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Sumo Logic
| Power Score: 47.88 | Momentum Score: 50.0 (3) | HQ: Redwood City, CA | CEO: Ramin Sayar |
Economics
Valuation: $2.2 billion (+81% YoY)
Amt. Raised: $345.5 million
Politics
Lobbying Spend:
No
Industry Orgs: No
People
Headcount: 919 (+18% YoY)
Engineering Headcount: 296 (+30% YoY)
Big Tech Experience: 8%
Open Roles: 112
Innovation
R&D Spending: $70.2 million (+29% YoY)
Patents Applied For: 0
Patents Owned: 23
Acquisitions:
Sensu (6/21), DFLabs (3/21)
Leadership
Exec Team Exits : Sydney Carey (CFO)
Diversity Data: No
ESG/CSR Data : No
On Power
Sumo Logic went public in September 2020 on NASDAQ,
just over a decade
after its founding in Redwood City, California. Though the company
has yet to turn
a profit
, it managed to grow its valuation by 81% year-over-year. As of April 2020, Sumo Logic
managed to attract
27 clients with ARR over $1 million. These prominent clients are likely drawn to Sumo Logic's robust
security monitoring features
and developer-friendly open source approach. Sumo Logic also received FedRAMP authorization in early 2021 and is now on an even playing field with many other companies on the top part of this list when it comes to winning public sector contracts.
Fresh off an IPO and leading the Power Index in total amount raised, Sumo Logic has used its ample financial resources to invest in its platform: Even though it has the lowest R&D spend of the public companies on the Power Index, it made one of the splashiest acquisitions by
agreeing to acquire
Sensu in June 2021. Sensu labels itself as a monitoring company, but Sumo Logic
expressed
that the acquisition would allow it to offer a "scalable end-to-end solution for infrastructure and application monitoring." Still, in the long run, Sumo Logic's lower R&D spend could become a competitive disadvantage: It spent $70.2 million on R&D in the last fiscal year, which paled in comparison to the $791 million spent by Splunk or the $211 million spent by Datadog.
On Disruption
Sumo Logic has been beefing up the number of tools it has in its arsenal recently, launching Real User Monitoring and app performance tools in July. And it has continued to ship products with pace, coming out in August with its Cloud SOAR platform that enhances security automation within the context of observability, effectively allowing DevOps teams to automate courses of action for disruptive events. It's noteworthy that the slew of recent software developments comes on the heels of a year where the company expanded its engineering team by 30%.
Tea Leaves
Geographic availability expansion has been a trend for Sumo Logic in 2021, and we expect the momentum to carry through to 2022. In April, the company
announced
that its Cloud SIEM solution would be available in Australia. That was followed up with
an announcement in July
that it would be available in Japan. The company
signaled
that it would continue this streak with the launch of availability in India.
While the product focus may be on abroad, Sumo Logic is also dealing with transition at home. In August 2021 the company
lost
its CFO, Sydney Carey, who helped lead the company through its IPO. Carey is staying on as an advisor to the company through the end of the calendar year, and a new executive search is underway to fill her role.
They Said It
"Every innovator needs to live in fear of being disrupted … If they manage to build a better product than us, then that's on us." — CTO Christian Beedgen in a September 2020 interview with Protocol