Lots of organizations are aware of the potential value of their IT logs; it’s just that they’re not in a financial position to do much about. To help internal IT teams overcome that issue, Graylog developed an open source log analytics application that has been upgraded to provide access to both Linux and Windows machine data via a new user interface.
Matt Maloney, vice president of product management for Graylog, says that unlike commercial log analytics applications, version 1.1 of the company’s namesake software provides an integrated framework for storing, searching and analyzing log data without requiring IT organizations to acquire additional software licenses for each function.
Maloney admits that Graylog’s log analytics software may not have every bell and whistle in the app that a commercial provider of log analytics software might offer. But from the perspective of the average IT organization, Maloney says Graylog provides the vast majority of the log analytics tools that they need and, just as importantly, will be a fast follower in terms of any log analytics innovations that may occur in the future.
Of course, the primary reason IT organizations are spending so much time on log analytics these days is security. Anomalies inside those logs are usually indicative of abnormal behavior that signals that some portion of the IT infrastructure has been hijacked by malware.
To a certain degree, log analytics at this point should be standard issue IT equipment. The only real issue for most organizations is finding a way to pay for it. However, Graylog 1.1 can help lower the cost of log analysis for many businesses.