Cloud SOAR and SIEM software provider Sumo Logic continues to see growing momentum with its MSP and MSSP partners, CEO Ramin Sayar said during the company's March 2022 earnings call.
First, the big picture: Sumo Logic's fourth quarter revenue was $67 million, up 24 percent year over year. During the March 8 earnings call, Sayar described how MSSPs and MSPs are contributing to that growth. In one example, Sumo Logic recently had a "multiyear multimillion dollar expansion" with an MSSP that provides managed detection and response (MDR) services to end-customers. The MSSP leverages Sumo Logic's software to support more than 450 end-customers, Sayar indicated -- though he stopped short of sharing the service provider's corporate name.
To drive additional channel growth, Sumo Logic has invested in simplified technologies and also designed its sales rep compensation programs to reward partner engagements, Sayar added. The partner effort also includes VARs (value-added resellers), which have discovered that Sumo Logic's platform delivers profit margin -- though Sayar didn't share specific financial metrics.
Sumo Logic: Partner Focus, Channel Leader and Competition
Sumo Logic’s overall partner ecosystem strategy spans ISVs (independent software vendors); MSPs and MSSPs; and distributors and VARs, Sayar explained during an earlier earnings call in December 2021. Those partners drove more than 50% of Sumo Logic’s business in Q3 of 2022. MSSP Alert does not know the figure for Q4 of 2022.
To drive those partner efforts, Sumo Logic in November 2021 hired McAfee and Cisco Systems veteran Lynne Doherty as president, worldwide field operations. Doherty previously was senior VP of U.S. commercial sales at McAfee, and VP of Americas security sales at Cisco.
Still, Sumo Logic could face growing competition from third-party cloud-based SIEM, SOAR and security analytics tools. Indeed, both Microsoft Azure Sentinel and Google Chronicle are building out their own MSSP ecosystems. And both Microsoft and Google have been acquiring cybersecurity businesses. The latest M&A example involves Google buying incident response expert Mandiant for $5.4 billion. That deal was announced in early March 2022.
Meanwhile, Sumo Logic also competes fiercely against fast-growing Datadog as well as Splunk.
Sumo Logic Cloud SOAR: Latest Capabilities, AWS Partnership
Amid that heightened competition, Sumo Logic continues to invest heavily in R&D and new product launches. For instance, Sumo Logic's Cloud SOAR solution gained War Room and App Central features to help MSSPs and end-customers drive efficiency and automation across their security operations, the company indicated in February 2022. Moreover, Sumo Logic has a longstanding partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS). The relationship extends back to the birth of Sumo Logic in 2010.
