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ServiceNow Cloud Observability vs Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

ServiceNow Cloud Observability
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
41st
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Splunk ITSI (IT Service Int...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
10th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
50
Ranking in other categories
IT Alerting and Incident Management (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of ServiceNow Cloud Observability is 0.4%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) is 0.7%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

VinayKumar16 - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides ease of use in areas like analytics and reporting
The feature of the tool that is more impactful for cloud performance stems from the area revolving around analytics and reporting. It is an easy-to-use tool. There is something known as performance analytics within ServiceNow that offers complete analytics, which offers end-to-end analytics along with the KPI metrics with what we have in place and so on. With the aforementioned aspects of the tool, I think we should be able to create a dashboard according to the operations view called the operation dashboard view, specifically for C-level executives.
Sunil K R - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps improve our incident response time, and our mean time to resolve, but visibility is limited
In my previous project, I successfully led the end-to-end deployment of a Splunk migration. The process went smoothly thanks in part to Splunk's professional services team. They conducted a thorough assessment, identified all our potential pain points, and developed a tailored solution and migration plan. This comprehensive approach ensured a seamless transition. Our core deployment team consisted of 5 internal members and two specialists from Splunk. Additionally, the project included a project manager and a product owner. We also benefited from the expertise of two professional service consultants and two representatives from the customer's side. An on-site admin architect further provided valuable technical support. Throughout the deployment process, we leveraged support from various resources whenever necessary. This included assistance with configuration changes, deployments, and other related tasks. We also collaborated effectively with our teammates to ensure a smooth and successful implementation.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The ability to create a stream based on different parameters, operation name, service name, URL, tags, and URI part, is one valuable feature."
"The solution Lightstep/ServiceNow has a couple of pretty advanced functionalities to help us investigate a deviation and help the development teams have better observability in the environment using distributed and complex services."
"To a certain extent, it is possible to save on the costs of the product."
"The UI is very intuitive."
"The service analyzer view and automatic creation of incidents are valuable."
"Splunk ITSI offers a valuable visualization tree that allows us to map and analyze dependencies and co-dependency within our environment."
"One particularly useful feature of Splunk ITSI is the ability to create custom services."
"The most valuable features are the service analyzer and Glass Tables."
"I particularly appreciate two features of Splunk ITSI: data forwarding and the marketplace."
"Instant usability of gathered event metrics is available. We have metrics data from systems, and we can use that to instantly get system status and trends."
"The most valuable features are the agility, being able to ingest many data sources with no limitation on capacity."
"We save substantial time on monitoring tasks because we don't have to search for what we need. Everything is packed, so you can drill down to the end values by just doing the kit. We don't spend a lot of time on this. Splunk ITSI is easy to use and not time-consuming."
 

Cons

"In terms of licensing, users would want the product to offer them the ability to tailor the tasks offered in the solution to suit their needs."
"The dashboard and graphics must be improved."
"The support team could be better. Because of the different versions of different tactics of integrating reactive code base, the documentation is not very clear if someone has to be onboard. I would rate the documentation of Lightstep a five out of ten. It could need improvement."
"The design of this solution is not very intuitive and probably could come with more friendly tips for beginners."
"After upgrading Splunk ITSI from version 4.11 to 4.13, the analyzer stopped finding values for KPS and services."
"The UI could be updated. Some elements of the KPI section aren't where you'd expect. It looks like a website from 2010 or maybe older. You can't change some things, like if it doesn't word-wrap well. For example, if you have a long list of KPIs that exceed a character limit, you need to hover over them and wait for the HTML text to pop up to see which KPI it is."
"When configuring a dashboard, we can write search criteria. Based on the search criteria, the dashboard shows all the alerts, including the alert time, creation time, and a summary description of the alert. When you add an extra column, such as the user that triggered the alert, the next time he refreshes the dashboard, he wants to know that the alert is acknowledged. We want to improve that comment feature."
"Quality-of-life features have room for improvement."
"I believe the refresh time should be faster."
"The problem becomes the price, as Splunk is an expensive product."
"The dashboard function inside the individual episodes, not at the ITSI Notable Event Aggregation Policy level but actually at the correlation search layer, is an area where improvements are required."
"They should make it easier to use. Many people are new to it. It is hard and has a steep learning curve."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive. I rate the tool's pricing model an eight out of ten."
"It is interesting. I am not involved that much lately, but if I recall correctly, you license primarily on the volume of data that you are using in Splunk ITSI, but there is no way Splunk can ever check if that is true, so that is interesting. We are not doing it, but someone can pretend to just use 10%, and it would be super cheap. It is tricky, but it is more tricky for Splunk than for us."
"The cost of the modules is a bit high for non-global companies, making it difficult for them to afford Splunk ITSI."
"The licensing is based on data usage."
"I know that it is expensive, but I do not think there is another solution that can do similar things for that price."
"It would have been good if the product cost was much lower."
"Splunk ITSI is expensive."
"Pricing was pretty good, and it is possible to just add on the features we want."
"Splunk is pretty expensive, but it gives you a decent insight into the data. It is easy to learn, and ITSI has a great interface. You can run those queries and pass the data. I"
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Retailer
11%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with LightStep?
There are a lot of workflows and connectors. In terms of licensing, users would want the product to offer them the ability to tailor the tasks offered in the solution to suit their needs.
What is your primary use case for LightStep?
I use the solution in my company since it has multiple tenants available. Basically, what happens in business is that you have a hybrid setup model, and for that, you extensively use a cloud platfo...
What needs improvement with Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence)?
Currently, Glass tables in ITSI only display metrics related to KPIs. I proposed adding an option to show metrics related to entities. This would eliminate the need for custom SPL to achieve this f...
 

Also Known As

LightStep
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

InVision, Twilio, Lyft, Yext, DigitalOcean,
TransUnion, Cox Automotive, Carnival Cruises, Leidos, Econocom, National Ignition Factory, Entrust Datacard, Molina Healthcare, United States Census Bureau
Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow Cloud Observability vs. Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
846,617 professionals have used our research since 2012.