10 Years of Success: AWS and Sumo Logic

“10 Years of Success” is a blog series celebrating a decade of the AWS Partner Network (APN) through stories of partner transformation, collaboration, and customer success.

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By Amanda Mock, Program Manager – AWS Partner Network
By Anselmo Barrero, Sr. Director of Strategic Alliances – Sumo Logic

As we continue celebrating 10 years of the AWS Partner Network (APN), we are excited to feature Sumo Logic, an AWS Partner with a leading cloud-based machine data analytics software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform designed to deliver reliable and secure cloud-native applications.

The Sumo Logic Continuous Intelligence Platform, available in AWS Marketplace, empowers customers with real-time analytics and insights to increase the security and reliability of their cloud-native applications.

Sumo Logic’s SaaS analytics platform turns machine-generated data—such as logs, metrics, and traces—into continuous intelligence to drive real-time business, security, and IT insights without the headaches of managing traditional IT infrastructure, middleware, software, and data.

With Amazon Web Services (AWS) Competencies in Data and Analytics, DevOps, Containers, and Security, Sumo Logic helps customers like Moneytree manage compliance and speed innovation by providing operational and security insights.

“Of course, we needed an infrastructure, so AWS is a natural partner there,” explains Ross Sharrott, Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder at Moneytree. “But we also needed to manage our application on top of AWS, and that’s where Sumo Logic has helped us. Really, the two together have made both better.”

Q&A with Sumo Logic

We spoke with Anselmo Barrero, Sr. Director of Strategic Alliances at Sumo Logic, about how Sumo Logic has grown from a small startup to a global SaaS company since joining the APN in 2012, what resources and programs they’ve leveraged to improve customers’ digital experiences, and their achievements as an AWS Partner.

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AWS: What made you decide to become an AWS Partner back in 2012?

Anselmo Barrero: Back in 2008, we were very familiar with the challenges of building and running on-premises software. When AWS abstracted out the infrastructure, it gave us the tools to build our SaaS platform. Building the platform was one component of the strategy; we also needed to create awareness and go-to-market (GTM) plans—and what better way to do it than with AWS?

Once we joined the APN, we not only got the technical endorsement to promote our platform, but also increased visibility to potential customers and access to programs and resources to build GTM strategies that opened new regions and verticals. By leaning into AWS and the APN, Sumo Logic went from a small startup to a global SaaS company.

AWS: Ten years is a long time in the tech world. What changes have you seen in your customers or in your industry during that time?

Anselmo: The evolution has been dramatic. In order to compete and stay competitive, companies have gone from building applications based on three-tier and service-oriented architectures in the early 2000s, to building modern applications using microservices and serverless architectures.

This change helped companies deliver new digital experiences for their customers, but made the software stack more complex by adding hundreds of services, ephemeral infrastructure, container clusters, and more, making it harder for operations teams to understand the impacts to end customers.

In this new paradigm, application logs, application performance data, and infrastructure metrics are growing faster than operators can analyze them, making it increasingly difficult for humans to operate and make timely decisions when they are under pressure to solve issues impacting customer satisfaction.

Sumo Logic built its reputation helping customers navigate these challenges for over 12 years. Our solution has evolved into an advanced AWS-native platform that brings observability, security, and automation to almost every aspect of cloud computing.

Today, nearly every company is in the business of developing modern applications to improve customers’ digital experience. Sumo Logic provides insight to help those companies increase the reliability and security of their modern applications.

Instead of letting operations teams figure out which telemetry data is needed to solve an issue or guess which security threats are most critical, Sumo Logic provides contextualized insights to improve the reliability of mission-critical applications and visibility across DevOps, IT ops, security, and compliance teams to accelerate problem discovery and resolution.

AWS: What transformation and growth has your business gone through in the last 10 years?

Anselmo: Sumo Logic has seen dramatic growth over the last 10 years across every component of our business. We have grown from less than 50 employees to almost 1,000. Our revenue has grown from a few million dollars to an approximately $300 million dollar run rate.

In addition, we have become more sophisticated in how we attract, secure, and serve customers—today, serving over 2,400 customers globally. And of course, our usage of the APN and AWS has grown, and we now utilize many AWS Availability Zones from Germany to Singapore.

AWS: What are some challenges you’ve had to overcome, and how did you evolve and adapt to resolve them?

Anselmo: Like many born-in-AWS software companies, the challenges early on included building confidence that the cloud was safe to run mission-critical applications and hold sensitive data. Together, Sumo Logic and AWS, along with other cloud-native companies, have set the standard for security and velocity of innovation.

By sharing best practices gleaned from operating continuously in the cloud for over 12 years, Sumo Logic customers and much of the industry are now cloud-first; meaning they choose SaaS whenever possible.

AWS: How has partnering with AWS grown or evolved for your business since 2012?

Anselmo: The relationship has helped us both as a customer and as an independent software vendor (ISV). Our SaaS analytics platform only runs on AWS, and we have leveraged all kinds of AWS innovations along the way to make our solution more scalable and reliable year after year. We can now ingest and scan about two exabytes per day to help customers ensure application reliability and protection from cyber-security threats.

As an ISV, we’ve worked with AWS to build our business and grow the market; collaborating very closely with AWS on several pilot partner programs that have not only helped Sumo Logic but also created value for other AWS Partners.

As a design partner, we co-developed dozens of services, including virtual private cloud (VPC) flow logs, AWS Config, AWS CloudTrail, and Amazon GuardDuty, among others. On the GTM front, we’ve worked together to win customers—ranging from greenfield to multi-million dollar accounts.

AWS provides the services that companies need to build modern applications, and Sumo Logic provides the insights to help companies ensure application reliability, protect against cyber-security threats, and manage cloud infrastructure.

AWS: What APN resources or programs have you leveraged most effectively to build and differentiate your business?

Anselmo: With AWS Competencies in Data and Analytics, DevOps, Security, and Containers, we’ve leveraged the offered Marketing Development Funds (MDF), GTM programs, and other benefits to increase awareness and reach out to prospects. Through the APN, we signed several strategic collaboration agreements (SCAs), aligning Sumo Logic and AWS on goals to help grow the business, providing the governance to track and measure related KPIs.

In addition, the APN provides resources that have been critical in the execution of strategic initiatives. These resources go beyond traditional partner development managers (PDMs) to include solution architects, program managers, and co-seller specialists that work closely with our team to form an extended execution machine.

This integrated team made possible the launch of Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM Powered by AWS, our AWS-native hybrid and multi-cloud threat protection offering, which helped us win AWS ISV Partner of the Year in 2021.

As the market for the cloud has evolved, we’ve built a multi-faceted GTM engagement strategy with AWS. For example, we’re an AWS Marketplace Seller and early adopter of the AWS Enterprise Discount Program (AWS EDP). We work with AWS on GTM activities, including demand generation, co-selling, co-founding proofs of concepts, and key deals.

In 2017, Sumo was the No. 1 AWS Sales Alignment Program Partner, and in 2021 we were the first partner to go to market jointly with Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM Powered by AWS.

AWS: In your opinion, what’s the best part about working with AWS or your most favorite aspect of being an AWS Partner?

Anselmo: Sumo Logic and AWS are deeply aligned and kindred spirits in the shift to cloud computing. We are fearless in our innovation, and share a culture for learning and collaboration. A key element in our relationship is the willingness to explore and experiment, which allows us to produce outcomes that serve the broader community, and ultimately creates a roadmap for joint customer success building innovative cloud-native applications or accelerating migrations to AWS.

We love the pace of innovation at AWS and the dedication of our AWS account team, who helps us make sure those innovations align with our business goals. Having an account team that looks after our business is critical, as they help us get plugged in to AWS innovations early on and channel our feedback to the AWS services team, allowing us to optimize our usage of AWS.

As an AWS Partner, the best part is the engagement with our APN team, which includes collaborating with individuals across partner development and marketing functions. This relationship allows us to define and execute on GTM programs that align with both companies’ goals. The APN provides programs to increase awareness and leads and helps us accelerate co-selling that allows us to experiment with pilots and ideas to grow our business.

AWS: What do the next few years look like for your organization with AWS? What are you hoping to achieve for continued growth?

Anselmo: The future for AWS and Sumo Logic looks bright and strong because each of us delivers key components to enable the digital transformation required for companies to remain competitive, now and in the future. AWS delivers the services to build modern, scalable, and cost-effective applications, and Sumo Logic provides the SaaS analytics platform to deliver reliable and secure cloud-native applications.

Given this synergy, Sumo Logic envisions tighter collaboration with AWS to help customers modernize and migrate their applications to AWS. We’ll continue collaborating to build solutions and programs that allow customers to start or accelerate their digital transformation, and will support tighter services integration to make migration easier from procurement to deployment.

In 2021, Sumo Logic was named an AWS ISV Partner of the Year. This was a big moment for us, recognizing and highlighting our great work and collaboration with AWS. We hope to keep accelerating and growing this connection with AWS to better serve our customers and grow our business around the globe.
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About the AWS Partner Network

The AWS Partner Network (APN) is a global community of partners that leverage programs, expertise, and resources to build, market, and sell customer offerings. This diverse network features 100,000 partners from more than 150 countries.

Together, partners and AWS can provide innovative solutions, solve technical challenges, win deals, and deliver value to our mutual customers.

▶ Read Jeff Barr’s blog post about the APN’s anniversary: 10 Years and Going Strong!

▶ See other stories in the APN’s “10 Years of Success” blog series.