Problem
As a Software as a Service grows, the need for audit logs increases. It’s great to have internally, but also your customers will ask for it eventually - not having them can be a reason they move to a competitor.
If you’re not familiar with audit logs, they look like this:
2021-10-10 12:34:12 :
bob
logged in to the Admin Dashboard from IP address 1.2.3.4.2021-10-10 12:34:20:
bob
addedalice
to the Admin user group.2021-10-10 12:36:07:
alice
modifieduser.fred.telephone_number
.
Implementing audit logs is something that many businesses go through at considerable engineering cost and time.
Solution
Audit Logs as a Service.
Customers send their events through an API, the service collects them and provides a UI for customers to view their logs, as well as an API to query them.
Likely many customers will want to self-host this service as audit logs can be very sensitive information.
Business Model
A subscription model that is based on usage makes sense, with self-hosted deployments costing more.