Loggly’s Year in Review: Looking Back at 2013 and Forward to a New Era of Responsive Log Management

2013 ended on a busy note here at Loggly. In a really short period of time, we have shifted our focus from our Gen1 to Gen2 product. We saw some incredible momentum in the last part of the year; in fact, December was our biggest month yet for sales; but now that it’s over, I have had a chance to take stock of our 2013 accomplishments and look into the crystal ball that is 2014.

Responsive Log Management Keeps DevOps on a Healthy Diet

From the first day we launched our Gen2 platform, it has been clear that we are meeting a critical need for net-centric companies: To solve operational problems faster. Logs are a nutritious food item, and every healthy net-centric company ingests them as part of their operating diet. Loggly Gen2 makes your logs easier to digest and much tastier, so that your application’s muscles stay strong.

A Look Back

Through August, our focus across the team was to finish building Gen2, test it, document it and launch it.  While we had thousands of Gen1 customers, we knew that our future lay with Gen2.

Our September 3 launch was truly a big bang.  We tripled our previous high-water mark for signups in the first 24 hours alone. Since then, we have built even more momentum:

• 20% of the year’s new customers came during the last month of the year, when new software projects typically slow down
• Our largest new customers came in even as existing customers increased their footprints
• We have made the service so easy to use that 80% of the customers who become active do so in the first 24 hours
• Thousands of new customers have signed up on Gen2 and Loggly’s total data under management nearly doubled in the fourth quarter.

Our solution is so broad and the market need so critical we have seen adoption across almost every vertical. Here are just a few of the companies that have joined our base of 3,500+ customers:

We’re Focused on Continuous Improvement for Our Customers and Our Service

In the fourth quarter, we added a huge number of product enhancements: expanded parsing capabilities (e.g. PHP and Java GC logs), event export, bulk event transmission, surrounding search, grid view enhancements, new alerting options, API extensions, and more.

AWS CloudTrail support was another major feature addition to Gen2, and our announcement was timed to coincide with the AWS re:Invent show in Vegas. We were invited to speak about our unique approach to high-scale architectures at the conference, and we were thrilled when this presentation, given by our own Jim Nisbet and Philip O’Toole, emerged as one of the top-registered, top-attended and top-ranked sessions at the conference (Watch a video replay or view their slides). Even more of an accomplishment since it was the last session on the last day! Jim and Philip did a great job of giving the audience some actionable tips they could apply to their businesses, drawing on the really tough challenges we face with cloud-based log management at scale.

Now, all our customers who are on AWS have the ability to search, analyze, and alert on AWS CloudTrail log data. The more types of data we make easier to digest, the more parts of our customers’ organizations get the vitamins and minerals they need.

Finally, AWS re:Invent gave us a great opportunity to pick our customers’ brains and find new ways to improve the Loggly service. Our usability sessions were well-attended, and I’m proud to say that our development team has already been able to put some of the highest-priority feedback into the product.

2013 Wrap up

At Loggly, there really wasn’t a moment of downtime heading into the end of 2013.  Consider:

• We released 6 follow-up releases to Gen2 between September and the end of the year.  This rapid deployment of new functionality is why SaaS is such a great model
• And how about this to cap things off: In the last 12 weeks of the year, we added twice as much new revenue as we had over the prior 12 months!

2013 Was Just the Start

Looking forward, it’s clear that the cloud model will continue growing faster than a teenage football player. Amazon’s AWS revenues, which grew 56% year-over-year through Q3 2013, provide a telling indicator. And what better to keep that growth on track but responsive log management?

Listening to Customers

We’re listening to you, our greatly appreciated customers. We are always trying to learn more about how we can improve our service to meet your needs and connect it better to how you get your work done. If you’ve got suggestions that you want to forward to me, click here.

The Rising Tide Lifts All Ships but Sinks the Unprepared

In 2014, we’re scaling our business just like you are probably scaling yours. Scaling typically means that you have to get better at what you are already doing.  Dave Packard wrote a long time ago in The HP Way, “More businesses die from indigestion than starvation”, and that is true for companies looking to focus on expanding core competencies.

Cloud-centric companies are voting with their log files and leaders have found that log management in the cloud is a great way to keep the focus where it belongs and cut down on the heartburn from a mission-critical DevOps functions. Your logs help you build strong DevOps muscles because they’re one of the most important ways to measure and keep tabs on your operations.

So, for 2014: Go to the gym regularly, eat your spinach, and send us your log data!

The Loggly and SolarWinds trademarks, service marks, and logos are the exclusive property of SolarWinds Worldwide, LLC or its affiliates. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.