Splunk Enterprise vs. Splunk IT Service Intelligence (ITSI)

Pros: Splunk is very well suited if you have multiple log sources of related data. All of them can be correlated and tasks can be automated based on the requirement. Other than alerts, Splunk can also run a specific script of your choice, based on some defined conditions. Cons: If you have a few logs but a large number of log sources, Splunk can be very expensive.

Incentivized

[Splunk IT Service Intelligence (ITSI)] is well suited when you have a system that you want to visualize, and then layer in information from many different sources. This will allows ITSI to intelligently create alerts based on the system as a whole vs the individual components. In some cases, a simple splunk dashboard would really suffice over using ITSI. Teams deploying ITSI should really understand the use cases and consider using simple dashboards where they make sense, and use ITSI for topological views.

Incentivized

• Real-time + Scheduled alerts - i-e you can set up alerts which are actively monitoring your logs
• Pretty good response time for search results. With our key/value logging, Splunk makes it blazing fast to query the data.
• Dashboards provide insights into historical data
• Love how Splunk indexes all of the data and provides keys to search on

Incentivized

• Monitor hundreds of IT services by continuously tracking thousands of KPIs in a scalable way.
• Quickly identify problem areas by a combination of default visualizations and ability to create custom dashboards.
• Extremely configurable to effectively monitor nearly any KPI imaginable from Splunk.

Incentivized

• Even though there is a search tool as a help function, you still have to read through many documentation to find the answers you're looking for and sometimes you don't find it. The help function in Splunk could be improved to be more intuitive or have a built-in help per report, panel or dashboard.
• Creating a Splunk dashboard is rather straightforward however, customization is not. Splunk could be improved to provide more tools or features for customization such as adding colors and font options for text and graphs or graphics.
• My dashboard has a lot of useful information and I want the important panels and reports at the top but there is no easy way to do this. Perhaps Splunk could be improved to allow features such as adding URL links to other dashboards or some other clever way to emphasize the important data in my dashboard without compromising space.

Incentivized

• The terminology takes some getting used to: Aggregation policies, notable events, correlation searches, glass tables. If you're not familiar with ITSI, these terms can be a bit overwhelming and steepens the learning curve.
• We have had some technical issues with the underlying support when used in a multisite cluster. We've had to build in several points of redundancy to make sure it works as expected.
• I'd like to see additional types of notable events, like informational events that come in for when an incident is created or when an alert is acknowledged so all of those action steps can be viewed on the episode timeline without affecting the count of events.

Incentivized

We are using Splunk extensively in our projects and we have recently upgraded to Splunk version 6.0 which is quite efficient and giving expected results. We keep track of updates and new features Splunk introduces periodically and try to introduce those features in our day to day activities for improvement in our reporting system and other tasks.

We have replaced our monitoring platform with Splunk & ITSI, and with the success, it's seen at our organization thus far we would be hard-pressed to pivot to another tool. Frankly, our business partners and application teams love Splunk & ITSI.

Splunk Enterprise has plenty of storage space for security logs and can search and correlate suspicious activities up to 30+ days back. Splunk Enterprise can integrate with a ticketing system to track threats and correlate with IoC between security events. Splunk Enterprise can provide reports of account lockouts. Splunk Enterprise can consolidate multiple security alerts into one entry with a number showing how many events occurred.

Incentivized

Splunk IT Service Intelligence (ITSI) is a platform with extended functionality and provides various functionalities which can be utilized to improve the efficiency and accuracy in analyzing the data and detecting the attacks.

When properly setup and configured, Splunk is extremely reliable.

Incentivized

Splunk maintains a well resourced support system that has been consistent since we purchased the product. They help out in a timely manner and provide expert level information as needed. We typically open cases online and communicate when possible via e-mail and are able to resolve most issues with that method.

Incentivized

During POC, pre-planning, and implementation, we have had interactions with numerous folks at Splunk. Everyone from sales & engineering to markets analysts to specific IT component SMEs, and a small professional services engagement to get started. They have all been exceptionally helpful and go above and beyond the call of duty. They actively reach out to ensure success is being realized and find ways to help proactively, instead of having to simply open support cases with the vendor.

The online course was simple clear and described the main capabilities of the solution. There is also an initial module that can be done for free so anyone can familiarize themselves with the functionality of this solution. On the other hand, however, there could be more free online courses. Maybe even with a certificate, this would broaden the group of people who are familiar with the platform while increasing familiarity with the solution itself.

Smooth without too many major issues.

Incentivized

A lot of products have natively inside their own dashboards and or their own logging repositories. And each one is difficult to learn or they're too complex or they're not verbose in the sense that they're not easy to mine the data that you're looking for. So that could be anything from the native logging that you find in other Cisco products. It's easier to use Splunk to draw the data that you're looking for as opposed to going to the individual's products themselves to get the logs that you're looking for.

Incentivized

Splunk has raised itself as a platform not just as a tool unlike other products in the market. If I talk about Moogsoft it also has similar capabilities but Splunk ITSI has more visibility and its GUI is making a different impact on the users. ServiceNow and Splunk are equally capable products however Splunk seems to have more tech-savvy people tools than ServiceNow.

Incentivized

Splunk can scale in to the petabyte per day range which of course is awesome

• Splunk has allowed developers to diagnose production issues when access of control was taken away from them to be allowed to view items in production environments and I believe that is invaluable.
• At times some developers weren't super happy about using it, but it was more of the fact that they were used to having production access and not creating their splunk queries to get information.
• Going one place to view logs was very beneficial to have.

Incentivized

• Splunk IT Service Intelligence (ITSI) has improved our efficiency and accuracy in detecting the attacks and mitigating them.
• It helped us in discovering various kinds of logins within our organization, such as failed logins, interactive logins, admin logins etc etc
• With the help of Splunk IT Service Intelligence (ITSI) we can now keep an eye on real time data as well.