Splunk Doubles Down On IT Management And DevOps With New Observability Cloud

Observability Cloud, now generally available, combines Splunk’s core machine data management capabilities with management and monitoring tools – some recently acquired – for IT management and DevOps teams.

Continuing to expand its portfolio of cloud-based “data-to-everything” software, Splunk says its Splunk Observability Cloud for IT and DevOps teams, in beta since last fall, is now generally available.

The system, which originally debuted in October in beta as the Splunk Observability Suite, is key to the company’s efforts to expand sales of its machine data management technology for IT infrastructure monitoring, application performance management and DevOps tasks.

The announcement also helps Splunk come closer to its goal of transitioning to cloud-based products and a subscription sales model with annual recurring revenue.

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“Until now, the tools that IT and DevOps teams rely on to monitor and manage applications and infrastructure have been disconnected, often separated into two or three different platforms,” said Spiros Xanthos, vice president of product management, observability and IT operations, in an interview with CRN.

“The Splunk Observability Cloud brings all the needed observability solutions together in a unified interface designed to help customers gain a comprehensive view across all their data and operate at enterprise scale.”

Splunk’s flagship machine data platform, offered as Splunk Enterprise and Splunk Cloud, powers a range of data management, automation and analysis tasks. The platform’s core technology collects and manages “open telemetry” machine data in real time, at scale.

More recently the company has focused on providing its “data-to-everything” software for IT management and monitoring, cybersecurity and DevOps, offering a portfolio of tools and applications in those areas.

During Splunk’s recent fiscal 2021 fourth-quarter and year-end earnings call CEO Doug Merritt said the widespread SolarWinds cyberattack has brought home to many businesses and organizations the importance of collecting and analyzing data for security operations.

Splunk Observability Cloud incorporates some existing Splunk products including Splunk Log Observer, Splunk Real User Monitoring (RUM), Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring, Splunk APM and Splunk On-Call.

The new offering also includes infrastructure monitoring technology Splunk obtained through its October 2020 acquisition of Plumbr, an Estonia-based developer of application performance monitoring tools. It also includes Splunk Synthetic Monitoring, which is based on digital experience monitoring technology from the vendor’s acquisition of Atlanta-based Rigor, also in October.

For DevOps tasks, the inclusion of Splunk Log Observer in Splunk Observability Cloud provides the log data management and analysis capabilities needed by developers and site reliability engineers.

Splunk works with a range of channel partners including systems integrators, solution providers, resellers, managed service providers and consultants including Accenture, Bluesify Solutions, CDW, ClearShark, Deloitte, SoftwareOne and Trace3.

Xanthos said solution providers are increasingly helping business customers resolve complexity as they migrate to the cloud and launch digital transformation initiatives. But that often means piecing together multiple products – sometimes from multiple vendors – and legacy technologies often can’t work with today’s complex systems and microservices.

Solution providers are asking Splunk for more complete, pre-integrated systems like Splunk Observability Cloud, Xanthos said. “This gives them a complete solution to sell,” he said.

“With the shift to cloud, IT and DevOps teams are now wrestling with more operational complexity that is compounded by too many existing monitoring tools that have blind spots, siloed data and disjointed workflows,” said Sendur Sellakumar, Splunk’s chief product officer, in a statement. “The Splunk Observability Cloud helps IT and DevOps teams conquer complexity and accelerate cloud transformation for their organizations.”