You may have seen the recent news about the acquisition of Sumo Logic by Francisco Partners. Private equity acquisitions like this can lead to uncertainty and questions, especially around two essential customer observability needs:
- Unified capabilities, data, and teams: Unifying tools and data requires continued investment. Will new ownership break apart pieces from the current solution? Will it invest in further data integration, or look to remove product costs as part of a restructuring?
- Simple, transparent pricing: The recent acquisition leads to additional questions about pricing as well. Will Sumo Logic make changes to the way they bill their customers? Will it have to charge for additional capabilities? Will this pricing plan reflect the acquisition costs? As more organizations look to increase predictability in their spend, how will Sumo Logic help during this transition period?
If you’re a Sumo Logic customer, you have an opportunity to review alternative observability solutions—such as New Relic—and evaluate whether they better meet your needs. We can help your development and operations (DevOps and ITOps) teams switch from siloed monitoring tools to a powerful, all-in-one observability platform.
But, regardless of who you choose, let’s look at the top two considerations to help with your observability vendor evaluation.
Avoid silos that limit full-stack observability
You know that your infrastructure and application surface areas are constantly increasing and using a combination of fragmented tools, siloed data, and disparate teams makes your work harder.
Point solutions for individual observability capabilities, such as application performance monitoring (APM), infrastructure monitoring, and log management, can introduce tool silos that can lead to slow, complex issue resolution. A quarter of 2022 Observability Forecast survey respondents noted that too many monitoring tools are a primary challenge that prevents them from prioritizing and/or achieving full-stack observability.
Using Sumo Logic for log management is no exception. Storing logs in a detached platform results in one more data silo you have to correlate with your other infrastructure and APM tools. Not to mention understanding how it relates to other telemetry data. Why risk increasing the mean time to resolution (MTTR) if you don’t have to?
An observability platform with a unified database can mitigate some or all of this complexity.
New Relic is a unified telemetry platform where all metrics, events, logs, and traces are stored together in a single database, enabling you to correlate all of your telemetry data across your entire stack in one place. Whether you’re navigating APM, infrastructure, Kubernetes, or traces, your logs are right there. You can search through log files quickly with our highly-scalable platform and find relevant, in-context log data throughout the platform alongside the rest of your telemetry data. Using our curated UIs, you can detect and resolve issues even faster.
Prior to New Relic, we used many tools. We had to rely on many different skills. The developers managed the logs and the DevOps managed the dashboards, which resulted in very few interactions between them. Thanks to New Relic, all this data is now handled within a single tool, facilitating excellent team communication.
Additionally, a unified observability platform is seen as a key driver for overall business growth. According to the 2022 Observability Forecast survey, respondents with a single observability tool were the most likely to say that business and/or revenue growth is a primary benefit enabled by their observability deployment (36%).
Look for transparent pricing that removes billing surprises
It’s also critical that the cost of observability tooling matches the value that it provides, especially when facing economic uncertainty. When 2022 Observability Forecast respondents were asked about the most important pricing or billing feature for their observability platform, 36% said budget-friendly pricing, 31% said transparent pricing, and 31% said predictable spending.
An essential way to manage economic risk is to ensure that you’re driving greater efficiencies. In short, you should pay only for what you use instead of over-provisioning and paying for the equivalent of shelfware that collects dust. Your tools should meet your technical requirements and avoid gaps that cause complexity and limit effectiveness.
Many observability vendors set prices based on the number of hosts you want to instrument, or worse, use a complex and opaque tiering model. For example, Sumo Logic customers may start with one data ingest cost, only to find that they are using multiple data tiers that obfuscate costs with a blended pricing model.1
In contrast, New Relic provides simple, transparent pricing based on two core metrics—data and users—and includes 100 GB of free data ingest per month with a low data ingest cost starting at $0.30/GB ingested (beyond the 100 GB free tier). Getting access to the New Relic all-in-one observability platform—which includes 30+ capabilities and unlimited hosts and CPUs—is determined by user type. Basic users are free, core users start at $49/month, and full platform users start at $99/month (Standard edition customers get one free full platform user per month!).
Jason Bloomberg, the president of industry analyst firm Intellyx, describes the effects of our efforts to offer unified capabilities with simple, transparent pricing: “New Relic is changing the economics of observability by empowering companies to leverage all available telemetry at a dramatically lower cost than before.”
This cost comparison demonstrates how Sumo Logic logs can be 2–4x more expensive than New Relic.
Comparison of monthly log costs for New Relic versus Sumo Logic based on published prices and hypothetical customer usage data
More than 15,000 New Relic customers already experience business value from our observability platform, and we can help you too.
Next steps
Are you ready to switch? It’s easy! You can migrate from Sumo Logic to New Relic in minutes. Learn more about New Relic pricing and sign up for a free account to try it yourself (no credit card required!).
Contact us today to learn more, get help estimating your potential savings, and plan your migration.
The views expressed on this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of New Relic. Any solutions offered by the author are environment-specific and not part of the commercial solutions or support offered by New Relic. Please join us exclusively at the Explorers Hub (discuss.newrelic.com) for questions and support related to this blog post. This blog may contain links to content on third-party sites. By providing such links, New Relic does not adopt, guarantee, approve or endorse the information, views or products available on such sites.
All dollar amounts are in USD unless otherwise noted. This blog post contains “forward-looking” statements, as that term is defined under federal securities laws, including but not limited to statements regarding the anticipated benefits and value propositions of the New Relic usage-based pricing model. The achievement or success of the matters covered by such forward-looking statements are based on New Relic current assumptions, expectations, and beliefs and are subject to substantial risks, uncertainties, assumptions, and changes in circumstances that may cause New Relic actual results, performance, or achievements to differ materially from those expressed or implied in any forward-looking statement. Further information on factors that could affect New Relic financial and other results and the forward-looking statements in this post is included in the filings New Relic makes with the SEC from time to time, including in the most recent New Relic Form 10-Q, particularly under the captions “Risk Factors” and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations.” Copies of these documents may be obtained by visiting the New Relic Investor Relations website at http://ir.newrelic.com or the SEC website at www.sec.gov. New Relic assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements, except as required by law.
All third-party trademarks (including logos and icons) referenced by New Relic remain the property of their respective owners. Unless specifically identified as such, New Relic’s use of third-party trademarks does not indicate any relationship, sponsorship, or endorsement between New Relic and the owners of these trademarks. Any references by New Relic to third-party trademarks are to identify the corresponding third-party goods and/or services.
