Do you ever get the feeling that you should be doing something else? Do you wonder what you would do if you had a year to do research without having to worry about getting paid? I’ve always thought that academic sabbaticals would be great for everyone, even people who don’t work in academia. Over the last year I have had a rare opportunity to try different jobs, research some of my interests, and basically take time to figure out what I want to do next.
After leaving my last log management startup, I spent several months in a fog trying to figure out what to do next without doing much at all. I spent some time working with a couple of startups that had nothing to do with log management, but I felt like I was wasting both my time and the knowledge that I had developed over the previous ten years. Also, I felt like I knew too little about the other technology at the time; it felt like I was starting all over again. It just wasn’t fun or interesting.
During this time I started reading the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. In his book Gladwell examines the factors that contribute to high levels of success for people. He examines how some people become very successful – from professional hockey players, to musicians, to technology tycoons (like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates). The book shows that these people weren’t overnight sensations, but rather that it took many years of work, a passion for what they were doing, good timing, and lucky breaks along the way to become successful and become an ‘Outlier’.
All this got me to thinking about my own situation. To be most successful at what I was doing, I needed to focus on my knowledge base and the things about which I was passionate. This took me down the path of researching the opportunities in log management and the direction technology was heading. Finally, I hoped luck and good timing would be on my side.
My conclusion was that log management is a very hot field, and I had spent over ten years helping to develop it. It was where I needed to be.
I have spent the past nine months doing research and talking to friends and former colleagues who work with logs. I have found that there are many opportunities for innovative software companies working with log data. It’s exciting to see that in the large enterprise there has been a tremendous shift in the IT operations staff and an increased focus on log data. Governance, Risk, and Compliance have really pushed security and IT operations staff to focus on collecting and analyzing corporate log data. It started with the SIEM vendors collecting security logs. It has moved to log management vendors expanding to network and operating system log data.
My self-induced sabbatical is almost over. Thank you Malcolm Gladwell!
It has been a few months since my last post. I have been busy working on my next startup idea. I plan to announce what I am doing over the next couple of weeks.