I am often asked that if Log Management is so important to the modern IT department, then how come more than 80% of the market that “should” have adopted it has not done so?

The cynic says “unless you have best practice as an enforced regulation (think PCI-DSS here)” then twill always be thus.

One reason why I think this is so is because earlier generations never had power tools and found looking at logs to be hard and relatively unrewarding work. That perception is hard to overcome even in this day and age after endless punditry and episode after episode has clarified the value.

Still resisting the value proposition? Then consider a recent column in the NY Times which quotes Dov Seidman, the C.E.O. of LRN who describes two kinds of values: “situational values” and “sustainable values.”

The article is in the context of the current political situation in the US but the same theme applies to many other areas.

“Leaders, companies or individuals guided by situational values do whatever the situation will allow, no matter the wider interests of their communities. For example, a banker who writes a mortgage for someone he knows can’t make the payments over time is acting on situational values, saying: I’ll be gone when the bill comes due.”

At the other end, people inspired by sustainable values act just the opposite, saying: I will never be gone. “I will always be here. Therefore, I must behave in ways that sustain — my employees, my customers, my suppliers, my environment, my country and my future generations.”

We accept that your datacenter grew organically, that back-in-the-day there were no power tools and you dug ditches with your bare hands outside when it was 40 below and tweets were for the birds…but…that was then and this is now.

Get Log Management, it’s a sustainable value.

–Ananth