Data Observability Startup Cribl Offers New Cloud Management Option

Cribl’s LogStream Cloud edition makes it possible to monitor and manage machine-generated data from the cloud while keeping the data itself in local processing and storage systems.

Big data startup Cribl is launching a cloud service for securely managing globally distributed observability data pipelines.

The new LogStream Cloud Enterprise Edition, slated for availability Oct. 18, will make it possible for businesses and organizations to centrally configure, manage, monitor and orchestrate data observability pipeline infrastructure anywhere in the world, according to the company.

“The new ways we use IT systems, everything from remote work to digital transformation, is driving tons and tons and tons more data volume,” said Cribl CEO Clint Sharp, in an interview with CRN.

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The product launch comes less than two months after Cribl announced a $200 million Series C funding round, providing capital the San Francisco-based company is using to accelerate product development and expand go-to-market efforts.

Cribl’s observability data engineering software, including its flagship LogStream system, is used to build pipelines for routing high volumes of telemetry data, including machine log, instrumentation, application and metric data, between operational, storage, analytical and security systems.

The Cribl observability pipeline software works by sitting between applications, including Splunk, Kafka, Exabeam, Amazon Kinesis and Datadog, that use agents to collect data. “We connect the things that were not originally intended to be connected,” Sharp said.

Cribl is targeted toward IT and security operations managers. “We’re going for an underserved market: DevOps, SREs [site reliability engineers], security. They just don’t have the tooling they need,” the CEO said.

Data observability is a hot sub-segment of the big data arena with established vendors like Splunk and Sumo Logic and startups such as Monte Carlo and BigEye fielding products in the data observability space. Sharp said many of those products are designed for managing data while Cribl is focused on managing the data observability pipelines and processes.

The new LogStream Cloud Enterprise Edition of the Cribl platform makes it possible to manage telemetry data inside a customer’s IT environment using the Cribl cloud service without the need to move the data and data processing itself to the cloud – what the company calls an “edge-focused deployment model.” That simplifies the task of managing observability data and keeps the data secure,” Sharp said.

“It costs money to move this data,” the CEO said, noting that Cribl customers work with terabytes, hundreds of terabytes, and even petabytes of data.

LogStream Cloud is used to create cloud-managed observability infrastructure that separates the configuration, management, control and policy enforcement tasks from the processing of local observability data. Management information is exchanged with local processing nodes through cryptographically secured, zero-trust communications.

The new cloud release of the Cribl software also introduces the new LogStream QuickConnect point-and-click configuration tool the company said makes it possible to easily connect any data source to multiple destinations. QuickConnect is also available in Cribl’s LogStream product.

Cribl partners with strategic service providers like Trace3 and Insight and works with VARs that provide IT/cloud infrastructure and cybersecurity solutions.