Redwood City, CA-based Sumo Logic is announcing an $80 million funding round today that will support a doubling of its staff and help it keep pace with customer demand for its data analytics services.
Sumo is benefiting from the transformation of businesses in sectors such as travel, entertainment, and retail into software-driven enterprises that generate a deluge of data from features such as apps and e-commerce platforms, Sumo’s CEO Ramin Sayar said in the company announcement.
Analyzing that data in real time can help flag software problems early, detect cybersecurity concerns, keep a company in better touch with customer needs, and help solve other problems, Sumo says. Consumers have come to expect quick fixes and frequent software innovations because businesses are relying more heavily on Web-based software that is continually upgraded, the company says.
In December, Sumo recruited its new CEO Sayar (pictured above) from Palo Alto, CA-based VMWare (NYSE: [[ticker:VMW]]) a global cloud infrastructure company. Sumo was founded in 2010 by its vice president of engineering Kumar Saurabh, CTO Christian Beedgen, and Bruno Kurtic, vice president of product and strategy. Saurabh and Beedgen were veterans of information security company ArcSight, and Kurtic had worked at another company in the same sector, SenSage.
Sumo, which fielded its first product in 2012, now analyzes close to an exabyte of data (that’s a billion gigabytes) every month from the 500 companies that have signed up for the service, which include JetBlue, McGraw-Hill, and San Francisco-based audio streaming company TuneIn, the company says.
Customers can sign up free and feed Sumo as much as 500 MB a day to analyze and retain for seven days. For higher service levels, rates start at $90 a month. Large enterprises can negotiate customized, multi-year contracts. The company doesn’t disclose its revenues.
Sumo’s $80 million round was led by DFJ Growth, along with new investor Institutional Venture Partners. Existing investors Greylock Partners, Sequoia Capital, Sutter Hill Ventures and Accel Partners also participated. To date, the company has raised $160.5 million.
“Sumo Logic is the first investment in IVP XV, a $1.4 billion fund focused on high-growth, later-stage technology companies,” said Steve Harrick, general partner at Institutional Venture Partners. The venture firm had tested Sumo’s reputation by consulting its portfolio companies and Sumo’s customers before investing. “The response we heard was consistent – Sumo Logic is the only service in this space that delivers the scale and sophistication necessary to succeed long-term.”
Sumo and its larger competitor Splunk handle the analysis of “machine data,” the swarm of information flowing from apps, devices, sensors, and other sources. San Francisco-based Splunk (NASDAQ: [[ticker:SPLK]]) shipped its first software in 2006. It now has 9,500 customers in 100 countries, and a staff count of more than 1,400.
With its new capital infusion, Sumo plans to double its headcount to 400 during the next year to beef up its engineering and sales operations.
