The observability and cybersecurity sector is chock full of providers from startups like StateStack and Coralogix to established organizations like Datadog, Sumo Logic and Splunk, offering solutions with capabilities of various depth and breadth that are solving the tough problems of application reliability and security.

It’s no wonder that consolidation in this space is happening, first in July with the announcement of New Relic being acquired by Francisco Partners and TPG for nearly $6.5 billion. And now with Cisco announcing the acquisition of Splunk for approximately $28 billion, and making it one of the largest software companies globally. It’s probably not over since some experts are anticipating that we’ll see even more reinvigoration of the merger and acquisition market.

Sumo Logic vs. Splunk

With the recent news of the Splunk acquisition by Cisco, Splunk is trying to figure out its go-forward strategy with their new owners, especially since Cisco has a similar solution, AppDynamics, that competes in the same space.

Sumo Logic is committed to solving security and observability problems, and quite frankly, Sumo Logic provides a better solution over Splunk.

Here’s a few reasons why:

Splunk is really an on-premise, not a cloud-native, provider – Sumo Logic is the only cloud-native SaaS Log Analytics Platform that delivers next-generation SIEM and developer operations insights, to quickly troubleshoot and fix performance issues and security threats before impacting users.

Splunk is expensive: Customers are frustrated with the complexity and high price of the Splunk licensing model. Sumo Logic offers a flexible and predictable pricing model as well as data tiering to capture all relevant application telemetry cost-effectively via our data tiering.
Splunk’s out of the box security and certifications cost extra: Splunk customers using the on-prem solution have to implement and manage all their own security protocols. Splunk Cloud can provide data security, but all security attestations cost more (HIPAA, PCI, SOC2). PLUS, if customers want encryption-at-rest, they have to pay extra (~15-20% up charge per ingested GB). Sumo Logic has security built-in from the ground up. All attestation and security certifications are included for all customers, out-of-the-box, and free. Plus we are constantly managing and upgrading on our attestations, code reviews, security penetration testing, and a bug bounty program.

Splunk is not a unified platform: Splunk requires multiple products or solutions to accommodate both observability and security use cases. For example, for APM&O use cases you need Splunk Observability Cloud (formerly SignalFX) but for SIEM you’d require Splunk Cloud plus Enterprise Security. Sumo Logic is the only SaaS Log Analytics Platform to unify BOTH security & observability on the same platform. We are committed to delivering a differentiated log analytics platform, integrated user experience, AI/ML driven insights, automated actions and evolving our portfolio to address use cases such as monitoring and troubleshooting, cloud infrastructure security, audit/compliance, and our industry-leading Cloud SIEM solution.

As markets continue to consolidate, it’s vital that you consider which technical partner aligns with your goals. If speed, cloud-native scalability, and pricing are top concerns, it’s understandable why Cisco’s Splunk may not seem appealing.

Learn more about Splunk alternatives like Sumo Logic.