然後是美國銀行的。

Great. And congrats as well from me. I'd like to ask about, the new IPO companies, often an IPO can be a catalyst for brand awareness. Have you guys seen any change in inbound interest, lead generation or any discernible impact to win rates? Or is it too early to tell?

偉大的。我也對此表示祝賀。我想問一下，對於新上市的公司來說，IPO往往可以成為品牌知名度的催化劑。你們有看到入站興趣、潛在客戶生成有任何變化或對贏率有任何明顯的影響嗎？或者說現在說還太早？

Yes, it's hard, of course, to pinpoint anything to something that's a little bit softer like this. But I think for us, it is a bonus. I think because it's a new category that we're trying to bring awareness of, especially in the kind of senior technology leadership ranks of a larger set of companies, I think just raising the profile of the company is really important. And we've tried to do a little bit to aid that. Stephanie joined as our CMO not long before the IPO and has really invested at both as part of the IPO in a sense. And I think that awareness is actually a real boon to us. And we're just starting to get to the scale where that's possible. As an early company, it's hard to really have broad awareness. But as we do, I think that's really important. I think with new categories, there's often an early company that becomes closely associated with that, and I think Confluent is becoming that for data in motion.

是的，當然，很難準確指出任何東西是像這樣稍微軟一點的東西。但我認為對我們來說，這是一個額外的獎勵。我認為，因為這是一個我們試圖引起人們注意的新類別，特別是在較大公司中的高階技術領導層中，所以我認為提高公司的知名度非常重要。我們也盡力為此提供一點幫助。史蒂芬妮在 IPO 前不久加入了我們，擔任首席行銷官，從某種意義上說，她確實在 IPO 中對兩家公司進行了投資。我認為這種認識其實對我們來說是一種真正的福音。我們才剛開始達到可能的規模。作為一家早期公司，很難真正獲得廣泛的認知。但正如我們所做的那樣，我認為這確實很重要。我認為，對於新的類別，通常會有一家早期公司與之密切相關，而我認為 Confluent 正在成為動態數據的代表。

And a quick follow-up. It's a tough hiring environment out there. How are you guys feeling about attracting and retaining good talent and driving new onboards to productivity as you go into next year?

並快速跟進。這裡的招募環境很艱難。進入明年，你們對於吸引和留住優秀人才以及推動新員工提高生產力有什麼看法？

Yes. It's as competitive as I have seen it in the tech world for talent. We feel good. We're on track with our plans but it's definitely worked. There is a silver lining on the war for talent on the technical side, which is every company in the world is struggling to hire engineers and the natural complement to hiring a bunch of distributed systems experts to run open sources, cloud services. And we're definitely seeing that shift in some of our customers where they're like, okay, we only have so many brilliant people in the organization and all of their salaries are going up quite significantly and it's really hard to hire more. How can we move those on to the parts of the business that are unique to us and how can we get some of the other staff for a reasonable price. And that's definitely a tailwind that's driving, I think, all of these cloud services, but certainly us.

是的。在我看來，科技界對人才的競爭非常激烈。我們感覺很好。我們的計劃正在順利進行，這確實有效。技術方面的人才爭奪戰也有一線希望，那就是世界上的每家公司都在努力招募工程師，而自然的補充是招募一群分散式系統專家來運作開源、雲端服務。我們確實看到一些客戶發生了這種轉變，他們覺得，好吧，我們組織中只有這麼多優秀人才，而且他們的工資都在大幅上漲，很難再招到更多的人。我們如何將這些人轉移到我們獨特的業務部分，以及如何以合理的價格招募其他員工。我認為，這無疑是推動所有這些雲端服務發展的順風，當然也包括我們。

Thanks, Derrick. Our next question comes from Brad Sills of Bank of America.

謝謝，德里克。下一個問題來自美國銀行的布拉德·西爾斯。

Congratulations on a real nice quarter here. I wanted to ask about the cloud. I think the focus there was on really driving that SMB or lower TCO kind of initial footprint to kind of get your foot in the door with some mid-market accounts. Is that what's driving the success here would you say? Or is it a balance of that plus large organizations kind of getting started with the cloud, moving data in motion more to the cloud as well?

恭喜您度過了一個非常愉快的季度。我想問一下關於雲的事情。我認為那裡的重點是真正推動 SMB 或更低 TCO 的初始足跡，以便讓您獲得一些中端市場帳戶的存取權。您認為這就是推動我們成功的因素嗎？或者這是一種平衡，加上大型組織開始使用雲端運算，將更多的動態資料轉移到雲端？

It really is the full journey. And for this kind of product, it isn't the case that the cloud offering is for the kind of low-end commercial companies only and big companies, what they really want is to do it all in their data centers. There was certainly a period of time where that was true for cloud infrastructure, but that's changed. And so if we look at this last quarter, a good chunk of our largest deals were cloud, surprising chunk of them. And I think that's great. And again, the whole journey matters. Of course, yes, we want people to be able to start quicker with lower friction, but we want that because we want them to graduate to where this is really a strategic platform in the company over time. And so the challenging part for us is to really nail all the steps in that journey and make it happen consistently and regularly. But yes, it is a mix. So we saw great success at the top end of the market. We saw great success at the low end. Our commercial sales organization really killed it this quarter. So yes, it really is a mix of company types.

這確實是一次完整的旅程。對於這種產品，雲端運算產品不僅僅是針對低端商業公司和大公司，他們真正想要的是在自己的資料中心完成所有工作。曾經有一段時間，雲端基礎架構確實存在這種情況，但這種情況已經改變了。因此，如果我們看一下上個季度，我們會發現我們最大的交易中很大一部分是雲端運算交易，這一比例令人驚訝。我認為這很棒。再說一次，整個旅程都很重要。當然，是的，我們希望人們能夠以更少的摩擦更快地開始工作，但我們之所以這樣，是因為我們希望他們隨著時間的推移能夠畢業到這個真正成為公司策略平台的地方。因此，對我們來說，最大的挑戰是真正掌握這段旅程中的所有步驟，並持續、定期地進行。但確實，這是一種混合。因此我們在高端市場取得了巨大的成功。我們在低端市場取得了巨大的成功。我們的商業銷售組織本季確實表現出色。是的，這確實是多種公司類型的混合。

Great to hear, Jay. One more, if I may, please. I know the global SI channel has been a big focus here. Can you remind us kind of where you are in that development? How critical is that channel to delivering on some of these bigger expand deals? You're obviously already seeing really good net revenue retention and expand activity. But could we anticipate that as a potential catalyst as that channel becomes more online?

很高興聽到這個消息，傑伊。如果可以的話，請再說一句。我知道全球 SI 頻道一直是我們的重點。您能否提醒我們一下您在該發展中所處的位置？這個管道對於達成一些更大的擴展交易有多重要？您顯然已經看到了非常好的淨收入保留和擴展活動。但隨著該管道變得更加在線，我們是否可以預期它會成為潛在的催化劑？

Yes. I think we're still early, right? We are putting effort into that. I think over time, this is going to be really important for us to grow into the role that we imagine with our customers. And so we're certainly investing in it and I think it could contribute a lot over time, but it's still in the early days for us now.

是的。我想我們還早吧？我們正在為此作出努力。我認為隨著時間的推移，這對我們成長為我們在客戶中想像的角色將非常重要。因此我們肯定會對其進行投資，而且我認為隨著時間的推移它會產生很大的貢獻，但對我們來說現在還處於早期階段。

Thanks, Brad. This concludes the Q&A portion of our call. We will now turn it back over to Jay for closing remarks.

謝謝，布拉德。我們的電話問答部分到此結束。現在我們將時間交還給傑伊，請他作結束語。

Yes. Thanks, everyone, for being with us on the call today. Huge thanks to our team, to our partners, to our investors and especially to our customers. And thank you all for being part of this journey, and we'll see you again next quarter.

是的。感謝大家今天的電話會議。非常感謝我們的團隊、合作夥伴、投資者，尤其是我們的客戶。感謝大家參與這趟旅程，我們將於下個季度再次見面。