Elasticsearch Releases Logstash 1.4 - Makes Log Analysis Faster and Simpler

LOS ALTOS, CA and AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS--(Marketwired - Mar 20, 2014) - Elasticsearch Inc., helping thousands of companies worldwide make sense of their data, has announced the release of Logstash 1.4, one of the most popular open source log management tools available today. Logstash now starts up three times faster and, in combination with the ELK stack, puts actionable business insights into the hands of even the smallest business by substantially improving product usability. Not only is it simple to include log data as part of your business analytics, Logstash also makes it easier to move all types of data into the ELK stack for analysis and visualization.

Analyzing log data, which is any data that carries a timestamp, can give a business insight into how customers are interacting with its purchasing process, product, website, or support system. It's critical for understanding the customer experience, what's working and what's not working, and is a true look at the vitality of a business. In concert with Elasticsearch for analysis and Kibana for visualization, today's Logstash release helps validate the Elasticsearch ELK stack as one of the most robust and affordable solutions for analyzing log data -- or really any type of data collected in a business.

"Using Logstash 1.4 along with the ELK stack has been a game changer for our business, allowing us to open up log data to all of our business units," says Don Son, Director of Product Management at The Control Group. "Prior to using the ELK stack, some of our departments had no visibility into our operational data. Now, we can provide all of our teams with the insights they require to improve our business offerings."

"Logstash can get data from unknown places and from any source and will clean it up so you don't have to worry about the exact log types or reconciling different data formats," says Jordan Sissel, software engineer and Logstash creator. "We handle it all and let you slice and dice that data with Elasticsearch. Serve it up nice and pretty with a side of Kibana and you've got instant feedback on how to better please your customers and drive business success."

Here's what's new in Logstash 1.4:

• An easier installation process that makes it faster and easier to get Logstash up and running, loading 3x faster, as well as providing better code accessibility for debugging and troubleshooting.
• A simplified plugin system that makes it easier for users to find additional plugins to customize Logstash to their specific business needs.
• Redesigned Puppet modules that automatically configure Logstash on a server or virtual machine, making Logstash's integration with this popular configuration management system easier to maintain.
• All new, expanded documentation that includes a simplified Getting Started Guide along with improved guidance across all of Logstash's most popular plugins.

Continuing its incredible growth in 2014, Elasticsearch debuted Elasticsearch 1.0 earlier this month, and launched its first commercial product, Elasticsearch Marvel. Logstash, which became the L in the ELK stack after hiring Jordan Sissel in August of 2013, has seen the same steady adoption, growing into the top open source logging solution that companies such as Bloomberg, eBay, Control Group and Dreamhost rely on.

Availability and support
Logstash 1.4 is available now on elasticsearch.org and from GitHub under an open source license.

Organizations can get support from the engineers that built Logstash and the Elasticsearch ELK stack by subscribing to our annual support offerings that also include free licenses to Marvel, a real-time monitoring system for ELK deployments. The past year has been good to Elasticsearch, Inc., which saw revenue growth year over year of over 400% and reached nearly six million cumulative downloads, at a pace of more than 450,000 downloads per month.

About Elasticsearch, Inc.
Elasticsearch is on a mission to make massive amounts of data usable for businesses everywhere by delivering the world's most advanced search and analytics engine available. With a laser focus on achieving the best user experience imaginable, the Elasticsearch ELK stack -- comprised of Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana -- has become one of the most popular and rapidly growing open source solutions in the market. Used by thousands of enterprises in virtually every industry today, Elasticsearch, Inc. provides production support, development support and training for the ELK stack as well as as the commercially available native monitoring solution, Marvel, that gives Elasticsearch users full transparency into the health of their systems.

Elasticsearch, Inc. was founded in 2012 by the people behind the Elasticsearch and Apache Lucene open source projects. Since its initial release, Elasticsearch has nearly six million cumulative downloads. Elasticsearch, Inc. is backed by Benchmark Capital and Index Ventures. Elasticsearch has offices in Amsterdam and Los Altos.

To learn more, visit www.elasticsearch.com.