LogLogic Launches Appliances for the Mid Market

March 18, 2008 Alex Woodie

LogLogic this week introduced a new line of log collection and analysis appliances geared toward helping mid size businesses address regulatory compliance mandates. The new MX appliances offer the same level of regulatory reporting and forensic analysis capabilities as LogLogic’s enterprise class LX and ST appliances, thereby giving customers more automation and control over their compliance initiatives, but with a simpler all-in-one architecture and a lower price.

The wave of regulatory compliance initiatives is not just impacting large enterprises, but mid size companies, too, says Dominique Levin, executive vice president of marketing, products, and business development at LogLogic. “The drivers in the mid market are very similar to the large enterprise, very heavily focused around these specific compliance mandates,” she says. “In the mid market, people are looking for the aspirin to kill the pain, and the pain is called PCI compliance first and foremost. The pain is called HIPAA if you’re a regional hospital, or GLBA or SOX if you’re a credit union.”

Up to this point, LogLogic has sold a two-part product line to help its customers address the log management crunch. The first of these, called the LX series of appliances, collects data from servers, applications, and network gear, and generates regulatory compliance reports on up to 90-days worth of data. Log data is then moved off to the ST series, which stores log data for up to two years (or 34 TB) while providing “Google-like” search speeds and forensics capabilities.

While LogLogic has been selling the LX and ST series of X64-based appliances to mid market organizations for the last five years, it recognized that the needs of mid market companies are different than large enterprises, Levin says. For starters, mid market companies don’t want to manage two devices, which was the minimum setup in LogLogic’s product line.

Now, with the new line of MX appliances, customers can get most of the capabilities of the LX and ST series, but in a single box. LogLogic is selling four mid market appliances tailored specifically to addressing PCI, HIPAA, SOX, and ITIL management. Each appliance comes with more than 100 precanned compliance reports for its particular mandate, and the capability to store up to a year’s worth of data. Pricing starts at $37,500 for each appliance, compared to prices of $70,000 for equivalent LX and ST appliances.

There are no differences between the types of reports, forensics, and real-time alerting capabilities when comparing the mid market and enterprise offerings, Levin says. Users get the same capability to customize reports, the open Web services API, and hot-swappable hardware components.

Aside from cost, the main difference between the two lines is scalability: the MX appliances are self-contained and can’t be connected to other LogLogic devices, whereas the LX and ST appliances can be linked to simplify enterprise log reporting across dozens of appliance and locations.

While that powerful distributed architecture is overkill for mid market customers struggling with complexity in their IT departments, those customers absolutely need the other log management benefits LogLogic can offer, Levin says.

Levin uses a car analogy from her native Europe to make the point. “Sometimes we the get reaction from mid market customers, who say, ‘I’d really like to drive that Mercedes, but I really can only afford a Volkswagen. So I’ll make due with a less expensive solution, even though I know it doesn’t have all the feature functionality I really want,'” she says. “So we’re essentially introducing a Mercedes C-Class, if you will. Yes you can afford that Mercedes. We haven’t taken away anything that makes a Mercedes a Mercedes.”