(soft techno music) >> Good evening. Welcome back to the Kube. Live in Los Angeles. We are at KubeCon Cloud Native Con 2021. Lisa Martin with Dave Nicholson, rounding out our day. We're going to introduce you to a new company, a new company that's new to us. I should say, log DNA. Peter Choi joins us the VP of product. Peter, welcome to the program. >> Thanks for having me. >> (Lisa) Talk to us about log DNA. Who are you guys? What do you do? >> So, you know, log DNA is a log medicine platform. Traditionally, we've been focused on, you know, offering log analysis, log management capabilities to dev ops teams. So your classic kind of troubleshooting, debugging, getting into your systems. More recently, maybe in like the last year or so we've been focused on a lot of control functionality around log medicine. So what I mean by that is a lot of people typically think of kind of the analysis or the dashboards, but with the pandemic, we noticed that you see this kind of surge of data because all of the services are being used, but you also see a downward pressure on cost, right? Because all of a sudden you don't want to be spending two X on those digital experiences. So we've been focused really on kind of tamping down kind of controls on the volume of log data coming in and making sure that they have a higher kind of signal and noise ratio. And then, you know, I'll talk about it a little bit, but we've really been honing in on how can we take those capabilities and kind of form them more in a pipeline. So log management, dev ops, you know, focusing on log data, but moving forward really focused on that flow of data. >> (Dave) So, when you talk about the flow of data and logs that are being read, make this a little more real, bring it up, bring it up just to level in terms of data, from what? >> Yeah. >> What kind of logs? What things are generating logs? What's the relevant information that's being. Kept track of? >> Yeah, I mean, so from our perspective, we're actually agnostic to data source. So we have an assist log integration. We have kind of basic API's. We have, you know, agents for any sort of operating system. Funny enough people actually use those agents to install, log DNA on robots, right? And so we have a customer they're, you know, one of the largest E-commerce platforms on, in the, in the world and they have a warehouse robots division and they installed the agent on every single one of those robots. They're, you know, they're running like arm 64 processors and they will send the log data directly to us. Right? So to us, it's no different. A robot is no different from a server is no different from an application is no different from a router. We take in all that data. Traditionally though, to answer your question, I guess, in the simplest way, mostly applications, servers, firewalls, all the traditional stuff you'd expect kind of going into a log platform. >> So you mentioned a big name customer. I've got a guess as to who that is. I won't, I won't say, but talk to us about the observability pipeline. What is that? What are the benefits in it for customers? >> (Peter) Sure. So, like if we zoom out again, you know, you think about logs traditionally. I think a lot of folks say, okay, we'll ingest the logs. We'll analyze them. What we noticed is that there's a lot of value in the step before that. So I think in the earlier days it was really novel to say, Hey, we're going to get logs and we're going to put it into a system. We're going to analyze it. We're going to centralize. Right. And that had its merits. But I think over time it got a little chaotic. And so you saw a lot of the vendors over the last three years consolidating and doing more of a single pane of glass, all the pillars of observability and whatnot. But then the downside of that is you're seeing a lot of the teams that are using that then saying being constrained by single vendor for all the ways that you can access that data. So we decided that the control point being on the analysis side on, on the very far right side was constricting. So we said, okay, let's move the control point up into a pipeline where the logs are coming to a single point of ingress. And then what we'll do is we will offer views, but also allow you to stream into other systems. So we'll allow you to stream into like a SIM or a data warehouse or something, something like that. Right? So, and you know, we're still trying to like nail down the messaging. I'm sure our marketing person's going to roast me after this. But the simplest way to think of observability pipeline is it's the step before the analysis part, that kind of ingest processes and routes the data. >> (Dave) Yeah. This is the Kube, by the way, neither one of us is a weather reporter. (laughing) So, so the technical stuff is good with us. >> Yes. It is. What are, and talk to us about some of the key features and capabilities and maybe anything that's newly announced are going to be announced. >> Yeah. For sure. So what we recently announced early access on is our streaming capabilities. So it's something that we built in conjunction with IBM and with a couple of, you know, large major institutions that we were working with on the IBM cloud. And basically we realized as we were ingesting a log data, some of those consumers wanted to access subsets of that data and other systems such as Q radar or, you know, a security product. So we ended up taking, we filtered down a subset of that data and we stream it out into those systems. And so we're taking those capabilities and then bringing it into our direct product, you know, whatever you access via logging.com. That is what's essentially going to be the seed for the kind of observability pipeline moving forward. So when you start thinking about it, all of this stuff that I mentioned, where we say, we're focusing on control, like allowing you to exclude logs, allowing you to transform logs, you take those processing capabilities, you take the streaming capabilities, you put them together and all of a sudden that's the pipeline, right? So that's the biggest focus for us now. And then we also have supporting features such as, you know, control API's. We have index rate alerting so that you can get notified if you see aberrations in the amount of flow of data. We have things like variable retention. So when a certain subset of logs come in, if you want it store it for seven days or 30 days, you can go ahead and do that because we know that a large block of logs is going to have many different use cases and many different associated values, right? >> So let's pretend for a moment that a user, somebody who has spent their money on log DNA is putting together a Yelp review and they've given you five stars. >> Yup. >> What do they say about log DNA? Why did they give you that five star rating? >> Yeah. Absolutely. I think, you know, the most common one and it's funny it's Yelp because we actually religiously mine, our G2 crowd reviews. (all laughing) And so the thing that we hear most often is, it's ease of use, right? A lot of these tools. I mean, I'm sure, you know, you're talking to founders and product leaders every day with developers. Like the, the bar, the baseline is so low, you know, a lot of, a lot of organizations where like, we'll give them the, you know, their coders, they'll figure it out. We'll just give them docs and they'll figure it out. But we, we went a little bit extra in terms of like, how can we smooth that experience so that when you go to your computer and you type in QTPL, blah, blah, blah, two lines, and all of a sudden all your logs are shipping from your cluster to log DNA. So that's the constant theme for us in all of our views is, Hey, I showed up, I signed up and within 30 minutes I had everything going that I needed to get. >> (Lisa) So fast time to value. >> Yes. >> Which is critical these days. >> Absolutely. >> Talk to me. So here we are at, at KubeCon, the CNCF community is huge. I think I, the number I saw yesterday was 138,000 contributors. Lots of activity, because we're in person, which is great. We can have those hallway networking conversations that we haven't been able to have in a year and a half. What are some of the things that you guys have heard at the booth in terms of being able to engage with the community again? >> You know, the thing that we've heard most often is just like having a finger on the pulse. It's so hard to do that because you know, when we're all at our computers, we just go from zoom to zoom. And so it, it like, unless it punches you in the face, you're not aware of it. Right. But when you come here, you look around, you go, you can start to identify trends, you hear the conversations in the hallway, you see the sessions. It's just that, that sense of, it's almost like a Phantom limb that, that sense of community and being kind of connected. I think that's the thing that we've heard most often that people are excited. And, you know, I think a lot of us are just kind of treating this like a dry run. Like we're kind of easing our way back in. And so it, you know, it felt good to be back. >> Well, they've done a great job here, right? I mean, you have to show your proof of vaccination. They're doing temperature checks, or you can show your clear health pass. So they're making it. We were talking to the executive director of CNCF earlier today and you're making it, it's not rocket science. We have enough data to know that this can be done carefully and safely. >> (David) Don't forget the wristbands. >> That's right. And, and did you see the wristbands? >> (Peter) Oh yeah. >> Yeah, yeah that's great. >> Yep, it is great. >> I was, I was on the fence by the way. I was like, I was a green or yellow, depending on the person. >> (both) Yeah. >> Yeah. But giving, giving everybody the opportunity to socialize again and to have those, those conversations that you just can't have by zoom, because you have somebody you've seen someone and it jogs your memory and also the control of do I want to shake someone's hand or do I not. They've done a great job. And I think hopefully this is a good test in the water for others, other organizations to learn. This can be done safely because of the community. You can't replicate that on video. >> (Peter) Absolutely. And I'll tell you this one for us, this is our, this is our event. This is the event for us every single year. We, we it's the only event we care about at the end of the day. So. >> What are some of the things that you've seen in the last year, in terms of where, we were talking a lot about the, the adoption of Kubernetes, kind of, where is it in its maturation state, but we've seen so much acceleration and digital transformation in the last 18 months for every industry businesses rapidly pivoting multiple times to try to, to survive one and then figure out a new way to thrive in this, this new I'll call it the new. Now I'll borrow that from a friend at Citrix, the new now, not the new normal, the new now, what are some of the things that you've seen in the last year and a half from, from your customer base in terms of what have they been coming to you saying help? >> (Peter) You know, I think going back to the earlier point about time to value, that's the thing that a lot. So a lot of our customers are, you know, very big Kubernetes, you know, they're, they're big consumers of Kubernetes. I would say, you know, for me, when I do the, we do our, our QBRs with our top customers, I would say 80% of them are huge Kubernetes shops. Right. And the biggest bottleneck for them actually is onboarding new engineers because a lot of the, and you know, we have a customer, we have better mortgage. We have, IBM, we have Rappi is a customer of ours. They're like Latin American version of Instacart. They double their engineering base and you, you know, like 18 in 18 months. And so that's, you know, I think it was maybe from 1500 to 3000 developers or so, so their thing is like, we need to get people on board as soon as possible. We need to get them in these tools, getting access to, to, to their longs, to whatever they need. And so that's been the biggest thing that we've heard over and over again is A, how can we hire? And then B when we hire them, how do we onboard them as quickly as possible, so that they're ramped up and they're adding value. >> How do you help with that onboarding, making it faster, seamless so that they can get value faster? >> So for us, you know, we really lean in on our, our customer success teams. So they do, you know, they do trainings, they do best practices. Basically. We kind of think of ourselves given how much Kubernetes contradiction we have, we think of ourselves as cross pollinators. So a lot of the times we'll go into those decks and we'll try to learn just as much as we're trying to try to teach. And then we'll go and repeat that process through every single set of our customers. So a lot of the patterns that we'll see are, well, you know, what kinds of tools are you using for orchestration? What kind of tools are you using for deployment? How are you thinking about X, Y, and Z? And then, you know, even our own SRE teams will kind of get into the mix and, you know, provide tips and feedback. >> (Lisa) Customer centricity is key. We've heard that a lot today. We hear that from a lot of companies. It's one thing to hear it. It's another thing to see it. And it sounds like the Yelp review that you would have given, or, or what you're hearing through G2 crowd. I mean, that voice of the customer is valid. That's, that's the only validation. I think that really matters because analysts are paid. >> Yeah. >> But hearing that validation through the voice of the customer consistently lets you know, we're going in the right direction here. >> Absolutely. >> I think it's, it's interesting that ease of use comes up. You wonder if those are only anonymous reviews, you don't necessarily associate open source community with cutting edge, you know, we're the people on the pirate ship. >> (Peter) Yeah. And so when, when, when people start to finally admit, you know, some ease of use would be nice. I think that's an indication of maturity at a certain point. It's saying, okay, not everyone is going to come in and sit behind a keyboard and program things in machine language. Every time we want to do some simple tasks, let's automate, let's get some ease of use into this. >> And I'll tell you in the early days it drove me and our, our CEO talker. It drove us nuts that people would say easiest to be like, that's so shallow. It doesn't mean anything. Well, you know, all of that. However, but to your point, if we don't meet the use case, if we don't have the power behind it, the ease of use is abstracting away. It's like an iceberg, right. It's abstracting away a lot. So we can't even have the ease of use conversation unless we're able to meet the use case. So, so what we've been doing is digging into that more, be like, okay, ease of use, but what were you trying to do? What, what is it that we enabled? Because ease of use, if it's a very shallow set of use cases is not as valid as ease of use for petabytes of data for an organization like IBM. Right? >> That's a great, I'm glad that you dug into that because ease of use is one of those things that you'll see it in marketing materials, but to your point, you want to know what does this actually mean? What are we delivering? >> Right. >> And now, you know what you're delivering with Peter, thank you for sharing with us about logged in and what you guys are doing, how you're helping your community of customers and hearing the voice of the customer through G2 and others. Good work. >> Thank you. And by the way, I'll be remiss if I, if I don't say this, if you're interested in learning more about some of the stuff that we're working on, just go to logging in dot com. We've got, I think we've got a banner for the early access programs that I mentioned earlier. So, you know, at the end of the day, to your point about customer centricity, everything we prioritize is based on our customers, what they need, what they tell us about. And so, you know, whatever engagement that we get from the people at the show and prospects, like that's how we drive a roadmap. >> (Lisa) Yup. That's why we're all here. Log dna.com. Peter, thank you for joining Dave and me today. We appreciate it. >> Thanks for having me. >> Our pleasure for Dave Nicholson. I'm Lisa Martin signing off from Los Angeles today. The Kubes coverage of KubeCon clouding of con 21 continues tomorrow. We'll see then. (soft techno music)