Featured Startup: LogRhythm

InformationWeek features Boulder's LogRhythm in its April issue. Founded in 2003 by Chris Petersen and Andy Grolnik, LogRhythm delivers software for interpreting your raw data.

By automating the collection, organization, analysis and archival of all log data, LogRhythm enables enterprises to easily comply with log data retention regulations while simultaneously gaining valuable, timely and actionable insights into security, availability, performance and audit issues within their infrastructure.

The field of of analysis is crowded and there are many open source options. The challenges are in developing the market and educating the customers that they need such a tool. Customers need to see the direct relation to revenue from a log analysis tool. "We show them other ways they can use the product, and the ROI goes up," Petersen says in his InformationWeek interview. The bigger problem is making sure the right type of events are logged so they can be analyzed for decision making.

There is a big opportunity to offer log analysis in Software as a Service (SaaS) model. End users will have less resistance to use the analysis tools on a per use basis instead of investing in one. There is no need for ROI calculations and depreciating the software cost over years and worrying about installations and upgrades. If the platform and APIs can be standardized, individual developers can add value added components that end users can 'rent' on a per use or per month basis. I do not yet know of a log analysis tool offered in SaaS model.