Category Archives: Splunk

Big Data, Financial Results, News & Analysis, Splunk

Splunk CEO quits while ahead after 2% revenue growth

splunkAs big data pioneer Splunk reported better than expected quarterly revenues and shares surged by 2%, its leader for the last seven years has announced his retirement.

Splunk CEO Godfrey Sullivan, who successfully steered the software company through an initial public offering in 2012, has stepped down to be replaced by Doug Merritt, a senior VP. However, Sullivan will remain at the company as non-executive chairman and has promised a smooth transition.

Sullivan, previously the boss of Hyperion until it was acquired by Oracle, has steered the company since the days when the value of machine-to-machine (M2M) intelligence and big data analytics were relatively unknown. The Splunk IPO in 2012 was a landmark for the industry, being the first time the public were invited to invest in a company specialising in the then-new concept of big data. Splunk’s IPO was acclaimed as one of most successful tech offerings in the decade with share prices surging 108% on the first day of trading.

Under Sullivan Splunk’s customer base grew from 750 to 10,000 and annual revenues from $18 million to $600 million, according to a Splunk statement. His successor, Merritt, a veteran of SAP, Peoplesoft and Cisco, has been with Splunk since 2011 and said he would work with Godfrey on a smooth transition. “We will continue our laser focus on becoming the data fabric for businesses, government agencies, universities and organisations,” he said.

“Doug brings enormous management, sales, product and marketing skills to his new role,” said Splunk’s lead independent director John Connors. “As senior vice president for field operations for Splunk, Doug has consistently delivered outstanding financial results.”

In its results for the third quarter of financial year 2016 Splunk reported total revenues of $174.4 million, up 50% year-over-year, and ahead of analyst expectations by $14.4million.

Amazon AWS, Amazon Web Service, DropBox, Google, Google Drive, Microsoft, New Relic, Splunk

Amazon AWS Moving ‘Up the Stack’ to Applications

Amazon Web Services has entered the applications end of the cloud world with several recent releases:

  • Log monitoring and admin with Logs for CloudWatch
  • Collaboration and file sharing with Zocalo
  • Mobile application development with Cognito, Mobile Analytics and a new Mobile SDK

Logs for Cloudwatch works with the AWS CloudWatch network monitoring console to collect log file activities which can then be stored and analyzed in AWS Kinesis. The new tool automatically moves logs from instances and aggregates them into a central service where exceptions can be set directly on those applications.

Third-party products already that, and companies like Splunk, Logentries, and New Relic , which launched its new Insights real-time analytics tool just hours before the AWS news, will all be watching this very carefully (probably also very nervously).

The new AWS Zocalo collaboration/file-sharing plans are further proof that Amazon knows it must be a broad platform player to compete against two mega platform rivals – Google and Microsoft, as well as two younger, well-funded but more limited contenders in Dropbox and Box. Zocalo thus targets Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive, which are part of a much bigger portfolio of end-user products at those companies.

Analytics, Artificial intelligence, Cloud & IT Management, Machine learning, Partnerships, Prelert, Splunk

Anomaly Detective Adds Predictive Analytics to Splunk

Prelert today announced Anomaly Detective, an advanced machine intelligence solution for Splunk Enterprise environments. The introduction of Anomaly Detective expands Prelert’s line of diagnostic predictive analytics products that integrate with a customer’s existing IT management tools and quickly provide value by finding problematic behavior changes hidden in huge volumes of operations data.

Anomaly Detective’s self-learning predictive analytics with machine intelligence assistance recognize both normal and abnormal machine behavior. Using highly advanced pattern recognition algorithms, Anomaly Detective identifies developing issues and provides detailed diagnostic data, enabling IT experts to avoid problems or diagnose them as much as 90 percent faster than previously possible. IT personnel who utilize Splunk Enterprise software in infrastructure, applications performance and security can now additionally benefit from machine learning to automatically spot anomalies and isolate their root causes in minutes, saving time and resolving problems before the business is impacted.

Anomaly Detective is  downloadable software that installs as a tightly integrated application for Splunk Enterprise. Because it leverages recent advances in machine intelligence, Anomaly Detective is 100 percent self-learning and requires minimal configuration. Anomaly Detective augments existing IT expertise, empowering IT staff to spend less time mining data, reduce troubleshooting costs and improve compliance with service-level agreements — all of which contribute to a rapid return on investment.

“Prelert Anomaly Detective is like a machine intelligence assistant, using advanced machine learning analytics to analyze the massive amounts of IT operations management data produced by today’s online applications and services,” said Mark Jaffe, CEO of Prelert. “We’ve packaged the power of big data analytics, normally focused on solving business problems, in easy-to-use machine intelligence solutions that are greatly needed in the real world of IT operations.”

Prelert Anomaly Detective is now available and easily downloadable from the Prelert website and from Prelert resellers. Pricing is based on the amount of data analyzed per day, starting at $1,200 for environments indexing more than 500MB of data per day. For information on pricing for Splunk Enterprise, go to http://www.splunk.com/view/how-to-get-splunk/SP-CAAADFV.

Carahsoft Technology Corp, Government, Partnerships, Splunk

Carahsoft to Resell Splunk to Government Customers

SSplunk Inc. and Carahsoft Technology Corp. today announced an alliance under which Carahsoft will market, sell and distribute Splunk software to federal, state and local government agencies and the Splunk reseller partner ecosystem.

“Splunk software will enable Carahsoft and our reseller network to better equip agencies with big data management and security solutions needed for highly sensitive, mission critical environments,” said Craig P. Abod, Carahsoft president. “Splunk’s ability to make machine data accessible, usable and valuable makes it a core technology in our big data portfolio and a critical solution for our customers.”

With Splunk software, government entities can index, monitor, analyze and visualize massive volumes of valuable machine data generated by complex physical, virtual and cloud-based environments. Splunk helps agencies create real-time visibility across all agency servers and network devices by enabling agencies to create a single viewpoint to help investigate security incidents and address critical operations and application management functions.

“The government faces a paradox today with massive streams of data, real-time mission requirements and shrinking budgets,” said Bill Cull, vice president of public sector, Splunk. “Splunk software helps agencies to effectively analyze machine-generated big data, meet security and compliance standards and drastically cut operational costs. Our strategic alliance with Carahsoft will give agencies easier access to our products, allowing them to uncover data and improve operational intelligence to achieve mission success.”

For more information on Splunk, visit the intelligence solutions section of Carahsoft’s website or join Carahsoft and Splunk at the FedCyber.com Cyber Security Summit on Thursday, November 15, 2012 in Washington, D.C. Go to Splunk’s website to learn how Splunk works with government agencies and click here to download a free version of Splunk Enterprise.