Sumo Logic offers free data ingest for log analytics

Flex Licensing fine print

Sumo Logic's new pricing does not apply outside of log data, including metrics and traces and its security information and event management product. Company officials said existing customers will be offered the new pricing later this year, as the vendor establishes migration paths to the new approach. The new pricing plan is likely to represent a double-digit decrease in costs for customers compared with competitors that charge for ingest, according to Sumo execs, who did not specify how it will compare with the company's own existing prices.

One Sumo Logic customer said it's unlikely his company will send more log data into the Sumo back end because of the pricing changes, since it has already refined its log management hygiene to keep costs low.

"I was thinking that traces [were] also free, which would make it interesting for us," said Iwan Eising, service reliability architect team lead at ERP company Infor. "We're already logging pretty much everything that we need."

They're correct that the data volumes are humongous. It's [potentially] a real good reason not to do logging … and think twice about going to a vendor.

Generally, however, Eising said he sees Flex Licensing as a timely and positive change.

"They're correct that the data volumes are humongous," he said. "It's [potentially] a real good reason not to do logging … and think twice about going to a vendor."

Data growth forces wider price reckoning

This move follows shifts in pricing by other log analytics and observability vendors, such as Splunk's cloud pricing option and Dynatrace's bulk data ingest pricing tier for its log analytics tools. Newer observability players such as Observe Inc. also offer free data ingest.

Analysts said further pricing shifts from other vendors are likely to follow.

"Removing data ingestion costs is somewhat unique, in that not many vendors are doing it," said Andy Thurai, an analyst at Constellation Research. "But across the board, the rapid digitization forced by COVID [led companies to] rapidly digitize, which means they don't have data hygiene principles in place … and then building fully native cloud apps and microservices are very chatty by nature."

The cost of gathering broad swaths of observability data for the kind of detailed analysis required to troubleshoot distributed apps can outpace the cost of operating an app, something vendors must counteract, especially if they want customers to centralize data collection on their platforms, Thurai said.

Here, Sumo Logic remains best known for its log analytics, rather than the events, metrics and traces also important for observability, Gohring and Thurai said, though it has some support for each.

However, consistency is another area where Sumo Logic's Flex Licensing plan will be a competitive strength, Gohring predicted.

"My understanding is that the [pricing query] buckets are for the term of the contract [with the customer]," she said. "The idea is that if you have a spike this weekend, you're not going to get a crazy bill."

Beth Pariseau, senior news writer for TechTarget Editorial, is an award-winning veteran of IT journalism covering DevOps. Have a tip?Email her or reach out on X @PariseauTT.