Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Chris Nguyen, CEO of LogDNA (Part 2)

Chris Nguyen: There are trends that are happening today that provide value for LogDNA. One is the amount of data is growing exponentially. It is huge.

Trend number two is that data is fragmented. Because of the evolution of DevOps, containers, microservices, and data is super fragmented. To be able to pull that information into one powerful environment is very challenging.

The third opportunity is that companies don’t execute their infrastructure the same way. One size doesn’t fit all. Companies execute from public cloud, private cloud, and on premise. For you to handle the vast amount of data means you need to be able to handle scale, but also have a flexible deployment based on different customers.

For example, one of our customers that we partnered with is IBM Cloud. We power IBM Cloud’s logging and monitoring infrastructure at scale. That’s such a badge of honor. If you can handle these current challenges and trends, what do you want to do over time?

Today we say, “Let me take in all the logs. Let me provide a visualization and a loading system.” A lot of the time, it’s just a sanity check that all the things are moving. I’m excited there. If you want to think even more in the future, we self-diagnose it. We fix it for you.

That’s definitely a world that we want to get into. How do you provide insight and action for tomorrow? The action part is the fun part. I get excited because everyone needs a logging system.

Sramana Mitra: Brainstorm with me for a moment. I don’t know if you’re familiar with my writings on PaaS. I’ve written considerably on this topic lately. It sounds like you are in a perfect situation to create a PaaS offering whereby you invite developers who can take the infrastructure that you’re creating and create automation nodes and applications on top of your platform.

Is that an accurate observation?

Chris Nguyen: It’s a possibility that we definitely think about. If we expose our API, we don’t have to develop our own feature set.

Sramana Mitra: It’s not like you don’t have to develop. We are in conversations with lots of PaaS leaders. What I’m hearing constantly is if you have a platform and smaller companies are developing on your platform, this gives you an opportunity to see which ones are sticking. Then you can acquire them. You’re in a very strong position with a diversified portfolio of products. 

Chris Nguyen: It’s a great strategy to have. My VP of Product came from Heroku. They had a huge component of PaaS. 

Sramana Mitra: What is the penetration level of your kind of technology in the DevOps organizations around the enterprises right now?

Chris Nguyen: We sell to everybody. If you’re a hobbyist, you can swipe your credit card. We have over 2,500 customers across the spectrum. That is the chip of the surface of all the companies out there. My goal is one customer at a time.

If you build a compelling product, it goes viral through experience and industry leaders. We’re just getting started. This is a long marathon. Success to us, five years from now, is to become the de facto observability system. 

This segment is part 2 in the series : Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Chris Nguyen, CEO of LogDNA
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