Executive Summary
Organizations today operate in increasingly complex, data‑intensive environments where security teams must manage growing volumes of logs, alerts, and compliance obligations while operating with limited resources. Traditional security information and event management (SIEM) platforms often struggle to keep pace, requiring significant administrative overhead. They also constrain data ingestion due to cost and force analysts to work across fragmented tools and datasets. As a result, organizations face challenges in maintaining visibility, quickly responding to incidents, and efficiently scaling their security operations. To address these pressures, organizations are seeking solutions that are less cost-prohibitive, simplify data access, improve analyst experience (AX) and productivity, and reduce operational complexity.
The Gravwell Security Data Platform (SDP) is a log analytics solution designed to ingest, store, and analyze large volumes of machine data without requiring rigid data normalization at ingestion. It provides organizations with a centralized environment to search, correlate, and analyze data across diverse sources, including identity systems, endpoints, network infrastructure, cloud applications, custom-built applications, and other nonstandard or proprietary data sources. By enabling flexible data ingestion, powerful query capabilities, and a scalable architecture, the platform supports a range of use cases, including security investigations, detection engineering, compliance reporting, and broader operational analytics, while also reducing the administrative overhead typically associated with traditional SIEM platforms.
Gravwell commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study and examine the potential return on investment (ROI) enterprises may realize by deploying the Gravwell Security Data Platform (Gravwell SDP).1 The purpose of this study is to provide readers with a framework to evaluate the potential financial impact of the Gravwell SDP on their organizations.
To better understand the benefits, costs, and risks associated with this investment, Forrester interviewed four decision-makers with experience using the Gravwell Security Data Platform. For the purposes of this study, Forrester aggregated the experiences of the interviewees and combined the results into a single composite organization, which is a midsize, regulated organization supporting tens of thousands of users across its operations.
Prior to implementing the Gravwell SDP, interviewees reported relying on legacy SIEM and log management platforms that required significant maintenance effort and limited their ability to fully utilize available data. Security teams worked across multiple tools to collect and correlate information, often spending hours gathering and validating data before reaching conclusions. Ingest-based pricing models forced organizations to limit data collection, reducing visibility and constraining detection capabilities. In addition, maintaining ingestion pipelines, schemas, and reporting workflows required ongoing engineering effort, further limiting already constrained security teams.
After implementing the Gravwell platform, interviewees reported improved visibility across their environments by centralizing access to data in a single platform. Analysts were able to more efficiently correlate data across systems, reducing the time required to investigate incidents, build and maintain detections, and respond to compliance requests. Organizations also ingested more data without cost penalties, improving coverage and reducing reliance on filtering or sampling. At the same time, reduced administrative overhead allowed teams to shift focus from platform maintenance to analysis and response.
Key Findings
Quantified benefits. Three-year, risk-adjusted present value (PV) quantified benefits for the composite organization include:
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Improved security analyst productivity. The composite organization improves overall SOC team productivity by using the Gravwell SDP to centralize log access, streamline investigations, simplify detection and alert management, and reduce time spent reviewing low-value alerts and false positives. Analysts, detection engineers, and platform engineers no longer spend significant time switching between tools, manually correlating data, or maintaining ingestion pipelines and schemas. Instead, they operate within a unified environment that enables faster investigations and more efficient detection engineering. These improvements reduce the composite’s investigation effort, accelerate alert development, and significantly lower ongoing administrative overhead. Over three years, these efficiencies deliver approximately $288,000 in value.
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Accelerated compliance, audit, and regulated reporting response. The composite organization improves the efficiency of compliance and audit activities by centralizing access to historical data and simplifying evidence collection. Analysts can retrieve, correlate, and export required data from a single platform rather than coordinating across multiple systems. These improvements reduce the time required to respond to audits, legal requests, and regulatory inquiries. Over three years, these efficiencies are worth approximately $44,000 to the composite.
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Reduced SIEM licensing and platform costs. The composite organization reduces platform costs by replacing a legacy SIEM with Gravwell’s predictable licensing model. Instead of incurring escalating costs tied to data ingestion, the organization ingests and analyzes data without incremental cost penalties. This shift improves visibility while reducing overall spend. Over three years, these savings total approximately $694,000.
Unquantified benefits. Benefits that provide value for the composite organization but are not quantified for this study include:
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Improved overall security posture. The composite organization strengthens its overall security posture by adopting the Gravwell SDP to ingest and retain a more complete set of data, expand detection coverage, and improve the speed and quality of investigations through centralized visibility. Enabled in part by the platform’s structure-on-read model, the organization can ingest data without rigid schema requirements or upfront normalization, allowing broader and more flexible data collection. Instead of limiting data collection due to cost constraints or managing fragmented datasets, the organization analyzes a more complete log set and can query historical data to investigate incidents more thoroughly. These improvements reduce visibility gaps, increase confidence in detection and response, and enable the organization to more effectively identify and respond to potential threats.
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Greater team scalability. The composite organization improves team scalability by adopting the Gravwell SDP to reduce manual effort across investigations, detection development, and platform maintenance. These efficiencies are further enhanced by enabling automation across investigation workflows, reporting, and detection processes, reducing reliance on repetitive manual tasks. Together, these improvements allow a relatively small security team to manage increasing workloads without adding headcount. By shifting time away from data collection and platform maintenance toward higher-value analytical activities, the organization increases productivity per analyst. This allows it to expand use cases and support additional stakeholders while scaling operations without proportional increases in staffing.
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Predictable cost structure. The composite organization benefits from a more predictable cost structure by replacing ingest-based pricing with Gravwell’s licensing model, eliminating the risk of unexpected overage fees. Instead of restricting data collection to manage costs, the organization ingests all relevant data without incurring incremental charges, removing the trade-off between visibility and spend. This supports more accurate budgeting and enables the composite organization to align platform costs more closely with the value derived from its security data.
Costs. Three-year, risk-adjusted PV costs for the composite organization include:
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Initial implementation and subscription costs. The composite organization incurs ongoing subscription costs to access the Gravwell SDP’s capabilities, along with a relatively limited level of internal effort to deploy, configure, and operationalize the platform. In total, these costs amount to $282,000 over three years.
The financial analysis that is based on the interviews found that a composite organization experiences benefits of $1.0 million over three years versus costs of $282,000, adding up to a net present value (NPV) of $743,000 and an ROI of 264%.
Key Statistics
264%
Return on investment (ROI)
$1.0M
Benefits PV
$743K
Net present value (NPV)
<6 months
Payback
Benefits (Three-Year)
The Gravwell Security Data Platform Customer Journey
Drivers leading to the Gravwell SDP investment
Interviews
| Role | Industry | Region | Users/Endpoints |
|---|---|---|---|
| Director of information security | Private academic institution | North America | 12,000 |
| Information security analyst | Public research university | North America | 40,000 |
| Senior threat response engineer | Financial services organization | North America | 2,700 |
| Security and compliance lead | Cloud services provider | North America | Hundreds of thousands |
Key Challenges
Prior to adopting the Gravwell platform, interviewees reported that their organizations relied on traditional SIEM platforms that introduced several structural limitations. These legacy systems enforced event-ingestion caps tied to licensing models, which constrained how much data organizations could collect and, in some cases, resulted in dropped logs and incomplete visibility into security events.
Interviewees also described high and inflexible costs associated with licensing and vendor-controlled infrastructure. These constraints limited their organizations’ ability to scale capacity or expand use cases. As a result, security teams selectively ingested data, operated with fragmented visibility across multiple tools, and accepted trade-offs between coverage, performance, and cost. Over time, these limitations reduced investigation efficiency and lowered confidence in detecting critical threats.
Due to these constraints, security teams regularly made trade-offs between data coverage and operational performance. They prioritized the most critical log sources while limiting or excluding additional data that would have provided broader visibility and investigative context. In some cases, ingest limits resulted in dropped logs, creating concerns that important security activity could go undetected. This increased reliance on manual correlation across systems and made it difficult to keep pace with growing data volumes and evolving security requirements.
Specifically, interviewees identified the following challenges:
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Fragmented investigation workflows, which required analysts to gather and correlate data across multiple tools and systems.
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High administrative overhead, including time spent managing ingestion pipelines, schemas, and SIEM infrastructure.
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Limited data visibility driven by ingest-based pricing models that restricted the volume and type of data collected.
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Slow investigation and response times caused by manual data collection and validation processes.
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Inefficient detection development, with complex and time-consuming rule creation.
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Labor-intensive reporting processes, particularly for compliance, audit, and legal requests.
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Escalating and unpredictable costs tied to data ingestion volumes and licensing models.
Investment Objectives
To address these challenges, interviewees reported that their organizations sought solutions that would improve efficiency, visibility, and scalability across security and operational workflows. Their key objectives included:
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Improving investigation speed and efficiency by enabling centralized access to relevant data.
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Increasing data visibility and coverage without incurring additional cost constraints.
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Reducing administrative burden associated with managing SIEM infrastructure and ingestion pipelines.
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Simplifying and accelerating detection creation and maintenance.
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Streamlining compliance, audit, and reporting workflows.
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Achieving predictable costs by eliminating ingest-based pricing volatility.
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Enabling scalability without increasing headcount, allowing lean teams to handle growing workloads.
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Creating a flexible data foundation to support evolving use cases and advanced analytics.
After evaluating multiple solutions, interviewees reported that their organizations selected Gravwell based on its ability to ingest data without volume-based cost constraints and reduce operational complexity.
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Three interviewees reported evaluating Gravwell alongside traditional SIEM platforms, ultimately selecting it due to its flexible data ingestion model, structure-on-read architecture that eliminates rigid schemas at ingestion, and lower operational overhead.
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Two interviewees reported conducting structured evaluations, including proof-of-concept deployments, to validate ingestion capabilities, usability, and integration with existing environments.
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Interviewees described focusing migration efforts on replicating existing use cases, dashboards, and data sources from legacy platforms. Vendor support accelerated this process and reduced internal effort.
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One interviewee described a phased onboarding approach, initially prioritizing key log sources and use cases, then expanding coverage over time as the organization onboarded additional data sources.
Composite Organization
Based on the interviews, Forrester constructed a composite organization to represent the typical characteristics and experiences described. The composite organization is representative of the interviewees’ organizations, and it is used to present the aggregate financial analysis in the next section. The composite organization has the following characteristics:
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Description of composite. The composite organization represents a midsize regulated enterprise supporting tens of thousands of users across a complex environment consisting of legacy systems, cloud platforms, SaaS applications, identity services, and network infrastructure. The organization operates in a log-intensive environment with enterprise-level security requirements but constrained staffing and budget relative to its scale.
The security team consists of four dedicated analysts with established processes for investigation, alerting, and compliance reporting.
Prior to implementing the Gravwell SDP, the organization relied on a traditional SIEM platform that was costly to operate, complex to maintain, and constrained by ingest-based pricing models. These limitations forced the team to selectively ingest data, rely on multiple tools for investigations, and dedicate significant time to maintaining ingestion pipelines and reporting workflows. As a result, the organization struggled to maintain comprehensive visibility, respond quickly to incidents, and scale operations alongside increasing data volumes. -
Deployment characteristics. The composite organization deploys Gravwell as a SaaS-based platform to serve as a centralized log analytics environment and security data lake. It integrates data across systems and enables the organization to ingest and analyze all relevant data without ingest-based cost constraints.
The security team used Gravwell as its primary platform for:
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Security investigations.
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Detection engineering.
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Compliance reporting.
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Operational analytics.
Onboarding is supported by Gravwell’s mission support team, which helps accelerate migration from the legacy SIEM platform. This includes replicating existing use cases and ensuring a smooth transition.
KEY ASSUMPTIONS
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Four security analysts
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Tens of thousands of users or identities
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More than 9,000 endpoints, servers, and cloud resources
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Log ingest volumes of hundreds of gigabytes per day
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SaaS-based deployment
Analysis Of Benefits
Quantified benefit data as applied to the composite
Total Benefits
| Ref. | Benefit | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | Total | Present Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Atr | Improved security analyst productivity | $95,539 | $127,386 | $127,386 | $350,312 | $287,839 |
| Btr | Accelerated compliance, audit, and regulated reporting response | $17,496 | $17,496 | $17,496 | $52,488 | $43,510 |
| Ctr | Reduced SIEM licensing and platform costs | $279,000 | $279,000 | $279,000 | $837,000 | $693,832 |
| Total benefits (risk-adjusted) | $392,035 | $423,882 | $423,882 | $1,239,800 | $1,025,181 |
Improved Security Analyst Productivity
Evidence and data. Across the interviews, participants reported productivity gains in three areas: faster security investigations, more efficient alert and detection creation, and reduced SIEM administration effort. Together, these improvements reduced the time analysts spent gathering data, configuring detections, and maintaining the legacy environment.
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Savings from faster security incident investigation. Interviewees reported that Gravwell improved investigation efficiency by replacing fragmented, manual workflows with a centralized, query-driven process. Prior to adopting the Gravwell SDP, analysts at their organizations spent significant time gathering data from multiple tools, requesting logs from other teams, and manually correlating information before they could validate an event. The information security analyst at the public research university explained: “Before, I had to go through every single portal, grab all the data, and parse it manually. That took almost two full business days. Having it in one place reduces that time to about half a day, and sometimes even less.”
After implementing the Gravwell platform, interviewees said analysts at their organizations could query identity, endpoint, SaaS, network, and infrastructure data in one environment. This allowed them to move more quickly from alert triage to incident validation because the data needed to investigate a case was already centralized and accessible. As a result, interviewees reported shorter evidence-gathering cycles, faster triage, and less time spent determining whether an event required escalation. The director of information security at the private academic institution said: “We have real-time insight now. As we ingest logs, we can analyze them and get alerts in real time, which lets us react faster, triage faster, and understand incidents much more quickly than before.”
Interviewees also said these workflow improvements reduced the effort required to validate false positives and supported faster handling of identity anomalies, access issues, incident response events, and MDR- or SIEM-triggered investigations.
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Savings from faster alert and detection creation. Interviewees also reported productivity gains from faster alert and detection development. Prior to Gravwell, they said analysts at their organizations often spent hours — and in some cases most of a day — creating or modifying a single detection because legacy SIEM workflows required multiple configuration steps, dependencies, and platform-specific rule structures.
After adopting Gravwell’s SDP, interviewees said their organizations used a more flexible query-based approach to build and maintain detections. They reported that analysts could more quickly create and modify detections by working in a centralized environment and reusing logic across workflows. This reduced the engineering effort required to operationalize new use cases and bring detections into production. The senior threat response engineer at the financial services organization explained: “Before, we were very limited in what we could ingest, so there were things we just couldn’t monitor. Now we can bring everything in and build the alerts we actually need instead of missing things.”
Interviewees also said the Gravwell platform gave their organizations greater flexibility to create more environment-specific and precise detections. They emphasized that, while the financial model captures direct time savings from creation and modification, the operational benefit also included better-aligned detection logic and less analyst time spent reviewing low-value alerts. The information security analyst at the public research university noted: “With the ability to ingest everything, we can now preemptively set automation thresholds. Before, we wouldn’t even be notified unless something had already happened, but now we can actually detect things earlier.”
While the financial model captures the direct time savings from faster detection creation and modification, the interviewees emphasized that these improvements also contribute to higher‑quality detection logic, which can reduce unnecessary alert noise and improve downstream analyst efficiency. This includes a reduction in the amount of false positives and irrelevant alerts that analysts need to triage. Together, these changes enable teams at their organizations to more efficiently create, tune, and maintain detections while expanding coverage and supporting more effective investigation workflows.
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Savings from reduced SIEM administration and maintenance effort. Interviewees said their organizations also reduced SIEM administration and maintenance effort after adopting Gravwell. Prior to deployment, teams spent significant time maintaining ingestion pipelines, troubleshooting formatting issues, and ensuring that logs conformed to rigid schemas. When upstream data changed, pipelines often required manual intervention to keep data flowing and usable.
Interviewees reported that Gravwell reduced this burden by enabling teams to structure and interpret data at query time rather than requiring heavy preprocessing at ingest. As a result, their organizations spent less time managing schemas, parsers, and ingestion mappings and less time troubleshooting broken pipelines. The information security analyst at the public research university said, ”We’re not having to normalize everything before it comes in, which saves us a ton of time compared to the way we had to manage data before.”
Interviewees emphasized that these changes materially reduced recurring operational overhead. The security and compliance lead at the cloud services provider noted: “The ongoing maintenance is honestly very minimal. It’s less than an hour per month to keep everything running the way we need it.”
Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:
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The composite organization conducts an average of 20 labor-intensive security investigations per week, including investigations initiated by security alerts such as identity anomalies, access issues, MDR-triggered cases, and other events requiring significant analyst time to review.
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Before Gravwell, each investigation requires an average of 3 hours, reflecting the time needed to gather, correlate, and validate data across multiple systems.
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Gravwell reduces investigation time by 65% through centralized data access, faster querying, and more efficient workflows.
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A fully burdened hourly rate of $75 is applied to security-related personnel. This rate includes salary, benefits, and overhead.
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The composite organization creates or materially updates approximately 24 detections or alerts per year, reflecting ongoing tuning of detection logic to respond to evolving threats and compliance requirements.
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Before Gravwell, each detection requires an average of 6 hours to create or materially modify.
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Gravwell reduces detection development time by 70% by simplifying rule creation and reducing dependency on complex platform configurations.
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Prior to deploying Gravwell SDP, the composite organization spent 15 hours per week on SIEM administration activities, including patching, ingestion management, troubleshooting, and maintenance related to the legacy platform.
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Gravwell reduces ongoing SIEM administration effort by 90% because the platform requires less operational maintenance.
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The model applies a 75% realization factor in Year 1 and 100% in Years 2 and 3 to reflect onboarding, training, and operational adoption.
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The model assumes a 75% productivity recapture rate, recognizing that not all time savings are converted into fully redeployable capacity.
Risks. Forrester recognizes that these results may not be representative of all experiences. The following factors may impact this benefit:
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Investigation times may still vary significantly depending on the complexity of each case.
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Teams may require time to standardize workflows and consistently realize productivity improvements.
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Some organizations may not fully invest in building and tuning detection rules, which could limit measurable gains.
Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 20%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $288,000.
65%
Reduction in security alert investigation time
70%
Reduction in alert creation time
90%
Reduction in SIEM maintenance effort
Improved Security Analyst Productivity
| Ref. | Metric | Source | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A1 | Security investigations per week | Interviews | 20 | 20 | 20 | ||
| A2 | Average time per security investigation before Gravwell (hours) | Composite | 3.0 | 3.0 | 3.0 | ||
| A3 | Reduction in security alert investigation time with Gravwell SDP | Composite | 65% | 65% | 65% | ||
| A4 | Fully burdened hourly rate for security-related personnel | Composite | $75 | $75 | $75 | ||
| A5 | Subtotal: Savings from faster security incident investigation | A1*52*A2*A3*A4 | $152,100 | $152,100 | $152,100 | ||
| A6 | Detections/alerts created or materially modified per year | Composite | 24 | 24 | 24 | ||
| A7 | Average time per detection before Gravwell (hours) | Composite | 6.0 | 6.0 | 6.0 | ||
| A8 | Reduction in alert creation time with Gravwell SDP | Composite | 70% | 70% | 70% | ||
| A9 | Subtotal: Savings from faster alert and detection creation | A4*A6*A7*A8 | $7,560 | $7,560 | $7,560 | ||
| A10 | Average time per week maintaining legacy SIEM (hours) | Composite | 15 | 15 | 15 | ||
| A11 | Reduction in maintenance time with the Gravwell SDP | Composite | 90% | 90% | 90% | ||
| A12 | Subtotal: Savings from reduced SIEM administration and maintenance effort | A4*A10*52*A11 | $52,650 | $52,650 | $52,650 | ||
| A13 | Benefit realization ramp | Interviews | 75% | 100% | 100% | ||
| A14 | Productivity recapture | TEI methodology | 75% | 75% | 75% | ||
| At | Improved security analyst productivity | (A5+A9+A12)*A13*A14 | $119,424 | $159,233 | $159,233 | ||
| Risk adjustment | ↓20% | ||||||
| Atr | Improved security analyst productivity (risk-adjusted) | $95,539 | $127,386 | $127,386 | |||
| Three-year total: $350,312 | Three-year present value: $287,839 | ||||||
Accelerated Compliance, Audit, And Regulated Reporting Response
Evidence and data. Interviewees reported that their organizations improved the efficiency of compliance, audit, legal, and regulated reporting activities by centralizing access to historical data in Gravwell. Prior to adopting the platform, responding to requests such as audits, subpoenas, and regulatory inquiries required manual, cross-team coordination. Analysts had to gather data from multiple systems, validate it, and compile it into usable formats, which significantly increased effort and response time. The senior threat response engineer at the financial services organization explained: “We had reports that required us to go to multiple tools, export the data, and then manipulate it to get what we wanted. It was a very manual process that could take hours each time.”
After implementing Gravwell, interviewees said analysts at their organizations could retrieve, correlate, and export the required data from a single platform. They reported that this centralized access reduced the need for cross-team coordination and eliminated much of the manual data validation and formatting effort. As a result, teams responded to audit and legal requests more quickly and with less effort. The same senior threat response engineer described the improvement: “I set up automated reports in the Gravwell platform, and what used to be a manual 2- or 3-hour process is now handled automatically. I don’t even have to think about it anymore.”
Interviewees emphasized that these activities were typically episodic but high-effort, meaning they did not occur continuously but required significant time when they did. Even though these events were periodic, reducing effort per request generated meaningful productivity gains over time. The security and compliance lead at the cloud services provider explained the operational impact. They said, “Having a single source of truth for all the data makes it much easier to support operational and compliance requirements, because you’re not trying to piece things together from different systems.”
Similarly, the information security analyst at the public research university described the improvement in response workflows. They shared, “With everything centralized, instead of scrambling to gather data from different systems, we can just run the query and get what we need much more quickly.”
Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:
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The composite organization completes 24 compliance, audit, legal, or regulated reporting requests per year.
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Before adopting Gravwell, each request requires an average of 18 hours to complete. This includes collecting data from multiple systems, coordinating across teams, validating information, and compiling reports.
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Gravwell reduces effort per request by 80% by enabling centralized data access, query-based retrieval, and automated reporting.
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A fully burdened hourly rate of $75 is applied to personnel involved in compliance and reporting activities.
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The model assumes a 75% productivity recapture rate, recognizing that not all time savings are converted into fully redeployable capacity.
Risks. Forrester recognizes that results will vary across organizations. This benefit may be affected by the following factors:
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The volume and complexity of audit and legal requests may differ significantly.
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Some reports may still require manual validation or formatting, particularly in highly regulated environments.
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Organizations may need to refine reporting workflows to fully realize efficiency gains.
Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 10%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $44,000.
80%
Reduction in compliance, audit, and reporting effort per request
Accelerated Compliance, Audit, And Regulated Reporting Response
| Ref. | Metric | Source | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| B1 | Compliance, audit, and legal or regulated reporting-related requests | Composite | 24 | 24 | 24 | |
| B2 | Average time per request before Gravwell (hours) | Composite | 18 | 18 | 18 | |
| B3 | Reduction in response time with Gravwell | Composite | 80% | 80% | 80% | |
| B4 | Productivity recapture | TEI methodology | 75% | 75% | 75% | |
| Bt | Accelerated compliance, audit, and regulated reporting response | B1*B2*B3*A4*B4 | $19,440 | $19,440 | $19,440 | |
| Risk adjustment | ↓10% | |||||
| Btr | Accelerated compliance, audit, and regulated reporting response (risk-adjusted) | $17,496 | $17,496 | $17,496 | ||
| Three-year total: $52,488 | Three-year present value: $43,510 | |||||
Reduced SIEM Licensing And Platform Costs
Evidence and data. Interviewees reported that their organizations reduced SIEM and platform costs by replacing legacy solutions that used ingest- or capacity-based pricing models with Gravwell’s more predictable licensing structure. Prior to adopting the Gravwell SDP, interviewees said their organizations experienced high and unpredictable costs as data volumes increased. Legacy platforms tied pricing directly to ingestion levels or processing capacity, which forced teams to either limit data collection or incur additional costs to maintain visibility. The information security analyst at the public research university explained: “The previous system was rate-limited and tied to ingestion thresholds. With Gravwell, we don’t pay extra for ingesting more data — we can bring in everything up to the limits of our hardware.”
Interviewees also noted that legacy SIEM environments often required additional licensing components or infrastructure investments to support scaling. These requirements increased total cost of ownership and made it difficult to align platform costs with the value derived from the data.
After implementing Gravwell, interviewees said their organizations eliminated ingest-driven cost constraints and shifted to a more predictable pricing model. This allowed them to increase data ingestion and expand visibility without incurring incremental licensing costs.
The senior threat response engineer at the financial services organization where the Gravwell SDP was implemented on-premises explained: “The most recent invoice we had for [our previous on-premises system] was about $372,000 a year. With the Gravwell offering, we’re paying [less than a third per year for the license], and even with hardware costs, it just doesn’t compare. At the same time, we’re ingesting about twice as much data as before.”
Interviewees also emphasized that their organizations were able to fully transition away from legacy SIEM platforms after migration. This eliminated overlapping system costs and allowed the new platform to replace the prior solution entirely.
The information security analyst at the public research university summarized the benefit: “Other solutions change cost based on how much data you ingest. With Gravwell, our costs stay consistent, which makes it much easier to plan and budget.”
Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:
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The composite organization replaces a legacy SIEM platform costing approximately $310,000 per year.
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Cost savings are realized immediately once the legacy system is retired and no longer incurs licensing or associated platform costs.
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Unlike productivity-related benefits, these savings do not depend on gradual adoption or workflow maturity. They reflect the direct elimination of an existing cost.
Risks. Forrester recognizes that cost outcomes may vary based on organizational circumstances. This benefit may be affected by the following factors:
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Contract terms, renewal cycles, and timing of SIEM decommissioning may delay full cost savings.
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Some organizations may operate legacy and new systems in parallel during transition periods.
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Deployment model differences (for example, SaaS versus on-premises) may affect total cost outcomes.
Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 10%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $694,000.
> 60%
Reduced SIEM costs
Reduced SIEM Licensing And Platform Costs
| Ref. | Metric | Source | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| C1 | Cost of the legacy SIEM platform | Interviews | $310,000 | $310,000 | $310,000 | |
| Ct | Reduced SIEM licensing and platform costs | C1 | $310,000 | $310,000 | $310,000 | |
| Risk adjustment | ↓10% | |||||
| Ctr | Reduced SIEM licensing and platform costs (risk-adjusted) | $279,000 | $279,000 | $279,000 | ||
| Three-year total: $837,000 | Three-year present value: $693,832 | |||||
Unquantified Benefits
Interviewees mentioned the following additional benefits that their organizations experienced but were not able to quantify:
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Improved overall security posture. The Gravwell SDP enhanced organizations’ overall security posture by increasing visibility across systems, reducing data gaps, and improving investigation efficiency. Interviewees described how the ability to ingest and retain larger volumes of data reduced blind spots and allowed teams to conduct more thorough and effective investigations. The senior threat response engineer at the financial services organization said: “It was kind of scary, because we were dropping logs and wondering if the bad stuff was in those logs. Now we can ingest everything and know we’re not missing anything important. Things don’t always get discovered right away, so having the ability to retain more log data and go back further really improves how we investigate and respond to incidents.”
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Greater team scalability. The Gravwell SDP improved teams’ ability to manage growing workloads by reducing manual effort associated with investigations, detection engineering, and platform maintenance. Interviewees noted that consolidating data and simplifying access enabled teams to operate more efficiently and handle increased data volumes without adding complexity. The director of information security at the private academic institution said, “The Gravwell platform greatly expanded our capabilities, and we were able to do more with the same team instead of spending time just maintaining the platform.” Similarly, the information security analyst at the public research university said: “With everything in one place, instead of scrambling and manually gathering data, we can just run a query and move on. It saves time and lets us handle more work without the same level of effort.”
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Predictable costs and elimination of ingest-based pricing risk. The Gravwell SDP provided more predictable cost structures by removing ingest-based pricing constraints. Interviewees reported that this reduced uncertainty associated with data growth and allowed them to ingest the data they needed without adjusting usage based on pricing thresholds. The information security analyst at the public research university explained, “With Gravwell’s platform, we don’t pay extra for ingesting more data, so we can actually bring in everything we need without worrying about cost spikes.”
Flexibility
The value of flexibility is unique to each organization. Interviewees described several potential future scenarios in which the Gravwell SDP could enable additional use cases and business opportunities, including:
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Expansion of data ingestion and use cases without rearchitecting the platform. Interviewees reported that the Gravwell platform provided flexibility to expand use cases over time without requiring rearchitecture. By enabling teams to ingest and analyze diverse data sources without rigid schema requirements, organizations were able to more easily integrate legacy and modern systems and reduce the effort required to onboard new data. The information security analyst at the public research university said: “We’ve got software from the ’80s, the ’90s, and systems that don’t integrate well, and the Gravwell SDP just finds a way to get all of it, or almost all of it, into one place. We’re not having to normalize everything before it comes in, which saves us a ton of time and makes it much easier to bring in new data sources.”
Interviewees noted that this flexibility positioned their organizations to extend usage beyond core SIEM functions into broader operational and analytical scenarios over time, including operational visibility and cross-system reporting. -
Enablement of advanced analytics, automation, and future innovation. Interviewees also described how this flexibility created opportunities to support evolving investigative and reporting needs and to improve how teams used and analyzed data. The senior threat response engineer at the financial services organization explained: “With the Gravwell platform, we were able to ingest data in one place and query exactly what we wanted, which gave us a lot more flexibility in how we investigated and used the data. Some of these reports — where we had to pull multiple spreadsheets and combine them manually — would have been very difficult before.”
Interviewees reported that centralizing accessible, queryable data created opportunities to increase automation and adopt more advanced analytics capabilities, including emerging AI-enabled approaches. As a result, they emphasized the long-term value of expanding the use of existing data and enabling more advanced use cases without additional platform investment.
Flexibility would also be quantified when evaluated as part of a specific project (described in more detail in Total Economic Impact Approach).
Analysis Of Costs
Quantified cost data as applied to the composite
Total Costs
| Ref. | Cost | Initial | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | Total | Present Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dtr | Gravwell SDP costs | $8,250 | $110,000 | $110,000 | $110,000 | $338,250 | $281,804 |
| Total costs (risk-adjusted) | $8,250 | $110,000 | $110,000 | $110,000 | $338,250 | $281,804 |
Gravwell SDP Costs
Evidence and data. Interviewees described their organizations’ implementation of the Gravwell SDP as requiring a combination of internal support and collaboration with Gravwell’s implementation and mission support teams. They indicated that initial deployment activities were relatively quick, followed by additional effort to onboard data sources, validate ingestion, and tune queries and workflows. As the security and compliance lead at the cloud services provider explained: “The bulk of the primary deployment took us about two months. A lot of the setup goes quickly, but then you spend time making sure ingestion is accurate and tuning things as you go.”
Across the interviews, participants indicated that their security teams contributed a defined but manageable level of internal effort to support the transition from legacy SIEM platforms, including assisting the Gravwell mission support team with data migration, configuration, and validation. In addition to this implementation effort, interviewees noted that their organizations incur ongoing subscription costs for Gravwell SDP, which represent the primary recurring expense associated with the solution.
Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:
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The composite organization pays an annual subscription fee of $100,000 for the Gravwell platform.
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Its security analyst team invests 100 hours, combined, in assisting Gravwell’s implementation team to transition from the legacy SIEM and deploy the Gravwell SDP.
Risks. Forrester recognizes that these results may not be representative of all experiences. The following factors may impact this cost:
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Pricing variability. The pricing included in this study is intended to support directional economic modeling and should not be interpreted as list pricing or a proxy for fees paid by all organizations. Gravwell SDP pricing varies based on factors such as deployment scale, data volume, infrastructure model (on‑premises vs. cloud), and support requirements. Organizations should contact Gravwell directly for detailed pricing tailored to their environment.
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Implementation effort variability. The level of internal effort required for deployment may vary depending on the complexity of the existing environment, the number of data sources being onboarded, and the level of coordination required across IT and security teams.
Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this cost upward by 10%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $282,000.
Gravwell SDP Costs
| Ref. | Metric | Source | Initial | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| D1 | Subscription fee | Composite | $100,000 | $100,000 | $100,000 | |
| D2 | Internal implementation effort | A4*100 | $7,500 | |||
| Dt | Gravwell SDP costs | D1+D2 | $7,500 | $100,000 | $100,000 | $100,000 |
| Risk adjustment | ↑10% | |||||
| Dtr | Gravwell SDP costs (risk-adjusted) | $8,250 | $110,000 | $110,000 | $110,000 | |
| Three-year total: $338,250 | Three-year present value: $281,804 | |||||
Financial Summary
Consolidated Three-Year, Risk-Adjusted Metrics
Cash Flow Chart (Risk-Adjusted)
Cash Flow Analysis (Risk-Adjusted)
| Initial | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | Total | Present Value | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total costs | ($8,250) | ($110,000) | ($110,000) | ($110,000) | ($338,250) | ($281,804) |
| Total benefits | $0 | $392,035 | $423,882 | $423,882 | $1,239,800 | $1,025,181 |
| Net benefits | ($8,250) | $282,035 | $313,882 | $313,882 | $901,550 | $743,377 |
| ROI | 264% | |||||
| Payback | <6 months |
Please Note
The financial results calculated in the Benefits and Costs sections can be used to determine the ROI, NPV, and payback period for the composite organization’s investment. Forrester assumes a yearly discount rate of 10% for this analysis.
These risk-adjusted ROI, NPV, and payback period values are determined by applying risk-adjustment factors to the unadjusted results in each Benefit and Cost section.
The initial investment column contains costs incurred at “time 0” or at the beginning of Year 1 that are not discounted. All other cash flows are discounted using the discount rate at the end of the year. PV calculations are calculated for each total cost and benefit estimate. NPV calculations in the summary tables are the sum of the initial investment and the discounted cash flows in each year. Sums and present value calculations of the Total Benefits, Total Costs, and Cash Flow tables may not exactly add up, as some rounding may occur.
From the information provided in the interviews, Forrester constructed a Total Economic Impact™ framework for those organizations considering an investment in the Gravwell Security Data Platform.
The objective of the framework is to identify the cost, benefit, flexibility, and risk factors that affect the investment decision. Forrester took a multistep approach to evaluate the impact that the Gravwell platform can have on an organization.
Due Diligence
Interviewed Gravwell stakeholders and Forrester analysts to gather data relative to Security Data Platform.
Interviews
Interviewed four decision-makers at organizations using the Gravwell SDP platform to obtain data about costs, benefits, and risks.
Composite Organization
Designed a composite organization based on characteristics of the interviewees’ organizations.
Financial Model Framework
Constructed a financial model representative of the interviews using the TEI methodology and risk-adjusted the financial model based on issues and concerns of the interviewees.
Case Study
Employed four fundamental elements of TEI in modeling the investment impact: benefits, costs, flexibility, and risks. Given the increasing sophistication of ROI analyses related to IT investments, Forrester’s TEI methodology provides a complete picture of the total economic impact of purchase decisions. Please see Appendix A for additional information on the TEI methodology.
Total Economic Impact Approach
Benefits
Benefits represent the value the solution delivers to the business. The TEI methodology places equal weight on the measure of benefits and costs, allowing for a full examination of the solution’s effect on the entire organization.
Costs
Costs comprise all expenses necessary to deliver the proposed value, or benefits, of the solution. The methodology captures implementation and ongoing costs associated with the solution.
Flexibility
Flexibility represents the strategic value that can be obtained for some future additional investment building on top of the initial investment already made. The ability to capture that benefit has a PV that can be estimated.
Risks
Risks measure the uncertainty of benefit and cost estimates given: 1) the likelihood that estimates will meet original projections and 2) the likelihood that estimates will be tracked over time. TEI risk factors are based on “triangular distribution.”
Financial Terminology
Present value (PV)
The present or current value of (discounted) cost and benefit estimates given at an interest rate (the discount rate). The PVs of costs and benefits feed into the total NPV of cash flows.
Net present value (NPV)
The present or current value of (discounted) future net cash flows given an interest rate (the discount rate). A positive project NPV normally indicates that the investment should be made unless other projects have higher NPVs.
Return on investment (ROI)
A project’s expected return in percentage terms. ROI is calculated by dividing net benefits (benefits less costs) by costs.
Discount rate
The interest rate used in cash flow analysis to take into account the time value of money. Organizations typically use discount rates between 8% and 16%.
Payback
The breakeven point for an investment. This is the point in time at which net benefits (benefits minus costs) equal initial investment or cost.
Appendix A
Total Economic Impact
Total Economic Impact is a methodology developed by Forrester Research that enhances a company’s technology decision-making processes and assists solution providers in communicating their value proposition to clients. The TEI methodology helps companies demonstrate, justify, and realize the tangible value of business and technology initiatives to both senior management and other key stakeholders.
Appendix B
Supplemental Material
Related Forrester Research
The Extended Detection And Response Platforms Landscape, Forrester Research, Inc., February 5, 2026
The Forrester Tech Tide™: Zero Trust Threat Detection And Response, Forrester Research, Inc., June 4, 2026
Role Profile: Detection Engineer, Forrester Research, Inc., March 26, 2025
Strategies For Security Data Management In A Hybrid, Multicloud World, Forrester Research, Inc., December 6, 2024
The Security Analytics Platforms Landscape, Q4 2024, Forrester Research, Inc., December 12, 2024
Appendix C
Endnotes
1 Total Economic Impact is a methodology developed by Forrester Research that enhances a company’s technology decision-making processes and assists solution providers in communicating their value proposition to clients. The TEI methodology helps companies demonstrate, justify, and realize the tangible value of business and technology initiatives to both senior management and other key stakeholders.
Disclosures
Readers should be aware of the following:
This study is commissioned by Gravwell and delivered by Forrester Consulting. It is not meant to be used as a competitive analysis.
Forrester makes no assumptions as to the potential ROI that other organizations will receive. Forrester strongly advises that readers use their own estimates within the framework provided in the study to determine the appropriateness of an investment in Security Data Platform. For any interactive functionality, the intent is for the questions to solicit inputs specific to a prospect's business. Forrester believes that this analysis is representative of what companies may achieve with the Gravwell platform based on the inputs provided and any assumptions made. Forrester does not endorse Gravwell or its offerings. Although great care has been taken to ensure the accuracy and completeness of this model, Gravwell and Forrester Research are unable to accept any legal responsibility for any actions taken on the basis of the information contained herein. The interactive tool is provided ‘AS IS,’ and Forrester and Gravwell make no warranties of any kind.
Gravwell reviewed and provided feedback to Forrester, but Forrester maintains editorial control over the study and its findings and does not accept changes to the study that contradict Forrester’s findings or obscure the meaning of the study.
Gravwell provided the customer names for the interviews but did not participate in the interviews.
Consulting Team:
Lori Heckmann Anna Orban-Imreh
Published
August 2026
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