Logz.io, an Israel-based data analytics and security startup, announced today it raised a $16 million Series B funding round and recently relocated its New York office to Boston.
Boston-based OpenView Venture Partners led the funding round. Earlier investors 83North and Giza Venture Capital also chipped in. Logz.io, which is based in Tel Aviv, has raised $24 million altogether since it was founded in late 2014 by Israel natives Tomer Levy (pictured above, left) and Asaf Yigal (right).
Logz.io helps companies track what’s going on behind the scenes with websites, apps, and other software, in order to help them avoid costly outages and other malfunctions. Every machine that runs software—computers, smartphones, tablets, smart watches, servers, and more—keeps a running log of every action it takes. But with the flood of data that has accompanied the rise of mobile apps and cloud computing, it has become difficult for IT departments to effectively monitor these logs without help.
Logz.io is one of the companies that sells software to track and analyze all of this activity for businesses, ideally helping to make their operations more productive and secure. Related companies include Splunk and Sumo Logic.
Logz.io’s approach uses open-source software—specifically, the Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana (ELK) stack—and offers it as a cloud service for analyzing enterprise companies’ logs. In addition, Logz.io has developed machine learning algorithms that study interactions users have with their log data and searches the Web for known software bugs, with the goal of parsing out the log events that are actually important for companies and their IT departments to know about.
Since launching its service last year, Logz.io says it has signed up more than 1,000 companies in 80 countries. In an interview, Levy says “a few hundred” of those companies are paying customers. Those clients include Electronic Arts, British Airways, and Dyn, a New Hampshire-based firm that helps manage Internet performance.
Levy wouldn’t share details, but Logz.io says it helped Dyn respond to a recent cyber attack that temporarily shut down or slowed many popular websites and applications, including Twitter, Spotify, Reddit, and others.
“Being actively involved with Dyn, I saw firsthand how instrumental Logz.io was in our ability to quickly respond to and mitigate the recent unprecedented DDoS attacks we experienced, helping us assess the source, target, and protocols used,” said Jim Baum, an OpenView venture partner and Dyn’s executive chairman, in a prepared statement. Baum is joining Logz.io’s board as part of the funding deal.
Logz.io employs 55 people and is hiring, Levy says. The Tel Aviv office houses the engineering team and some sales and marketing staff members, while the downtown Boston office focuses on sales, marketing, and “customer success,” he says.
The company recently hired Bridget Gleason as vice president of sales. She was previously vice president of corporate sales and executive advisor at Sumo Logic.
