Some clues from Datadog

Datadog has already given 2 investor presentations since their recent earnings. Here's my gleaned tidbits.

JPMorgan Global Tech, Media and Communications investor conf (CEO interview)

  • land through infrastructure monitoring
  • typically called in when cloud migration starts
  • then can add in add'l product like APM or log mgmt
  • now 75% of new lands have 2+ products
  • orig solutions that owned the market don't work in cloud, custs must seek out cloud-native solutions
  • why not use AWS for cloud monitoring? customers are hybrid and multi-cloud
  • primary competition is customers DIY w/ open-source tools
  • most new logos are greenfield, maybe have a on-prem but are just entering cloud
  • custs start in cloud and quickly hit pain points (no visibility, lots of complexity); developers are ones taking the next step to engage
  • go-to-market is bottom up, cycle usually a few months for mid-sized, couple quarters for large
  • 10% of biz negatively affected by pandemic, 10% positively
  • massive increase in traffic, customers had to scale 5-20x overnight; on-prem maxed out and cloud scaled
  • charge by usage/volume, sized by the infrastructure footprint
  • avg yearly rev is 200k/yr for enterprises, 160-170k/yr mid-market, and growing
  • new RUM product seeing good uptake, just started charging for it in Q1
  • with new Security product, just started charging for it
  • want security and ops working together on same platform; it's early days, more on the Security roadmap coming
  • hiring like mad

William Blair Growth Stock investor conf (CFO interview)

  • 5-20% workloads are in cloud - but low % of that is being monitored
  • early days in hybrid rollout
  • pandemic accelerated things
  • new lands mostly greenfield
  • biggest competition is in-house or open source (Elastic)
  • other solutions not cloud-native, but have competitors at points (Splunk)
  • cooperate w/ cloud providers for monitoring their infrastructure
  • not much competition from in-cloud monitoring - custs have hybrid or have multiple cloud vendors
  • trying to be as frictionless as possible; easy to install and test, customers can easily see how it works and see the benefits
  • 10% of custs affected strongly by pandemic, another 10% w/ some impact -- but also 10% w/ strongly positive impact (streaming, food delivery)
  • a lot of volatility in usage but not in overall pattern
  • launched new Partner program in Jan, seeing some success but its early -- thus far been great for geo diversification and getting global system integrators involved
  • 75% of new lands in 2+ products, 63% of all custs
  • $NER been good due to growth of infrastructure, plus existing custs adding new products
  • getting FedRAMP approval this year, should boost govt custs next year
  • on int'l expand, starting to grow in EMEA and now Asia last yr
  • cannot create the trend in new locations - will watch for cloud migration ramping up, and follow it

-muji