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Splunk Inc. (Splunk) specializes in creating tools for analyzing and visualizing real-time data, making it a leading provider of operational intelligence software.
Splunk, a company specializing in information technology, develops software that monitors, searches, analyzes, and visualizes machine-generated data in real time.
Michael Baum, Rob Das, and Erik Swan were the ones that came up with the idea for Splunk in 2003.
Gartner positioned Splunk as a Security Information and Event Management Leader in 2020. The company was also recognized on the Fortune 1000 list for 2020.
The company’s focus has shifted from selling search appliances to offering big data analytics applications centered around IT operations and security since its founding in 2003.
Splunk’s client list continues to grow and includes 92 of the Fortune 100’s most successful organizations, such as Cisco, Bosch, IBM, Adobe, and Visa.
Splunk has experienced a meteoric rise, driven by the need to analyze enormous amounts of data, resulting in sales of $2.229 billion for the year 2021 and a stock price of $156.60 per share as of September 1st.
Splunk offers a variety of products, including IT Service Intelligence, User Behavior Analytics, Asset Performance Management, and Infrastructure Monitoring. The company offers a variety of products, including Enterprise, Cloud, Data Stream Processors, and more.
The company has also expanded its platform through mergers and acquisitions, including the acquisition of Phantom Cyber for $350 million in 2018 and SignalFx for $1.05 billion in 2019.
The company currently holds a commanding share of the IT operations management market, valued at $13.3 billion, is clearly in the driver’s seat in this sector.
Moreover, Splunk is the dominant player in the $49.7 billion security information and Event Management (SIEM) market, with a 29 percent market share.
What Does Splunk Do?
Splunk emerged among the most successful log management solutions shortly after its initial release in 2007.
Splunk’s emphasis on log analysis and security incident and event management (SIEM) has made it the product of choice for businesses that generate a significant amount of machine data and log files.
However, over the last decade, there has been a significant shift in the landscape of log management. Today, the industry uses distributed architectures like microservices, containers, and hybrid clouds.
As a result, businesses now have access to new, less expensive solutions, more practical and more effectively optimized for managing their log data.
Top Splunk Competitors & Alternatives
1. LogRhythm
LogRhythm is an independent vendor of SIEM (security information and event management). LogRhythm is a security company known for network monitoring, security analytics, log management, and security information management.
LogRhythm has over 4,000 customers worldwide and 561 employees across 9 locations. LogRhythm has secured finance of 126,3 million dollars since the company’s inception.
LogRhythm’s customers are in various industries, including banking and financial services, healthcare, oil and gas, industrial controls, technology, electricity, education, retail, government, and telecommunications. LogRhythm headquarters are located in Boulder, Colorado.
LogRhythm applies behavioral analytics, machine learning, and big data to provide its customers with actionable intelligence that can assist them in preventing cyberattacks.
LogRhythm’s industry-leading NextGen SIEM Platform is its primary source of competitive advantage. Like Splunk, LogRhythm’s NextGen SIEM Platform analyzes user behavior and security incidents.
LogRhythm is an artificial intelligence technology company focusing on enhanced threat protection and transaction analytics based on machine learning.
You can also use it to analyze root causes or orchestrate security. LogRhythm is one of Splunk’s competitors in the market for protecting big data. Splunk offers several benefits over LogRhythm regarding competition, even though both companies sell comparable products.
Moreover, this integrated platform can also provide network monitoring, security automation, and response solutions. For the ninth consecutive year, Gartner has named LogRhythm a SIEM Magic Quadrant Leader, accomplished in 2021.
The client list of LogRhythm includes such prominent companies as NASA, Cargill, and XcelEnergy. LogRhythm is widely regarded as one of the most creative alternatives to Splunk.
For example, Splunk’s user interface is simple and intuitive for end-users, while LogRhythm’s may seem intimidating to IT professionals unfamiliar with security information and event management (SIEM).
In addition, Splunk offers improved management solutions for massive data collection and historical data.
2. IBM
IBM is an industry-leading software developer, and one of its products is called IBM QRadar. Splunk and IBM QRadar are the two solutions that enjoy the greatest popularity worldwide in security information and event management (SIEM).
The most formidable adversary that Splunk faces is IBM, which boasts over 350,000 people and revenues of $73.6 billion. The QRadar Corporation, an IBM Company, offers businesses products that assist them in analyzing security information and event management (SIEM) data.
The similarity between Splunk and QRadar is that both provide a solution to meet SIEM’s requirements, so they are comparable.
Splunk uses its superior search capabilities, text analytics, and natural language processing capabilities to enhance its BI (business intelligence) and compliance capabilities.
Splunk competes with QRadar using these capabilities, whereas QRadar was built as a true SIEM system. Splunk and IBM provide sophisticated SIEM products that offer a range of specific advantages to customers who purchase them.
However, the IBM QRadar platform utilizes advanced User Behavior Analytics to detect and prevent attacks that originate within a company. IBM QRadar, in contrast to Splunk, makes extensive use of automation to identify network flow traffic and security log data.
IBM QRadar has many advantages, including scalable, self-managing databases; easy compliance management; complete visibility; elimination of manual activities; real-time threat detection, and comprehensive visibility.
Thanks to its flexible architecture, it can integrate with 450 different solutions and can be installed either in the cloud or on-premises. Consequently, users can analyze data points in the billions and obtain insights much more rapidly than they use Splunk.
IBM QRadar is compatible with various other security products offered by IBM, including Watson AI, IBM Resilient, and UBA. IBM QRadar is Splunk’s top competitor and alternative in the security information and event management (SIEM) market.
3. Elastic NV
Elastic NV is a Dutch firm that offers a suite of tools known as the Elastic Stack, designed for next-generation analytics. Elastic is a company focused on search, observability, and security for enterprises.
Elastic Stack is a leading open-source log management system that the company provides. It is particularly well-known for the open-source Elasticsearch search and analytics engine.
Additionally, Elastic Stack provides the Kibana interface for viewing data and the Beats, open-source log shippers. Elastic is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and has worldwide offices.
Elastic offers a variety of solutions to help organizations identify, monitor, and defend themselves against cyberattacks using data analytics. These four products make up Elastic’s product portfolio: Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana, and Beats.
A company may use Elasticsearch for search analytics, Logstash for log processing, and Kibana to visualize data collected by the organization.
Elastic combines machine learning and time series analysis techniques for extracting meaningful insights from logs, events, metrics, and alerts, among other data types, for enterprise use.
Standard functionalities are included in the free edition of the Elastic stack. Users can pay for an upgrade to the premium edition, allowing access to controls, statistical notifiers, and reporting solutions.
The open-source tools offered by Elastic have the potential to steal clients away from Splunk easily. It has a robust customer base consisting of major players like eBay and Wikipedia, Uber, Tinder, and Netflix.
Elastic also collaborates with Core Security and certifications from the United States Department of Defense, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and the General Services Administration (GSA) for being FedRAMP Ready.
The market capitalization of Elastic was 15.03 billion as of the 2nd of September 2021. Its sales have increased to $608.49 million as of the 30th of April, 2021, from $427.62 million the prior year.
Elastic’s quarterly assets totaled $1.520 billion, while its long-term debt was $565.84 million during the same period.
4. Rapid7
Rapid7 is a pioneer in the field of providing security risk intelligence. The company was established in the year 2000. Rapid7 offers information technology professionals the whole perspective of their exposure to security hazards and efficiently prioritizes the few available resources.
Rapid7 is a public company currently trading under the ticker symbol NASDAQ: RPD and having a market capitalization of 6.876 billion dollars as of May 2022.
Rapid7 competes with Splunk in the big data security market. They offer products that aid businesses in collecting, analyzing, and visualizing data relevant to security events through machine data.
Rapid7 has several competitive advantages over Splunk, including a significant market presence and an excellent reputation. However, Splunk is more capable of search, text analytics, and other natural language processing functions. The natural language processing capabilities of Splunk are more advanced.
Rapid7 generated total revenues of $0.411 billion in 2020, increasing the firm’s $0.327 billion total revenues in 2019.
Rapid7 assets reached $1.24 billion as of the 30th of June, 2021, representing a rise of 44.15 percent year over year.
5. Sumo Logic
Sumo Logic is a company that specializes in data analysis. Splunk and Sumo Logic provides log management and analytical services, but Sumo Logic focuses primarily on business intelligence (BI), operations, and security.
Sumo Logic has significantly increased its efforts to expand worldwide in recent months.
In July 2021, the company introduced its Cloud SIEM solution to Japan. Sumo Logic employed approximately 800 people in 2020, and its sales amounted to $155 million.
Sumo Logic is currently considered one of the most formidable rivals to Splunk in the market.
The machine-generated large data can be better understood with the cloud-based native tool’s analytics and logs management services. It is a consolidated platform that makes monitoring and analyzing each app from a single spot simple.
Sumo Logic can analyze data with advanced analytics, predictive analytics, and machine learning. It can identify patterns in the data and identify problems.
Splunk and Sumo Logic offer businesses real-time insight into their IT operations by utilizing machine-generated data.
Over 2,100 customers use Sumo Logic’s cloud-native log-analysis software worldwide to identify anomalies and outliers in data and to predict disruptive events.
Sumo Logic’s Continuous Intelligence Platform is the primary advantage over Splunk on a competitive basis.
The platform automates the collection of data, its intake, and analysis. It provides insights that can be applied immediately.
Sumo Logic, the first company to develop continuous intelligence, is among the most innovative companies that compete with Splunk.
Understanding the business environment, the ability to comply with industry standards, support for cloud migration, and multi-tenant design that scales on demand are all vital.
Sumo Logic offers three subscription plans: Sumo Professional, Sumo Enterprise, and Sumo Free, each of which costs zero dollars a month, ninety dollars a month, and one hundred fifty dollars a month, respectively. There is a one-month free trial period available for commercial software versions.
6. FireEye
FireEye is a company that specializes in cybersecurity and provides services such as consultancy, security technology, and threat intelligence. The scalable platform offered by the company combines solutions of a nation-state standard and functions as an extension of the client’s existing security operations.
FireEye’s annualized recurring revenue reached $638 million for 2020, an increase of 8 percent from the previous year’s total.
FireEye revenues from cloud subscriptions, platforms, and managed services grew by 20 percent to $340 million.
FireEye is more specialized than Splunk in security and threat intelligence. Over 10,100 customers trust FireEye in over 103 countries to simplify cyber security’s complexities.
Additionally, the company offers security consulting services to organizations through Mandiant for those organizations to anticipate, prevent, and respond to cyberattacks.
The company’s rapidly expanding customer base includes more than half of the companies that make up the Forbes Global 2000.
FireEye is the best option when it comes to cyber security and threat intelligence when compared to Splunk.
7. SolarWinds
SolarWinds is a provider of solutions that assist businesses in managing their information technology infrastructure, networks, and systems. SolarWinds acquired Loggly in 2018, specializing in log management and analytics.
SolarWinds Loggly has been incorporated into the SolarWinds Cloud subsidiary recently. SolarWinds had approximately 3,200 employees and generated revenue of $1.02 billion in 2020.
SolarWinds’ Log Analyzer was the alternative to Splunk Analytics before SolarWinds acquired the latter company. This solution allows users to use event-generation systems, analyze their data, and generate reports.
SolarWinds is now a direct competitor to Splunk across the board, thanks to the addition of Loggly and Log Analyzer. Additionally, the company provides the IT management system known as Orion, which more than 30,000 organizations utilize.
SolarWinds Orion was breached in 2020 by hackers, who were able to access the networks and data of more than 18,000 customers.
SolarWinds’ competitive advantage was eroded as a result of this attack. However, SolarWinds Loggly still has the potential to steal some clients away from Splunk.
8. jKool
jKool is a web-based program that gives its rival Splunk a run for its money in functionality and features. jKool assists in analyzing machine-generated data in real time, such as transactions, metrics, and logs.
Additionally, it assists in analyzing large data when it is in motion and at rest. The pricing structure consists of two different editions. The Personal plan is free to use, but users can only keep their data for five days.
On the other hand, business plans require payment but offer limited data storage, streaming services, and professional customer service.
It is critical to track errors, transactions, failures, and exceptions, break down data into meaningful insights, analyze and consolidate machine data, find security threats, create custom dashboards, provide visuals such as graphs and charts, and offer customer insight into behavior.
The system is user-friendly, easy to set up, and can be deployed in the data center without a hitch. It can also effortlessly handle multiple streams of concurrent data in real time.
9. Micro Focus
Micro Focus is a multinational software and information technology firm based in the United Kingdom that supplies businesses with important technology for their operations.
Micro Focus provides consulting, information security, data center solutions, endpoint and identity access management, security analytics, and big data solutions.
Micro Focus had employed 12,000 people by 2020 and generated $3 billion in sales. Micro Focus helps businesses bridge outdated and up-to-date technology by providing predictive analytics, corporate DevOps, and hybrid IT management solutions.
More than 40,000 companies use its software products worldwide to protect their information technology investments. The corporation presented a three-year plan in 2020 to increase sales growth and generate approximately 700 million dollars in free cash flow yearly.
This audacious plan is expected to result in a 150 percent jump in the stock price by the end of 2021 due to this plan. Micro Focus is an excellent alternative to Splunk in enterprise DevOps and predictive analytics.
10. LogZilla
LogZilla is a NEO platform that provides IT and enterprise network teams with real-time insight into their networks to discover any issues on time. LogZilla can record 40TB of events daily because of its automated tools for recording, enriching, and repairing them.
LogZilla platform is easy to use and does not require prior training since it can be set up in just a few minutes. The software’s important characteristics are the elimination of false positives, the pre-processing of data, and the capability to run LogZilla on any operating system.
A reduction of up to 90 percent can be achieved with TCO, which represents a total cost of ownership. The alternative to Splunk can be used for free in networks that generate less than five hundred events every day.
Fees for medium-sized and small businesses range from $525 to $625, including phone and e-mail support.
11. Mezmo
Mezmo is a technology business that provides DevOps teams with log management services.
Mezmo facilitates the consolidation of all system logs into one platform and offers insights that can be helpful for DevOps teams when developing and troubleshooting applications. The annual revenue of the corporation is close to $15 million.
Mezmo’s services are used by Fortune 500 companies, including Asics, Better.com, Sysdig, and 6 River Systems. Fortune magazine recognized Mezmo as one of the best workplaces for small and medium-sized businesses in August 2021.
Mezmo, unlike Splunk, does not necessitate any settings on the delegating of logs. Mezmo is a more cost-effective alternative to Splunk because it employs a pricing mechanism dependent on the user’s consumption and ranges from $1.50 per GB to $3 per GB per month.
12. Sentry
Sentry serves as an error-tracking program that is similar to Splunk. It monitors, fixes, and detects crashes in real-time using the open-source tool.
Sentry configuration requires only a few lines of code and is quite straightforward. The software is provided as a hosting service and ensures quality assurance continuously to maximize the workforce’s effectiveness.
Sentry’s excellent features allow developers and designers to build better applications, track and monitor errors, deploy workflow, monitor errors without waiting for user feedback, and tag errors with the right context.
In addition, you’ll be able to send error notifications via email, chat, and SMS; track and fix mistakes with greater transparency and efficiency; find and correct errors, and build better apps. Sentry provides several different price plans to choose from.
The free version, the Developer plan, is ideal for use in the first stages of application development and personal projects.
The pricing of the Team Edition is set at 26 dollars per month, and it is ideal for teams and applications anticipating significant potential growth in the months ahead.
Sentry is also available in a Corporate edition, which is 80 dollars per month, and an Enterprise edition, which is 80 dollars per month but supports essential business applications.
Conclusion: Top Splunk Competitors
In conclusion, Splunk is a powerful and versatile platform, but plenty of competitors offer powerful features and services. Each company has its strengths and weaknesses, making it an attractive option for businesses looking to invest in analytics and machine learning solutions. It’s important to evaluate the features of each competitor carefully to determine which one best fits your organization’s needs. By researching these top Splunk competitors, you can gain insight into their approaches and strategies to help inform your decisions.
