What is our primary use case?
We utilize the Splunk Cloud Platform for log ingestion related to security and troubleshooting purposes.
How has it helped my organization?
Splunk Cloud Platform helps us with our security incident response. The cloud security logs are integrated with all the cloud providers.
The federated search feature enables us to search between Europe and the US, from one Splunk instance to another, all from a single location. This federated search simplifies how we handle data, making it easy to swiftly search for and manage information.
We monitor several cloud environments and find it easy to utilize the Splunk Cloud Platform for this purpose. Each cloud provider offers its own prebuilt dashboard, or customers can create their own.
The Splunk Cloud Platform offers excellent visibility into multiple environments. In the past, we utilized hybrid integrations, and they seamlessly worked right out of the box.
The reporting functionality provided by the Splunk Cloud Platform resembles that of the on-premise platform. It is readily available without requiring integration or the installation of reporting visualizations.
From a security standpoint, the Splunk Cloud Platform provides us with comprehensive visibility into all security logs. This enables us to implement security incident responses with great efficiency. Additionally, we have discovered that internal employees, such as product teams, are utilizing the platform as intended for various other use cases. For instance, it has proven valuable in troubleshooting performance issues and monitoring within Kubernetes. As such, we are leveraging a wide array of use cases within the company.
Splunk is a highly mature software that has been in the market for many years, which greatly influenced our decision-making process. Another factor was the user-friendly nature of the latest version, making it easy to initiate. We don't require a large workforce for installing components; it's as simple as out-of-the-box. Consequently, minimal time investment is needed for training.
The Splunk Cloud Platform assists us in accessing data to meet critical compliance and privacy regulations. For instance, this is particularly important for regulations such as GDPR and HIPAA. We are utilizing Splunk Cloud with a specific focus on HIPAA compliance, allocating extra attention to this aspect. In the case of GDPR, Splunk offers a range of built-in capabilities. For instance, it allows for log masking. Moreover, there are novel features available in Splunk Cloud, such as ingest actions. This feature is exceptionally useful as it enables us to mask the data before it's ingested into Splunk. Consequently, this approach ensures our adherence to compliance regulations, exemplified by GDPR.
The Splunk Cloud Platform has had a significant impact on our organization's security posture. It serves as our primary visibility tool and is the main source of trust for all login activities. Without Splunk, we would lose essential visibility and access to security updates. Currently, Splunk stands as one of the primary tools we utilize due to its utmost importance.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature is we don't have to deal with any back-end server maintenance because the solution is cloud-based.
What needs improvement?
The on-premises version of Splunk includes all the integrations, while the Cloud platform lacks certain integrations and is limited in terms of the number of supported apps.
The Splunk Cloud Platform is not a very mature solution; it has only been on the market for four or five years. While they have made significant improvements, there are still limitations, such as the absence of CLI access. Therefore, there are several limitations that still exist with the CLI.
The standard support has room for improvement.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Splunk Cloud Platform for four years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The Splunk Cloud Platform offers 99.9 percent availability, ensuring that we never experience downtime.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I would give Splunk Cloud Platforms' scalability an eight out of ten.
How are customer service and support?
Technical support needs more knowledgeable people.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We used Sumo Logic in the past, but it wasn't an enterprise-grade solution, so it couldn't support the scale we required. Additionally, Sumo Logic lacked support for many integrations. The Splunk Cloud Platform fulfills our scaling requirements and integration needs. Moreover, our team possesses skills that align well with Splunk, making it a better fit for us.
How was the initial setup?
The Initial deployment was very straightforward because we had the skills. But I would not say that this is straightforward without the skills. We need to learn at least the basics.
The deployment took six months to create this multi-tenant environment because it's a highly specialized setting. It's distinct from a typical Splunk deployment that might only take a day or two. However, the process of configuring, migrating all the data from Sumo Logic to the new Splunk Cloud, and setting up the multi-tenant system along with product dashboards, required approximately six months of effort on our part.
What was our ROI?
We utilize Splunk in a multi-tenant manner, wherein we allocate costs back to the product teams in each department based on their usage. We are a healthcare company engaged in the development of healthcare applications tailored for doctors and hospitals. Splunk plays a pivotal role in assisting us with this endeavor. I would estimate that we have experienced a return on investment of approximately 30 to 40 percent.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The cost of the Splunk Cloud Platform is high, and in addition to the standard licensing fee, we also have a premium support fee.
Now, we are paying less because, instead of being charged based on ingestion, we are paying for SVCs, which stands for Splunk Virtual Compute. This implies that our costs have decreased. Despite ingesting a larger volume of logs, our expenses are lower than they were before. However, it's important to note that if our usage of the tool increases, our expenses will also increase. Therefore, this represents a distinct licensing model from Splunk's.
What other advice do I have?
I would give Splunk Cloud Platform an eight out of ten. Splunk Cloud has shown significant improvement over the past four years, and I highly recommend it.
We operate two distinct Splunk Cloud platforms: one in Europe and another in the US. These platforms are linked through a federated search. This setup ensures that specific data, such as European data stored in the AWS cloud, is directed to the European Splunk platform, while data from the US Cloud is directed to the US Splunk platform. However, it's worth noting that all users primarily log into the Splunk US Cloud. From this point, they have the capability to transmit data to the Splunk Europe platform.
We have around 400 users.
The maintenance is primarily conducted by Splunk on the backend, and any on-premises maintenance we perform has been reduced by 80 percent.
The value that Resilience provides for SIEM solutions is significant for us. Therefore, if we inquire with various customers, they might provide different perspectives. However, concerning security, this holds substantial value. I would assert that it's the primary tool in our arsenal; indeed, we do possess other security tools, but the most frequently utilized one, which also delivers the utmost value, is undoubtedly Splunk.
The method to expand a SIEM system is achieved by extending the licenses. This expansion enables greater capabilities, increased log retention, and the ability to process more logs. In our specific scenario, we were previously restricted by the capacity of the ingest license. Our log ingestion was limited to, for instance, one terabyte per day. However, with the introduction of this new licensing model that's based on CPU usage, we now have the flexibility to ingest any amount of data while paying according to our actual tool usage. Consequently, if we intend to expand for additional servers, we simply need to contact Splunk and communicate our requirement for increased server capacity to enhance system performance. This process is streamlined because we aren't required to take any additional actions ourselves.
I would highly recommend Splunk Cloud because we don't require personnel for maintenance or server installation and management, as all these backend tasks are taken care of. Additionally, for those who are currently using a competitor of Splunk for SIEM purposes, I would also recommend transitioning to Splunk if they have the budget for it.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.