The inaugural meeting of the first UK Cribl User Group in London was an event many of our customers and employees goats had been looking forward to for quite a while. Despite the classic British weather dampening the rooftop setting, the atmosphere among our customers was anything but subdued. Company leaders from the finance, government, manufacturing, and media & entertainment sectors gathered to discuss the evolving world of data management, infrastructure, sharing challenges, and their recent wins.

Data challenges create a universal language to unite diverse industries

We have a wide range of industries represented in the first user group, and while they’re all involved in different sectors, they have a lot in common. The current data challenges of an IT engineer at a global manufacturer are often not that different from those of an IT engineer in a central government organization. Here are the key trends that the customers represented reported:

1. Enhanced Source Onboarding and Optimization: Companies have leveraged Cribl’s suite of products to onboard a greater volume of data and refine their infrastructure, ingestion, and storage processes. This dual benefit has enabled them to manage costs effectively while extracting more value from their existing Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), monitoring, and analytics platforms.
2. Breaking Free from Vendor Lock-in: The ability to liberate data has empowered these organizations to store their data as they see fit and channel it towards the most suitable platforms for analysis. This freedom is a significant leap towards achieving operational independence and agility despite what some of their existing vendors would like.
3. Elevated Security Insights: Organizations have significantly improved their threat detection and incident response capabilities by enriching data and filtering out irrelevant information with Cribl’s products. This refinement of data not only bolsters security measures but also enhances overall data utility.
4. Needing to Do More with Less: Across the customers at the event, they’re seeing rapid data growth, but their headcount and budgets remain flat. They’re looking to have an easier way to test out new tools, better integrate their existing tools together, and create more reusability of their work.

The goal of our user groups

Our vision for the user groups extends beyond mere meetings; we aim to cultivate a vibrant, engaged community where the exchange of knowledge and experiences is encouraged and the cornerstone of the group. This community is envisioned as a place where new and seasoned customers come together to share their insights and strategies for leveraging Cribl’s suite of products to solve complex data management challenges.

In addition to customer-to-customer interaction, our user groups serve as a direct channel for our team to share the latest updates on Cribl’s products, including sneak peeks into upcoming features and in-depth discussions on our product roadmap. This two-way dialogue is crucial, as it allows us to gather feedback directly from those who use our products daily, ensuring that our product team aligns closely with the problems our customers need help solving.

The group is designed to extend the resources available through Cribl Curious and the Cribl Community Slack channel. We encourage customers to share their success stories, offer solutions to peers’ challenges, or collaborate on creating and refining Cribl Packs.

Wrap up

The organizations represented are facing various technical projects, from migrating to cloud platforms to integrating with data lakes, but key challenges remain, such as data access, integration, and retention, and the high costs associated with traditional log management solutions were a recurring point of discussion. Using Cribl’s suite of products facilitates easy data operations to analyze, collect, process, and route all IT and security data, delivering the choice, control, and flexibility required to survive a 28% CAGR for data growth.

So what’s next for our UK Cribl customers? They’re focused on expanding their data sources, streamlining cloud migrations, and reducing infrastructure and storage costs. The drive towards more efficient data management practices is clear, with goals centered around doing more with less, enhancing visibility, and ensuring data resilience and reusability. Their journey with Cribl is about addressing immediate data challenges and setting a foundation for future innovation and efficiency.

Cribl, the Data Engine for IT and Security, empowers organizations to transform their data strategy. Customers use Cribl’s suite of products to collect, process, route, and analyze all IT and security data, delivering the flexibility, choice, and control required to adapt to their ever-changing needs.

We offer free training, certifications, and a free tier across our products. Our community Slack features Cribl engineers, partners, and customers who can answer your questions as you get started and continue to build and evolve. We also offer a variety of hands-on Sandboxes for those interested in how companies globally leverage our products for their data challenges.