Route before you index. Keep the savings.
Most organizations pay analytics-tier pricing for data nobody searches. A vendor-neutral control layer routes high-signal events to your SIEM or APM and sends the rest to cheap open-format storage, replayed on demand.
Why does telemetry cost keep climbing?
A large share of data ingested into SIEM and APM platforms is routine noise with no detection value. Firewall allow logs, bulk DNS queries, successful authentications, and debug output get indexed at the same premium rate as the events that actually drive alerts.
Pricing models add pressure. Splunk renewals carry a roughly 9% annual uplift that compounds year over year. Datadog bills ingest and indexing separately, and custom metrics commonly run 30-52% of a Datadog bill. Sentinel ties commitment tiers to each workspace.
The result is predictable. Margins erode as volume grows, and teams start dropping telemetry to control spend, which opens security and observability blind spots. Your number depends on your environment.
40-70%
Typical ingest reduction once a control layer routes by signal
60-70%
Share of firewall volume that is allow logs nobody searches
30-50%
Duplicate events common across most environments
How do you cut ingest cost without losing data?
You place a vendor-neutral control layer between your data sources and your analytics platform, then route by signal. High-value security and observability events go to your SIEM or APM. Everything else goes to open-format object storage like S3 or Azure Blob at a fraction of analytics-tier pricing.
The data is not lost. It is partitioned by host, application, and time window in low-cost storage, and replayed on demand when an investigation or audit needs it. No full rehydration and no re-indexing fees. We are expert across Splunk, Microsoft Sentinel, Datadog, and Cribl, and we recommend the routing approach that fits your stack.
- Filter noise, duplicates, and oversized fields before indexing so your platform only pays for signal
- Archive verbose data to open-format object storage at a fraction of analytics-tier pricing
- Enrich and normalize events in flight for higher-quality detections and dashboards
- Replay archived slices on demand for investigations and audits without re-indexing the full dataset
- Measure reduction per source and per destination so savings are auditable, not assumed
How does Logmetry deliver this?
Zbigniew Gajuk, our Co-Founder and Chief Observability and Security Architect, leads every engagement with 26+ years of Fortune 500 scale experience. We start with an Architecture Review, recommend the right approach with honest pros and cons, then design and build at the config level. The client chooses the platform.
Frequently asked questions
How much can a control layer cut my SIEM and APM costs?
A typical ingest reduction runs 40-70% depending on data composition, and your number depends on your environment. Published results include Autodesk at 93% data-cost savings and TransUnion at 85%, moving from 1 TB to 150 GB per day. The fastest win is usually firewall allow logs.
Does routing data away from the platform create compliance gaps?
No. All data is preserved in open-format object storage at full fidelity, so retention requirements are met through the archive. You replay specific slices for investigations or audits without re-indexing the full dataset. Your compliance team owns the audit, and the architecture supports it.
Will this work with my existing SIEM or APM?
Yes. The control layer sits in front of your platform, never in place of it, and routes to Splunk, Microsoft Sentinel, Datadog, and S3-compatible storage. It is vendor-neutral by design, so adding or migrating a destination later becomes a routing change rather than a rebuild.
Do you have a real cost-reduction example?
Yes. On an anonymized Fortune 500 healthcare and life-sciences environment of 20,000+ servers across 100+ countries, we cut 37% of log volume into Splunk and 61% on Palo Alto traffic logs, for $192K in year-one savings and about 30% ongoing license and storage savings. Your number depends on your environment.
Ready to explore this further?
Let's discuss how this applies to your environment.
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