How Sumo Logic Rolled Out a New Website
with Zero Down Time in Preparation for an IPO

About the Client: Sumo Logic

Sumo Logic specializes in cloud monitoring, log management, Cloud SIEM tools, and real-time insights for web and SaaS-based apps. Sumo Logic empowers companies and the people who operate them to make smarter, faster decisions.

Case Study Highlights

Challenges:

• Build an enterprise-scale website on CraftCMS, a newer with untested out-of-the-box performance capabilities.
• Prevent any downtime on the website.
• Complete the project on-budget and on time, prior to Sumo Logic’s IPO.
• Ensure the website is flexible to future marketing needs.

Solutions: 

• Write a module to publish the site statically, so it can be scaled up to withstand any amount of traffic.
• Leverage the static publishing ability to prevent downtime.
• Collaborate with Sumo Logic’s staff, take a proactive approach, and remain responsive to questions and requests.
• Build according to the long-term, pivoting needs of the website.

Results: 

• Easily handle any amount of traffic, including hundreds of thousands of simultaneous users.
• Stand up to the scrutiny and analysis of Sumo Logic’s own web evaluation tools.
• Experience zero website downtime since implementation.
• Wrap up the website development project within budget constraints and in just three months.
• Roll out the new site successfully prior to IPO, and maintain a continuing relationship that has evolved to meet Sumo Logic’s needs.

Background: A crucial website redesign prior to IPO.

Sumo Logic was preparing to redesign and replatform their website to something more scalable and easy to manage. It was important that Sumo Logic’s website show the brand at its brightest and best, because the company was preparing to go public.

The web design and UX firm created a new look and feel that the company rallied behind. But when it came time for implementation, the development company felt overwhelmed as they began building in CraftCMS. It was a newer platform, and while it had excellent functionality, it didn’t have the same level of development resources as other, more widely-used platforms, and it wasn’t 100% ready for the traffic demands of a site like Sumo Logic’s.

Challenge: Build a website that’s ready for enterprise scale, on timeline, and on budget.

As the budget and timeline for the website development project ballooned past original estimates, Sumo Logic knew they needed to adjust their strategy. Mike Greeves, Senior Director, Digital Marketing, blew the whistle.

Greeves explains,

“There were a lot of challenges with importing our data to the new platform, which caused the project to drag past deadlines and go over budget. Then, the site started having multiple live outages, which was a serious problem. We wanted the project to move faster and more smoothly in anticipation of announcing our IPO plans, and every little delay compounded our anxiety.”

Having worked previously with Brian Nance, Compiled Rogue’s Technology Advisor, Greeves reached out to him for a second opinion. Nance and Compiled Rogue Owner/Team Lead, Michael Sablone, agreed to take a look at the project so far.

Sablone said,

“When I saw the source code, it became clear what was going on. I could see where the developers were getting stuck with a lot of commits to the repository for tests. Plus, I realized the developers were primarily focused on short-term functionality by creating monolithic pages instead of flexible blocks. From my experience, it’s important to also consider long-term use; marketing sites need to be built flexibly in order to pivot over time.”

Sumo Logic briefly considered abandoning Craft CMS, but they ultimately decided to invest in the platform and — with the help of Compiled Rogue — use it to make their website more resilient than ever.

Solution: Ensure zero downtime and plan for a flexible future.

With their web development audit complete, Sumo Logic decided to hire Compiled Rogue to finalize the project in time for the IPO.

Greeves says,

“When Compiled Rogue got involved, that’s when things really turned around for the better. I felt comfortable with their expertise and work ethic. Plus, I appreciated that they were in the trenches with us. They were on Zoom calls and in Slack channels at all hours of the day debugging and answering questions. They’re exactly who you want on your web development project.”

The partnership between Sumo Logic and Compiled Rogue was exciting. For one, Sumo Logic leveraged its own platform to troubleshoot the website, analyze its structure, and evaluate the digital customer experience. This provided a treasure trove of actionable data for both Sumo Logic and Compiled Rogue.

Sablone, Nance, and their team at Compiled Rogue came up with an inventive solution to the website outages. They built a CraftCMS module that publishes the site statically. This way, the website’s pages can be staged to perfection behind the scenes, before pushing them to AWS in a static environment. This strategy ensured the website wouldn’t go down again — paving the way to a smooth IPO and beyond.

Results: A resilient website worthy of Sumo Logic’s dynamic business.

Despite the rocky start, Sumo Logic ultimately achieved all of their goals, using leveraging CraftCMS for their new website.

Greeves explains,

“The number one goal was to have no downtime. I told Compiled Rogue we needed our website to be bulletproof. Plus, we needed to get back on budget, and it was important we wrapped up on time for the IPO.

“The project was done about three months after we hired Compiled Rogue. I remember a couple of weeks went by, and we were looking at our website through our own platform, monitoring everything. The site performance was good; there were no outages. And then another two weeks went by, and then another two weeks, and all of the sudden, we really knew we were out of the choppy seas.

“Best of all, when we went public, the site handled all the traffic without any problems. Two years later, we still haven’t had any downtime.”

Greeves and his colleagues at Sumo Logic worked hard to make the project successful, and he also credits Compiled Rogue with being an integral part of his team.

Greeves says,

“Compiled Rogue are trusted experts and trusted partners. They rounded out our internal team’s capabilities and filled gaps.”

The partnership between the two companies only grew after the website rollout. Sumo Logic has retained Compiled Rogue for additional projects, including growth and conversion rate optimization, product application development, hiring consultations, and more.

Sablone discusses the evolving relationship between Sumo Logic and Compiled Rogue:

“They’ve come to know us as their web team. We’re on their weekly standup. We were consulted to interview for a senior developer position. Plus, we’re on their React product team, so we’re impacting both sides of their business.

“No one is better qualified to analyze how to make a product and onboarding better than someone external to the company with decades of broad experience in web technologies. At Compiled Rogue, we’re a mix of old-school experience and acute development expertise, which gives us unique problem-solving insights and allows us to serve our clients by thinking big-picture, long-tail, and long-term.”

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