The data observability platform vendor's new platform enables enterprises to use AIOps and automation to find anomalies with their IT system, report them and head off widespread problems.
Data observability vendor LogicMonitor's new LM Logs system aims to make it easier and cheaper for enterprises to analyze problems within their IT systems all from a single unified platform.
The vendor, based in Santa Barbara, Calif., introduced the new log management tool Wednesday.
What logs do
Logs analyze an enterprise's system to determine what's normal. One method of log analysis is log intelligence, which is powered by AI and automation.
One of the biggest challenges enterprises face in managing their IT infrastructure is coordinating the profusion of different management tools spread out across the organization, according to John Chessman, an analyst at Gartner. These can include infrastructure and application monitoring and log management tools.
When issues occur, multiple tools can provide alerts, but the probability that all the tools are malfunctioning is low.
Benefits of logs
Chessman said to solve the proliferation of tools many vendors, including LogicMonitor, are starting to offer products in which all the monitoring tools can be put in one place and enterprises can get a better, more unified view of what is causing major problem within their systems.
Logs … provide a lot of really interesting and valuable information about how things like applications and devices are working.
Josh ChessmanAnalyst, Gartner
"Logs are a key part of that because they provide a lot of really interesting and valuable information about how things like applications and devices are working," Chessman said.
LogicMonitor's new log management platform enables enterprises to put logs from all their various networks, devices and data sources such as the cloud in one place. IT professionals can query all these elements individually or jointly, while also applying machine learning to all the disparate data to get a broad view of what's happening in their systems.
LM Logs uses AIOps and automation capabilities to pick up on problems in an organization's data environment before they become widespread.
The platform's key feature is an unlimited log retention tool that boosts organizations' ability to retain and analyze data for business intelligence, and forensic and regulatory needs. It provides 30-day, one-year and unlimited data retention options.
Chessman said that while LogicMonitor is providing affordable SaaS-based unlimited log storage, vendors such as Splunk, and others are doing similar things.
LogicMonitor charges $6 per gigabyte per month for one-year retention of log data, and now offers $12 per GB per month for unlimited log data retention.
Some of LogicMonitor's competitors are offering similar value proposition with platforms that unify all of a company's data, including logs, events and metrics, as well as analyze data from multiple tools.
LogicMonitor began as an infrastructure-monitoring vendor but made acquisitions in application monitoring to try to fill out this breadth of data support. Application performance monitoring companies such as New Relic and Dynatrace, meanwhile, also added infrastructure monitoring support.
In the traditional log monitoring arena, Sumo Logic, Grafana and Elastic also have each offered reduced-cost data ingestion and retention deals as data volume skyrockets. Grafana's Loki log management system also launched with a data retention cost message.
Also, LogicMonitor now joins a host of other vendors in offering AIOps capabilities.
LM Logs gives organizations insight into all their logs under one platform.
Possible challenges
For LogicMonitor, ironically, the relatively inexpensive price point is a potential weakness, Chessman said.
"If they have too many people signing up and it's costing them more than [the price they're offering it for], that isn't going to work for a long time," he said.
Another challenge is that customers that may already be using a different platform will probably choose not to migrate large amounts of data from that different platform to LogicMonitor's, Chessman said.
Yet another hurdle for the vendor to overcome is that if a potential customer already has custom applications using another platform's API, it would then be difficult to try to rebuild that to work with LogicMonitor. That could take weeks, months or years to rebuild the apps, he said.
"One of the challenges [LogicMonitor faces] is how many people who are using them for other stuff want this or are in a position to leverage it," he said.
"I think having everything in one place, there are definite benefits to it, but there are always potential challenges or caveats or issues."
Editor's note: Senior news writer Beth Pariseau contributed to this story.
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