The software company Rizhiyi, 'China’s Splunk,' will pour more capital into R&D and ameliorate sales channels to further strengthen its business development ability.
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Rizhiyi (日志易, literally ‘easy logfile’), a log management provider, recently announced that it has completed a Series B round of funding, raising CNY 80 million (USD 11.4 million) from Danhua Capital (DHVC, 丹华资本), Prosperity Investment (盛世投资) and Sequoia Capital China (红杉资本中国). The latter is its prior backer, having led the firm’s CNY 60 million (USD 9.3 million) Series A in 2015.
Founded in 2014, the Beijing-based company produces software in managing complex logs in enterprise information systems, which allows for searching, monitoring, and analyzing machine-generated big data.
At present, IT operations in the Chinese market have gradually shifted from IT Operations Management (ITOM) to IT Operations Analytics (ITOA) on a wide range, where new generations of technology – for example, big data – are being employed.
In a big data environment, a considerable part consists of machine-generated unstructured data, and web-serve logs – which Rizhiyi concentrates on – are a typical type. This data – according to Chen Jun (陈军), founder and CEO of Rizhiyi – is not relational, and thus, does not fit into any sort of pre-defined data model. However, it has an internal structure.
In this case, the unstructured data is hardly searchable in traditional open-source search engines where a ‘Universal Search’ system is applied, and this gives rise to the opportunities fueling Rizhiyi's business.
The company has been independently developing its log search engine – ‘Beaver’ – since 2016, and it was officially launched in November 2018. As compared to open-source search engines, its key performance indicators (KPIs) have significantly improved. In particular, data processing performance has witnessed a 5-10 times increase.
Based on 'Beaver', Rizhiyi builds its end-to-end analysis capacity and integrates smart technologies encompassing machine learning to provide smart log center solutions to clients.
Meanwhile, in combining machine learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI), the log management provider has gradually extended its service to the Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations (AIOps) – launching ‘Lyxness’ in 2017 – and enterprise security scenes, through its corresponding product ‘SIEM’ was released in 2018.
Rizhiyi has served hundreds of clients, which are mainly Key Accounts (KAs) operating in the banking, insurance, securities, energy and mobility industries. These include Bank of China (中国银行, 601988:SH), China Construction Bank (中国建设银行, 601939:SH), China Pacific Insurance Company (中国太平洋保险, 601601:SH), Everbright Securities (光大证券, 601788:SH) and the State Grid Corporation of China (国家电网).In addition, it also provides Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).
At present, the company has broken even.
“Rizhiyi’s team had strong accumulated experience in relevant technologies before they started the business, and has been focused on producing log data software that fits the needs of Chinese clients for five years,” said Zhou Kui (周逵) from Sequoia Capital China. “Though it has been facing strong overseas rivals, the company successfully developed its own market, won the favor of KAs and witnessed rapid business expansions. We are optimistic about Rizhiyi’s future.”