George Gerchow, Sumo Logic | RSA Conference 2022

strong TV Hey everyone. Good morning. Good morning here from RSA conference.

It is Wednesday second. Well, it's actually the third day of our sake because they did where Monday used to be sort of a zero day kind of thing. That's pretty confident.

That's awesome. Right Monday was sort of a pre-conference day and things kind of kicked off on Tuesday this year. They did kick off on Monday, but there's no Friday.

And and so we have today and tomorrow and that'll put a wrap on RSA 2022. I'm happy to be joined by George gershow. With me today.

George is with sumo logic George. Welcome. Welcome to our broadcast.

Alley Allen video here. Thank you so much for having me. My pleasure being here pleasure to have you here.

So George, look our audience is no stranger to Sumo, but for people who maybe aren't sure you know, what? Crowd that you know, we see people devops people as we have the whole gamut give them a little Sumo background and maybe a little bit about what you do at Sumo sure. Absolutely.

So to keep it short, let's see more logic helps folks build and secure modern-day applications that are built off of microservices and right in the cloud personally. I'm lucky enough to serve and support a team called risk, which is real estate it security and compliance. Very cool.

Yeah. So let's dive in on the real estate. Yeah what exactly we mean by that?

Yeah, so think about it as facilities as people, you know, go back to work and enter offices. We want to make sure they feel safe and secure doing so and as a software driven business, so I'm lucky enough to have that team with me as well. Very cool, man.

Kind of land and and Facilities very cool. Yeah. Yeah with it.

Yeah, right. So so George I mean You know, this is a it's definitely an in-person back in person. RSA this year, right.

There's a lot of people the exhibit floor is stretches on as you know, as far as the eye can see. It seems right bigger than even then in years past right these to separate the North off on the South Hall now, it's all just one, Mass. But what do you think?

How's RSA been for you this year? It's really been fantastic, you know just going through the floor seeing the new startups coming out that lot of them a lot of them and a lot of more really really cool. You know, like it's just great to have that Vibe again.

It reminds me of my early days in this industry doesn't yeah. Yeah the networking too Alan like just seeing people haven't seen forever hugging them. I don't care how that sounds I'm a hugger.

No, I can hear what it so if there's two messages tomorrow I say this year for me. First of all zero trust. I don't ever want to see Zero ever good overplayed the market right?

Because yeah, man, that's the word but secondly people it's about people it's about especially like you and me, you know, we've been in this industry a while. It's it's good to see our friends who we haven't seen in two three years and you know you maybe you seem on Zoom. Maybe you talk to them.

Maybe you interact with them on social media. It's not the same. Is giving them a hug it really isn't and for us in general even like employees that people that work at Sumo.

We've had 400 people get onboarded since the pandemic agreed and I was like, oh my gosh, I've never met you in person. So just shaking their hand or giving him a hug and welcoming him as humans is awesome. Absolutely.

So it's it's that people to people connection and I think that you know, No matter what, we do with virtual events and all the cool augmented reality in this feature and that feature. It just doesn't take the place. Okay People to People.

It just doesn't you build those connections and even have it if I can say it a beer, you know with yeah a car or something else, California, you know, but let's let's talk a little bit about you know Sumo activities here at our so you guys had a panel last night a panel discussion you put on right? We did tell us yeah. So it was at the same Regis African Museum, which was really really cool.

Yeah. Yeah. We had the ciso JD Hansen of Code 42.

We had a partner that also showed up and then we had to see some of MGM Studios there right? It's nice and we focus on what you've been saying Allen which was a future of work people and then really around mental health, you know security people been on 24/7 forever. And then now everyone's kind of on 24/7.

So how do we start alleviating some of that as Leaders? Yeah, I mean So tonight, you know, we have like maybe the 15th or 16. Yeah, I'm doing I was security bloggers meet up nice started back in 2003 and you know, they're well with covid we've lost people obviously but we've also lost people in mental health issues these past couple years because I I think the 20 being on 24/7 but being isolated on 24/7 we has taken it's tall on on some folks and it sucks.

I mean, it really hurts it hurts, but You want to put a hole down on the thing? Certainly being back in person. And here's another thing.

I'm here in Georgia. I wonder what you're hearing is. People saying hey, you know what?

I'd like to go back to the office right for a long time. We all heard. Oh, it is great.

No one's going to the office and more. We're all gonna work from home. And yeah, I think it's good to have that option to do sometimes but there's something to be said about going to the office there really is and so again, you know, I'm looking up to have real estate and what we're finding is when you have a Purpose Driven event like you can't go in an office and sit next like I can't sit next to you and you're doing a zoom and I'm doing it right that's ridiculous.

It's ridiculous that's going on you that's all right, but you know that experience if you have just to get together or some kind of collaborative creative meeting people love it. And so, you know, that's part of our strategy is to have everything very Purpose Driven when folks come into that get together, we cater lunches and everything else and there's just nothing like it the way to go. I think we are looking at a hybrid future and I'll tell you I've also spent a lot of time talking to entrepreneurs and business owners big and small and you know, they they think they can get that it's better for them.

If they have people in the office. They're a little afraid to push it too hard because I don't want to force anyone to go, you know, right great resign or whatever, but I I think I think the consensus is building. That going back to the office is in a bad thing if we can so we'll see where that goes.

Well, we'll see but you know, they're also has to be commitment to it as well from the employee because like I'll tell you now like being in charge of real estate. I don't I'm not sure like how much square footage to have because if you're seeing you're gonna come back in and then we need you to commit to that as well too and well, it'll be interesting to see what it is gentle. Yeah, this is this whole thing.

You do hotel space Hotel office space where I'm not gonna assign you. It's a desk or office permanently because you're only here two three days a week, right and I can't it's an expensive proposition to keep an office for you seven days a week when you're only here, too. Or or not.

I mean, what would I can tell you what I've done personally here for Tech strong in our offices is we we have a bunch of assigns office for people who come in most every day and then we have a lot of floater offices right where the the Out of Towners who come in the occasional people, you know have a place they can. Park right and and it's comfortable and it's good. So I I do think that's a little bit in the future.

I said some sort of survey or some research coming out as well recently, right we did and we focused a lot on on compliance. You know, it's compliance is one of those things. I think that most security people don't want to talk about.

They don't want to hear about it. But let me tell you it's really the biggest business driver possible. Most of my budget always sits in compliance and I use that to feed Security in a lot of ways and create that hygiene, but by merging or compliance folks with our security team and give them responsibility to both it creates one happy family and then driving that culture across our company.

It's a very important stat, right? There's no doubt about it. So give us, you know, give me some in the background if you can on the on this compliance thing.

Yeah, how you know, how wide was the research and all that? Sure. So let's start off with like what we fall under this is gonna be acronym suit coming at you but I still 27,1 CSA star PCI, which is a major differentiator for us fed ramp or HIPAA audited every year and then we also have nydfs as well too.

And so having those regulations what it shows is rigor and we've been doing this Allen for seven years for most of those regulations. So what we decided to do was get something out there that describes like our strategy the importance how it ties into security and and we're really proud of that. You know, it's it's a major investment for us and then even more so being a SAS based company our customers get that for free as part of the service.

So think about if you're rolling out on Prem type solution you're held responsible for Applying that infrastructure and the application with someone like Sumo logic you get that as part of the service, which I think is a huge differentiator that we just don't talk about enough. So we're getting the word out there. We're being bold about it, you know in some ways.

I guess it's almost like the SAS version of supply chain. Oh, you know what I'm saying where you want to know if I'm using this vendor for solution. What you know that he's got his or they've got theirs.

Let's not be gender here, right? They've got their Ducks in a row when it comes to things like a compliance and regulation. So it's an important an important thing.

Yeah, Alan couldn't agree with you more. It's a great way to describe to supply chain or also what the executive order from Biden is which is the SEO M. You know, the software bill of materials.

We've been doing this for a long time and now it's becoming more important ever because as you've seen ransomware everybody, oh my gosh, but I guess if you got zero trust that doesn't happen. Well, yeah. Yeah being all right zero trusted the day right?

We got a t-shirt for you on that. Yeah anyway, but you know, you mentioned as Farms so we did our deaf secops then all day yesterday over I heard about itself. Yeah, and we had we had several people talk about s-bomb Primarily, we had a panel of Dr.

Eliziri from Intel little lady from nist another woman from Linux foundation and umbrella. I forgot what government agency but we spoke a lot about that spot but my friend chancy Wang. I don't know if you know chancy I don't she's now the founder of rain Capital cool.

She's be a Forester. She was professor at Carnegie. Melanch the PHD.

I'm gonna Rush right now. Yeah, keep on talking. She's a rockstar chancy brought up something about us Farms that I never thought of before.

It's an IT issue an IP issue intellectual property? Because if I'm going to start giving you all of the ingredients like arrested recipe in my in my thing right in my product. I kind of giving you my IP, right, you know, you now know the recipe why can't you cook it yourself?

Right? And and that's something I think that we're gonna need to figure out about this whole that's bomb thing. I reaches how do I give you the recipe without what preventing you from?

Just cutting me out of it. I think it just depends on how far it goes Alan, you know because like I can give you the tools and the software and the open source that we're using to make the sausage but doesn't make you a sausage maker. Mm-hmm.

Exactly. You're still just a sausage consumer. That's exactly right.

And so it's almost like even like hey, look, I'm a huge fan of cloud, right? We ride on AWS, but I'm not telling AWS absolutely everything about what we do, right? They've done that.

I was right. They've done that before too, right? Yeah.

No, it's we'd like to talk to you strategically. That's what's later. They roll out your competition.

Exactly exactly, but we do got to be careful with I think she makes a great Point We're Not Gonna Take it that far. I'll tell you now. Most vendors were just not going to give you that IP.

It's no I I think it's just it's suicide right? It's just counter counterproductive. Anyway, George any final thoughts around RSA or what's happening with sumo?

Yeah. So let's just start with RSA first, you know, so one. I'm so appreciative to be here.

I'm so thankful to do this with you and just see people it's been fantastic. I'm looking forward to coming back again. For those of you that haven't been please come to RSA.

It's wonderful and then with sumologic I'm just very excited about the future. You know, we've got some great Solutions out there. We're rolling out our clouds some solution more more every single day and the future is just nothing but bright for us.

So if you're looking for a job opportunity, let me know higher so that's common theme here a lot of we're hiring stuff out. Oh, I'm recruiting Allen. Yeah always be recruiting a b r but you know, I'm looking at this bad, right?

Out here. And for those who want to come to RSA next year, it's April 24th to the 27th. So a little bit not quite February but not June either but an interesting thing I realized my team told me yesterday is the week before next year is actually kubecon Europe.

Oh wow. So for some of us to be tough, yeah, we're gonna have to go to Amsterdam come home from Amsterdam and come out here. I mean, don't take up any don't cry, right?

Good job. Yeah, totally. I know exactly I know that's all my 23 year old daughter Madison.

I'm like do both good. That's awesome. Anyway, hey man drink, thank you so much.

You're all right. Hey, we're gonna be back live here at RSA right here at broadcast alley in Moscone West. We're here all day.

Check it out. We'll be right back.