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Azure Monitor vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.1
Azure Monitor's support is mixed; users find premium plans helpful, but improvements in response time and competence are needed.
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
6.3
Azure Monitor requires improved deployment, integration, user interface, and support, with enhanced automation, billing transparency, and AI-based features.
Sentiment score
6.2
Splunk Enterprise Security is costly and complex, with users seeking better integration, usability, support, and enhanced features like AI.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Azure Monitor is scalable and flexible for companies, though some face regional and integration challenges despite ongoing updates.
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

Sentiment score
4.7
Azure Monitor's pricing is seen as cost-effective or expensive, depending on usage, with benefits for existing Azure customers.
Sentiment score
7.7
Splunk Enterprise Security's pricing is perceived as high due to its licensing model and extensive features, often deterring SMEs.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.8
Azure Monitor is highly reliable and stable, with improvements over time, though some regional and advanced monitoring issues remain.
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
8.7
Azure Monitor provides dynamic alerting, seamless integration, and robust data, aiding proactive issue resolution and system health maintenance.
Sentiment score
8.7
Splunk Enterprise Security excels in dashboards, reporting, flexibility, scalability, support, log aggregation, alerting, integration, and efficient large data handling.
 

Categories and Ranking

Azure Monitor
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
53
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (4th), Cloud Monitoring Software (5th)
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. Azure Monitor is designed for Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability and holds a mindshare of 9.7%, up 9.1% compared to last year.
Splunk Enterprise Security, on the other hand, focuses on Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), holds 11.2% mindshare, down 15.0% since last year.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

Swapan Biswas - PeerSpot reviewer
A powerful Kusto query language but the alerting mechanism needs improvement
Alerts cannot be configured to monitor at a certain point in time. For example, we might want to alert people at zero hours but that is not possible. Splunk can accomplish this and its alerts are far better than the solution's options. The alerting mechanism is not up to the market. The default interface should be improved. You can prepare your own dashboard by using custom query language, but the default interface is not good.
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.
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.
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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…
 

Answers from the Community

NC
Nov 17, 2021
Nov 17, 2021
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 have problems somewhere or if we are not getting the flow we expect. It is very easy to search for queries and events and then do analysis. The flexibility of the search capability is extremely valua...
See 2 answers
Shibu Babuchandran - PeerSpot reviewer
Oct 22, 2021
Hi @Netanya Carmi​, Below are some comparisons on features and Integrations.  Azure Monitor Splunk Full observability into your applications, infrastructure, and network. It provides sophisticated tools for collecting and analyzing telemetry that allow you to maximize the performance and availability of your cloud and on-premises resources and applications; Search, monitor, analyze and visualize machine data. Splunk Inc. provides the leading platform for Operational Intelligence. Customers use Splunk to search, monitor, analyze and visualize machine data.                                    IT Infrastructure Monitoring Features Application Monitoring √ √ Bandwidth Monitoring √ X Capacity Planning √ X Configuration Change Management √ √ Data Movement Monitoring √ √ Health Monitoring √ X Multi-Platform Support √ X Performance Monitoring √ √ Point-in-Time Visibility √ X Reporting / Analytics √ √ Virtual Machine Monitoring √ X                                                 Integrations Squadcast √ √ Amazon EKS X √ Amazon Redshift X √ Amazon Web Services (AWS) X √ Azure DevOps Services √ X Azure Logic Apps √ X Azure Stack √ X Beats √ X CMS Hub X √ CyberOne X √
Nov 17, 2021
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 have problems somewhere or if we are not getting the flow we expect. It is very easy to search for queries and events and then do analysis. The flexibility of the search capability is extremely valuable. Splunk works well with other solutions. It is very easy to set up and very straightforward to deploy. The more data you process with Splunk, the more expensive it gets; an improved pricing model is needed. It would be great if Splunk had more SIEM functionality with better customization and a better ticket tool. The on-premises scaling is a bit more limited than on the cloud. Splunk currently has some limited default rules and customizations. If they could concentrate more on compliance and security information, that would be an added bonus. Azure Monitor has made it significantly easier for us to monitor applications and infrastructure for possible problems. This solution offers a survey of surveillance in real time and a very helpful dashboard. Azure Monitor, which is integrated with Azure DevOps, has good load gathering and very good analytics. We get useful alerts with Azure Monitor that make recommendations about the security and the platform. There should be more specific detail about where problems lie. Azure Monitor is lacking somewhat in vulnerability assessment; this aspect could be better. Their automation also needs some improvement. From gathering metrics from more applications to getting processes quickly started when something goes down, automation should be better. Conclusion: For us, Splunk is the better solution. We use Splunk to search, monitor, analyze, and visualize machine data, which it does very well. The dashboard is very intuitive. The log collection and log management tools are very good. We find Splunk’s search capability to be very powerful and flexible. Splunk can access any kind of data and there is no limitation to the kind of structured or unstructured data you can extract. Our team also liked that Splunk offers better integration with more solutions.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
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

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...
What do you like most about Azure Monitor?
Azure Monitor is a very easy-to-use product in the cloud environment.
What needs improvement with Azure Monitor?
Azure Monitor could improve by adding capabilities for data observability and integrating more tightly with their data platform components.
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 ...
What do you like most about Splunk?
There are a lot of third-party applications that can be installed.
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rackspace, First Gas, Allscripts, ABB Group
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 Azure Monitor vs. Splunk Enterprise Security and other solutions. Updated: May 2023.
823,795 professionals have used our research since 2012.