Splunk Enterprise 6 Launched At .conf 2013

Big Data specialist Splunk has launched the sixth version of its eponymous analytics platform, promising enhanced user experience, simplified management through a central dashboard and up to 1,000 times faster performance thanks to the patent-pending transparent acceleration technology.

The announcement was made at the fourth annual Splunk worldwide users’ conference in Las Vegas, better known as .conf.

The software is available to download immediately, with a free licence capped to 500MB of data per day.

Harder, better, faster, stronger

Splunk is unusual among big data tools: it can be used without knowledge of coding, runs on commodity hardware and allows users to manipulate and visualise machine-generated data through a simple web-based interface.

At the same time, the platform offers plenty of room for customisation and further development, enabling an ecosystem of partners that build their products on top of core Splunk functionality, from tiny start-ups to established industry specialists such as Cloudera and Hortonworks.

The latest version of Splunk Enterprise introduces pivot tables, which allow non-technical business users to explore data using a simple drag-and-drop interface, and build queries without learning a query language. It also features new data models, which help put your revelations in context, and a high performance analytics store, which can help deliver results up to 1,000 times faster than the previous versions of Splunk Enterprise.

“At Splunk, we understand that the most successful organisations in the world give equal access to the data, regardless of skill level, to drive smart decisions that have true business impact,” said Splunk CEO Godfrey Sullivan. “This is what inspired our product team to build Splunk Enterprise 6. We believe that everyone in the organisation, from the system administrator to the C-level executive, should be empowered to find that ‘aha’ moment. Splunk Enterprise 6 bridges the data divide and unifies IT and business users around the tremendous value and ROI to be found in machine data.”

“The core value of Splunk Enterprise 6 goes beyond our IT engineers. It presents a significant opportunity for business users and developers to eliminate their fear of data,” commented Splunk user Chulhyun Cho, leader of e-commerce development at CJ O Shopping. “We expect a dramatic increase in the number of business users that will use the platform thanks to the new analytics features.”

Earlier this year, IBM was rumoured to consider Splunk as a possible acquisition target, sending its share price up 8.4 percent to $32.27 on the NASDAQ.

Look out for more reports from .conf 2013 later this week.

Where do you store all that data? Take our storage quiz!