Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

AWS X-Ray vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Customer Service

No sentiment score available
Users are generally satisfied with AWS support but have limited direct experience with AWS X-Ray support specifically.
Sentiment score
7.2
Splunk Enterprise Security's support is generally praised for responsiveness and knowledge but criticized for delays and inconsistent quality.
 

Room For Improvement

Sentiment score
7.0
AWS X-Ray's complex interface and lack of features like anomaly detection and integration hinder user experience and analytical effectiveness.
Sentiment score
6.2
Splunk Enterprise Security is costly and complex, with users seeking better integration, usability, support, and enhanced features like AI.
It should also include anomaly detection capabilities, similar to machine learning, and have custom metadata to trace vulnerabilities.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.8
AWS X-Ray is praised for its scalability, seamlessly supporting large-scale applications with ease across diverse organizational needs.
Sentiment score
6.0
Splunk Enterprise Security is scalable and adaptable, handling large data volumes and multiple users easily but can be costly.
 

Setup Cost

No sentiment score available
AWS X-Ray offers scalable pricing with affordability varying by business size, providing discounts for large enterprises and differences for government users.
Sentiment score
7.7
Splunk Enterprise Security's pricing is perceived as high due to its licensing model and extensive features, often deterring SMEs.
AWS X-Ray is very beneficial, however, it is expensive.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.9
AWS X-Ray is highly stable and reliable, with minor offshore issues unrelated to internal bugs or data loss.
Sentiment score
4.8
Splunk Enterprise Security is praised for stability, reliability, low maintenance, and high performance, with minor issues quickly resolved.
 

Valuable Features

Sentiment score
8.6
AWS X-Ray offers robust tracing, error tracking, compliance support, performance monitoring, and direct queries for debugging and security insights.
Sentiment score
8.7
Splunk Enterprise Security excels in dashboards, reporting, flexibility, scalability, support, log aggregation, alerting, integration, and efficient large data handling.
The most beneficial feature is that it shows a dashboard for performance intervals, which reveals latencies.
 

Categories and Ranking

AWS X-Ray
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (14th)
Splunk Enterprise Security
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
301
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (1st), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (1st), IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Application Lifecycle Management solutions, they serve different purposes. AWS X-Ray is designed for Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability and holds a mindshare of 3.9%, up 3.5% compared to last year.
Splunk Enterprise Security, on the other hand, focuses on Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), holds 10.9% mindshare, down 14.3% since last year.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

Parth Solanki - PeerSpot reviewer
Saves time, is relatively cheap, and helps find errors
If we get any error, we can go to X-Ray and get all the requests for a certain error in one place. It makes it easy to find the issue in your own product. You can look at logs and error logs and find loopholes. You can do direct queries to get specific requests over the course of a day. It's very good at error reporting and quite fast. You also get a lot of information, including IP addresses, user locations, et cetera.
Avinash Gopu. - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers good visibility into multiple environments, significantly reduces our alert volume, and speeds up our security investigations
There are limitations with Splunk not detecting all user activity, especially on mainframes and network devices. This is because Splunk relies on agents, which cannot access certain workstations. In these cases, we have to rely on application data. For example, with mainframes, manual reports are generated and sent to Splunk, limiting visibility to what's manually reported. This lack of automation for specific platforms needs improvement from Splunk. Additionally, API access is limited for other applications that rely on API calls and requests. This requires heavy customization on Splunk's end. These are the main challenges we've encountered. Monitoring multiple cloud platforms, like Azure, GCP, and AWS, with Splunk Enterprise Security presents some challenges. While Splunk provides different connectors for each provider, consolidating data from two domains across distinct cloud environments can be complex. However, leveraging pre-built templates and Splunk's data collation capabilities can help overcome these hurdles. Despite initial difficulties, I believe Splunk can effectively address this task, earning it an eight out of ten rating for its multi-cloud monitoring capabilities. While Splunk Enterprise Security offers insider threat detection capabilities, its effectiveness could be enhanced by integrating with additional tools, such as endpoint security solutions. This integrated approach is particularly crucial for financial institutions, which often require dedicated endpoint security teams. While using multiple tools is valuable, further improvements within Splunk itself are also necessary. Considering both external integration and internal development, I would rate its current insider threat detection capabilities as three out of ten. Threat detection is where Splunk falls behind. While it offers tools, other use cases require additional work. PAM is an enterprise tool that centralizes information about users, servers, and everything else. It needs real-time monitoring, which I haven't seen in any of the companies I've worked for. They only rely on Splunk for alerting, but real-time monitoring should be handled by the endpoint security team's tools. This means there's no detection or analysis at the machine or endpoint level. Additionally, threat analysis reporting is also absent.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

VS
Feb 26, 2015
HP ArcSight vs. IBM QRadar vs. ​McAfee Nitro vs. Splunk vs. RSA Security vs. LogRhythm
We at Infosecnirvana.com have done several posts on SIEM. After the Dummies Guide on SIEM, we are following it up with a SIEM Product Comparison – 101 deck. So, here it is for your viewing pleasure. Let me know what you think by posting your comments below. The key products compared here are…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
5%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about AWS X-Ray?
AWS X-Ray is a strong solution and has a smooth integration process.
What needs improvement with AWS X-Ray?
They can improve how traces are sent to other providers.
What SOC product do you recommend?
For tools I’d recommend: -SIEM- LogRhythm -SOAR- Palo Alto XSOAR Doing commercial w/o both (or at least an XDR) is asking to miss details that are critical, and ending up a statistic. Also, rememb...
What is a better choice, Splunk or Azure Sentinel?
It would really depend on (1) which logs you need to ingest and (2) what are your use cases Splunk is easy for ingestion of anything, but the charge per GB/Day Indexed and it gets expensive as log ...
How does Splunk compare with Azure Monitor?
Splunk handles a high amount of data very well. We use Splunk to capture information and as an aggregator for monitoring information from different sources. Splunk is very good at alerting us if we...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

COMCAST, ConnectWise, skyscanner, AirAsia, cookpad, cimpress, VTEX, zowdow
Splunk has more than 7,000 customers spread across over 90 countries. These customers include Telenor, UniCredit, ideeli, McKenney's, Tesco, and SurveyMonkey.
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS X-Ray vs. Splunk Enterprise Security and other solutions. Updated: May 2023.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.