Caver vs Sumo Logic
Sumo Logic is a fully managed, cloud-only SIEM you rent by the gigabyte and the credit. Caver is a security data platform you own, running on an open lakehouse in your own environment. Here is the honest side by side: what Sumo does well, where Caver wins, and how to decide.
Sumo Logic is the cloud-native answer: a multi-tenant SaaS SIEM where Sumo runs the platform and you write the queries. For a cloud-only shop with steady ingest, that simplicity is genuinely valuable. The honest question is what you trade for it. Where your data lives, what it costs as you grow, and whether you can ever take it with you.
The core difference is ownership. Sumo keeps your data in Sumo’s cloud, in Sumo’s opaque format, priced by ingest volume and consumed credits. You cannot see the storage, run it on-prem, or point another tool at it. Caver stores everything once as OCSF-normalized Parquet on Apache Iceberg in your own object storage, in your own environment, and searches it in place. Compression measured against the same-window raw ingest volume runs about 48:1, and because the format is open your data engineering team can use the same tables for non-SIEM work. There is no per-GB meter and no per-credit conversation waiting for you as you scale.
At a glance
| Sumo Logic | Caver | |
|---|---|---|
| Deployment model | Multi-tenant SaaS only. | Self-hosted in your cloud, on-prem, or air-gapped. |
| License model | Per-GB ingest + per-credit pricing. | Per-deployment commercial license-key. |
| Data residency | Sumo’s chosen regions. | Your chosen environment, your storage account. |
| Storage | Sumo’s. | Your object storage. |
| Cold-tier search | Continuous and frequent tiers; performance varies by tier. | Single object-storage tier, consistent performance. |
| Query languages | Sumo’s own query language plus LogReduce / LogCompare. | SPL + KQL + SQL natively, all on the same backend with a language toggle. Plus AI agents over MCP, Grafana, Trino, Athena over the same OCSF Parquet lake. |
| Content ecosystem | Sumo Apps catalog (vendor-published, varying depth). | Curated vendor packs that ship with dashboards, saved searches, data inputs, and OCSF field mappings. Daily updates. No third-party install. |
| Air-gap deployment | Not supported. | Supported, including for caver-industrial. |
| Custom integration cost | API integration. | Direct repo access in customer environment. |
| OT / ICS coverage | No first-class OT product. The multi-tenant SaaS deployment model is structurally incompatible with air-gapped industrial environments. | caver-industrial: passive deep-packet decoders for BACnet/IP, S7Comm, IEC 60870-5-104, DNP3, Modbus TCP, EtherNet/IP, OPC-UA. Framework alignment for NIST 800-82 + IEC 62443. Air-gap-friendly deploy. Curated industrial threat intel. |
| AI security visibility | Limited. | caver-aisec, purpose-built. |
Sumo’s Cloud SIEM sits on the same managed platform, and its content comes from the Sumo Apps catalog at varying depth. Caver ships the full security platform as one curated product: detection content, correlation and risk-based alerting, SOAR-style playbooks, service analytics, behavioral analytics, caver-aisec for AI-security, and caver-industrial for OT. Underneath, the compute plane was rebuilt in Go and Rust. A vectorized, columnar engine runs SPL, KQL, and SQL directly on the open lake, with partition and predicate pruning and base-search reuse, so cold data stays fast without a hot tier to pay for. See how it works.
Strengths
| Where Sumo Logic wins | Where Caver wins |
|---|---|
| Zero infrastructure operations. Sumo runs the platform. Your team writes queries and reads dashboards. | Data sovereignty. Your data stays in your environment. Important for regulated industries, government work, OT, and any organization with a “data does not leave our infrastructure” policy. |
| MSP and multi-tenant friendliness. Sumo has a strong MSP / managed-service motion built into the product. | Cost trajectory at scale. Per-GB ingest pricing punishes growth. Per-deployment pricing doesn’t. |
| Predictable SaaS economics if your volume is stable. When your ingest doesn’t grow much month-to-month, Sumo’s pricing is straightforward. | Air-gap and on-prem. Sumo cannot run inside an air-gapped industrial network. Caver can. |
| Open storage format. Your data engineering team can use the same parquet / iceberg data for non-SIEM purposes. Sumo’s storage is opaque to you. | |
| Query however you want. SPL, KQL, and SQL natively on the same backend. AI agents over MCP, Grafana, Trino, Athena over the same Parquet lake. Sumo gives you Sumo’s query language. | |
| Content packs that ship complete. Each Caver pack includes dashboards, saved searches, data inputs, and OCSF field mappings, daily-updated. | |
| OT and AI surfaces. caver-industrial and caver-aisec have no Sumo equivalent. |
Because Caver federates and queries in place, you can stand it up alongside an existing Sumo deployment and migrate on your own timeline instead of a big-bang cutover. And once the data is in your object storage in an open format, there is no lock-in: switching engines, adding a data-lake tool, or moving clouds does not start with extracting years of telemetry from someone else’s store.
How to decide
If you’re cloud-native, multi-tenant, and your data-residency requirements don’t matter, Sumo is a reasonable SaaS answer.
If you have regulatory, compliance, or operational reasons to keep data in your own environment, or if your ingest is growing fast enough that per-GB pricing has become an existential conversation, Caver is the structural answer.
If you have OT, ICS, or air-gapped requirements, Caver is the only one of the two that can actually deploy there.
Watching Sumo credits climb, or need data to stay in your own environment? We will scope a Caver pilot against your real data and your real retention targets, and show the federation path so you can migrate on your own timeline.
Email matt@redeyesecurity.com, or read how Caver works first.