TopLog is three entrepreneurs from three countries who will soon have three doctorates in computer science.  And they have a single mission: to develop a company that makes life easier for network system administrators.

“TopLog turns system data into intelligence that can save you and your company time and money and prevent data loss,” explained Ozge Yeloglu, the president of the young Halifax-based company.

The company was developed from the doctoral thesis of Tokunbo Makanju, a Nigerian who received his PhD in computer science from Dalhousie University last year. Various people within the department believed the work had commercial potential, so he was joined by two doctoral candidates — Yeloglu, a native of Turkey, and Patrick LaRoche of Canada — to develop into a company.

Here’s how it works: companies of all sizes have active computer networks, which sometimes go down. Network system administrators must then manually dig into the log files on the network and figure out what happened.

And topLog automates a lot of these processes, solving major problems in this $1.5-billion global industry. Even before the network system collapses, topLog analyzes the events that take place over the network and learns automatically what are normal and anomalous events on the system. This knowledge can prevent the system from going down, and alert the network system administrators when anything out of the ordinary happens.

“There are many similar products on the market doing many similar things … but no one else is looking at system log data this way,” Yeloglu said.

The start-up has gone through the NextPhase mentoring course and is now working on a formula to roll the product out. The founders are hoping to build a relationship with a larger organization that could help bring the product to market. The company has validated the technology because it was the subject of a doctoral thesis, said Yeloglu.

The roll-out plans … and the question of whether the company will raise funds … will really depend on the response it receives from these larger companies and testing partners.

The company plans to move into Volta, the new shared space for technology companies in downtown Halifax, this spring. As well as working with other entrepreneurs, working at the space will give it access to a variety of mentors.

So far, topLog has been financed through the Early Stage Commercialization Fund offered by Innovacorp.