Splunk Launches Enterprise 6.3 And IT Service Intelligence

Data analytics giant Splunk is attempting to broaden its appeal with the release of offerings that boost its relevance across hybrid cloud, the Internet of Things, and IT service intelligence.

Here at Splunk’s .Conf annual shindig in Las Vegas, Splunk’s CEO Godfrey Sullivan kicked off proceedings with the announcement of Splunk Enterprise 6.3, Splunk’s real-time operational intelligence platform.

Splunk Enterprise 6.3 builds on the software’s performance, with more advanced analytics and visualisations, and high-volume event collection for DevOps and Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

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“Enterprise 6.3 truly takes a big leap,” said Sullivan. “The need to collect data at high volumes whilst being developer friendly is critical.”

The new version has support for high-volume DevOps and IoT data collection. A new ‘HTTP event collector’ uses a standard API to let applications and devices send millions of events per second directly to Splunk Enterprise or Splunk Cloud for analysis.

This was demonstrated at the keynote by thousands of Splunkers shaking their phones, and Splunk collecting data from the phones about platform and location, all in real-time without the need to install software. The conference attendees simply had to go to a URL on their browsers.

This new capability, said Splunk, can also be integrated into services such as AWS Lambda and Docker, as well as IoT services including Citrix Octoblu and Xively by LogMeIn.

“Splunk Enterprise is a mission-critical, enterprise-wide Operational Intelligence platform that today enables individual customers to process hundreds of terabytes of data per day and to gain rapid value from petabytes of current and historical data,” said Guido Schroeder, senior vice president of products, Splunk.

“The new version of Splunk Enterprise, also available as a cloud service via Splunk Cloud, can enable customers to more than double performance gains in search, analytics and data ingestion. Additionally, hardware requirements for an on-premises deployment of Splunk Enterprise can be cut in half compared to two years ago.”

Splunk was also keen to highlight the total cost ownership reduction Enterprise 6.3 can bring to customers. “50 percent reduction in hardware costs compared to version 6.0” boasted Sullivan at today’s keynote. “6.3 doubles the speed of search, reporting and data onboarding.”

ITSI

Another big release for Splunk today was a new IT monitoring and analytics platform called ITSI (IT service intelligence).

ITSI claims to give users a central, unified view of critical IT services, and it uses advanced analytics driven by machine learning to highlight anomalies, detect root cause and pinpoint areas of impact.

“With Splunk ITSI, we wanted to build on how customers were already using the Splunk platform for IT troubleshooting and monitoring and deliver a complete solution for IT professionals,” said Rick Fitz, senior vice president of IT markets, Splunk.

“IT teams now have an innovative data-driven approach to more effectively manage the new world of hybrid, cloud and software-defined everything in the data center. Splunk ITSI is in a class of its own because it provides both high-level monitoring and deep-dive troubleshooting and analytics in one solution, available as either software or a cloud service.”

Cloud

Splunk’s cloud general manager and senior vice president Marc Olesen also took the stage to remind the audience of Splunk’s offerings in the hybrid cloud space.

“How does Splunk cloud fit into our overall portfolio?” asked Olesen. “Well, it uses the same engine as Splunk Enterprise, and it’s about time to value and ease of use.

“We’re the only solution that offers a true, seamless, hybrid experience.” Olesen even went as far as to promise 100 percent uptime from its cloud services, which are hosted across ten Amazon Web Services cloud regions.

“If you’re a user, you can search for data indexed on premise or anywhere in the cloud, you don’t have to know where it is stored,” said Olesen.

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