Splunk 4.2 delivers a tenfold increase in performance in distributed environments and a fivefold increase in performance for a single instance of Splunk in a nondistributed environment, he says. In addition to business analytics, Splunk 4.2 offers Web analytics--such as transactions per minute or page views--application management, security, compliance and management of other IT operations.
Network Computing blogger Michael Brandenberg acknowledged the advantages of making data understandable to non-IT staff when reporting on Splunk 4.1 in April 2010: "Senior management and even line-of-business leaders can leverage the real-time impact of Web traffic, for example, to quickly see the impact of their marketing strategies and quickly adjust them based on that online intelligence."
The amount of what Splunk calls "machine-generated data"--also called "big data"--is expanding rapidly. IDC reported late last year that "the expanding digital universe--reaching 1.8 trillion gigabytes [of data]--will drive demand for ... information infrastructure and real-time analytics for 'big data.'"
Splunk faces a wide range of competitors given the various markets it's selling into, says Andrew Hay, an analyst at The 451 Group. In terms of log management, it goes up against companies such as Quest Software, LogLogic and Check Point. In the security information and event management (SIEM) space, it faces stiff competition from ArcSight, LogLogic, RSA and Q1 Labs for large enterprise deals, as well as CA Technologies, IBM, Novell and Symantec for midmarket customers. "Splunk's search capability and its confessed ambitions beyond IT management data also bring it into competition with more forward-looking data-warehousing players such as Aster Data Systems, Greenplum, SenSage and Vertica Systems," Hay wrote in an e-mail.
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