Sumo Logic

Sumo Logic, Inc.

Company type	Private
Industry	Computer software, security management, enterprise software
Founded	April 2010 (2010-04)
Founder	Kumar Saurabh, Christian Beedgen
Headquarters	Redwood City , United States
Area served	Global
Key people	Mark Ties (CEO), Stewart Grierson (COO), Lynne Doherty (President of Worldwide Field Operations)
Products	IT operations, security analytics, cloud-based SIEM, data analytics services
Owner	Francisco Partners
Number of employees	800
Website	sumologic.com

Overview

Sumo Logic, Inc. operates as a cloud-native machine data analytics firm specializing in security, IT operations, and business intelligence applications. The company delivers log management and analytical solutions that leverage extensive machine-generated big data. Established in April 2010 by industry veterans Kumar Saurabh and Christian Beedgen, both formerly of ArcSight, Sumo Logic maintains its headquarters in Redwood City, California.

On September 17, 2020, Sumo Logic transitioned to a publicly traded entity through its initial public offering on the NASDAQ stock exchange. The platform utilizes proprietary technologies, including Elastic Log Processing, LogReduce, and Push Analytics, which are currently patent-pending. In May 2023, the company was acquired by private equity firm Francisco Partners for $1.7 billion, resulting in its privatization.

Company Profile

• Type: Private
• Former NASDAQ Ticker: SUMO (2020–2023)
• Industry Sectors: Computer software, security management, enterprise software
• Founders: Kumar Saurabh, Christian Beedgen
• Headquarters: Redwood City, California, United States
• Leadership:
  • Mark Ties – Chief Executive Officer
  • Stewart Grierson – Chief Operating Officer
  • Lynne Doherty – President of Worldwide Field Operations
• Workforce: Approximately 800 employees
• Annual Revenue: $229.2 million (latest reported)
• Core Offerings: IT operations, security analytics, cloud-based SIEM, data analytics services
• Ownership: Francisco Partners
• Official Website: sumologic.com

History

Sumo Logic was established in 2010 by a team of technical experts specializing in log management, scalable architectures, big data, and cybersecurity.

Since December 2014, Ramin Sayar, previously associated with VMware, has served as Sumo Logic’s CEO. Prior to his tenure, Vance Loiselle, who came from BladeLogic, held the CEO position from May 2012 until December 2014.

In June 2012, the company introduced Sumo Logic Free, a freemium version of its analytics platform hosted on Amazon Web Services. Shortly after, in August 2012, Sumo Logic launched a solution tailored for VMware environments that enables organizations to search, visualize, and analyze VMware logs in real time for enhanced monitoring and event detection within virtual infrastructures.

The year 2016 saw the release of a new data analytics platform by Sumo Logic that merges log and metric data. This platform facilitates real-time analysis of both structured metrics and unstructured logs through interactive graphical dashboards.

At the AWS conference in 2017, Sumo Logic unveiled a machine data analytics service integrating Docker and Kubernetes analytics. This offering simplifies data ingestion processes for its cloud-hosted machine data analytics on Amazon Web Services.

In 2018, Sumo Logic expanded its integration capabilities with Google Cloud Platform by incorporating support for GCP applications and TensorFlow. Additionally, in September of the same year, the company added a cloud-based SIEM solution to its machine data analytics suite.

By April 2019, Sumo Logic had introduced a bidirectional integration with Atlassian’s OpsGenie incident alert system. This integration empowers users to generate and analyze alerts alongside incident data effectively. As of May 2019, the firm had secured venture capital funding totaling $345 million.

In 2021, revelations emerged involving a kickback scheme with Michael Kail, a former Netflix IT operations vice president convicted of fraud for accepting bribes from various vendors including Sumo Logic. The US Department of Justice reported that Kail served as an advisor to Sumo Logic from 2012 to 2014 and received stock options while endorsing vendor agreements between Netflix and Sumo Logic. Despite internal feedback about underperformance from his IT team, Kail insisted on utilizing Sumo Logic’s products. Evidence demonstrated that Kail assured Sumo Logic his advisory role did not conflict with his Netflix obligations and that the company was aware no contracts or preferential treatment were guaranteed. Importantly, Sumo Logic was not implicated in any criminal charges or legal claims related to this matter.

In February 2023, Francisco Partners announced its agreement to acquire Sumo Logic for $1.7 billion. The acquisition was completed in May 2023, resulting in Sumo Logic becoming a privately held company.

Funding

Sumo Logic secured investments from a range of prominent backers, including Accel Partners, DFJ Growth, Greylock Partners, Institutional Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, Sapphire Ventures, Sutter Hill Ventures, angel investor Shlomo Kramer, Battery Ventures, Tiger Global Management, and Franklin Templeton.

After operating in stealth mode for two years, the company introduced its cloud-native log management platform in January 2012 with a $15 million Series B funding round. By June 2015, the Series E funding round elevated Sumo Logic's total venture capital to $160.5 million. On June 27, 2017, the firm completed a $75 million Series F round, signaling progress toward an initial public offering.

In May 2019, Sumo Logic announced a Series G funding round of $110 million, reporting a valuation exceeding one billion dollars.

Technology and acquisitions

Positioning itself as a "continuous intelligence platform," Sumo Logic automates the gathering, ingestion, and analysis of diverse data types to deliver actionable insights to its clients. In 2019, the company acquired JASK to integrate its security operations center (SOC) capabilities with Sumo Logic’s security information and event management (SIEM) solutions. Additionally, Sumo Logic collaborates with The Pokémon Company to provide analytics for Pokémon GO, covering areas such as threat detection, vulnerability management, log aggregation, and security analytics.

The firm expanded its portfolio in 2021 by acquiring DFLabs and Sensu to enhance its offerings in security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR) technologies as well as monitoring workflow software. That same year, Sumo Logic introduced DevSecOps tools within its continuous intelligence platform aimed at infrastructure observability and telemetry data analysis for enterprise applications.

Sumo Logic’s infrastructure is built on an elastic petabyte-scale platform designed to collect, manage, and analyze enterprise log data efficiently—transforming millions of log entries into operational and security insights in real time. Its scalable processing can handle log data regardless of volume, type or location. Utilizing a cloud-based model addresses limitations commonly associated with on-premises solutions such as scalability constraints, inconsistent analysis methods, and unpredictable costs. The platform employs a globally distributed data retention system that ensures immediate access to all log data without requiring enterprises to manage complex archiving, backup or restoration processes. This fully cloud-hosted service requires no maintenance from customers.