The Gately Report: Sumo Logic Gives More to Partners Post-Francisco Partners Acquisition

Sumo Logic partners are benefitting from both Francisco Partners taking the company private and Joe Kim becoming its CEO.

That’s according to Timm Hoyt, Sumo Logic’s senior vice president of worldwide partners and alliances. Francisco Partners completed its $1.7 billion acquisition of Sumo Logic in May and Kim, Francisco Partners’ senior operating partner, was named CEO.

Before the acquisition, Sumo Logic was a public company and its stock was traded on the Nasdaq stock exchange.

“Moving to a privately held company from a publicly held company allows for organizations who are in growth mode to do some things that would be more difficult to do in the public market around prioritization of investments and some restructuring,” Hoyt said. “And I think this is one of the areas that is helping partners to benefit. In addition to moving from a public to a private company that is held by Francisco Partners, there were also some organizational changes. One of those was the addition of Joe as our CEO, and Joe has come in with amazing operator experience combined with his private equity experience as well, and has helped the company with fresh eyes recalibrate on what is our core essence and our mission, and our purpose to support our vision. And that is helping the company make sure we are investing in those areas.”

Sumo Logic and MSSPs

In the partner landscape, one of the investment priorities is around MSSPs, Hoyt said.

Sumo Logic's Timm Hoyt

“The MSSP space has been solid for Sumo, and we see macro trends to also complement additional investments,” he said. “The ability to do that with the support of Francisco Partners, and the direction and leadership of Joe, as he's helped us calibrate what our core beliefs are, where the product prioritization is, cross-functionally − how we are going to ensure we're executing and being accountable to one another − is a great benefit to customers and then the partners of ours who serve those customers.”

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