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SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

SolarWinds Server and Appli...
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.5
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (17th), Server Monitoring (7th), Active Directory Management (8th)
Splunk Enterprise Security
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
394
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. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is designed for Server Monitoring and holds a mindshare of 2.9%, up 2.5% compared to last year.
Splunk Enterprise Security, on the other hand, focuses on Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), holds 7.3% mindshare, down 9.5% since last year.
Server Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor2.9%
Zabbix10.3%
Nagios XI6.1%
Other80.7%
Server Monitoring
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Splunk Enterprise Security7.3%
IBM Security QRadar5.3%
Wazuh4.4%
Other83.0%
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

NikhilKalwint - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Specialist at ServiceIO
Monitoring over a thousand systems has improved decision making and operational visibility
From an advantage perspective, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is comparatively cheaper from a commercial point of view. It is easy to install and configure, very user-friendly, and quick to get up and running, allowing you to see the early value adds in your organization. It is compatible with most technologies for monitoring with very few chances of incompatibility. Configuration also allows us to monitor all the technical parameters we are looking for, making it a very good experience for us. The alerting feature in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is a main advantage, as it alerts based on threshold breaches and can raise tickets to the ticketing system, send SMS, and email notifications, allowing engineers to work on those tickets to resolve issues and avoid further impact. The visibility into server health is a beneficial feature that I am utilizing. We widely use various application performance metrics in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor such as database monitoring and server monitoring, which are quite good enough for any monitoring solution. We utilize the customizable dashboards in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor.
Sathis-Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at Bank of America
Helps us detect cyber threats quickly and integrate multiple feeds effectively
Overall, the product is good, but when it comes to some infrastructure issues, we have to dig into more logs. There is no straightforward indication of an issue. Health check kind of dashboards are not available. More AI would help us, and more optimization, since security products run more queries. The AI module could suggest solutions, optimizing queries or workload balancing. If the product itself advises on running queries during peak times, it would be similar to what ChatGPT currently offers. We see quite a few issues on stability. Even last week, we faced something, and identifying bottlenecks is not easy. We need more SMEs, and there is no mechanism to tell us about indexer or search head issues. Self-monitoring dashboards could be beneficial. The technical support still requires more improvement. Often, primary support takes a lot of time and forwards most solutions to the engineering side. The primary support team has very limited knowledge to provide.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is easy to install and configure, very user-friendly, and quick to get up and running, allowing you to see the early value adds in your organization."
"The most valuable feature is the Access Rights Manager."
"Once we got our IT inventory organized and aligned with the business, we were able to leverage our Orion Platform to provide more than just a reactive-based monitoring service to the business."
"The recommendations are a life saver."
"SolarWinds SAM has significantly improved our workflow by allowing us to develop a comprehensive knowledge base of known errors and automate responses to specific alerts."
"There are many valuable features, including the network configuration manager, and the network performance manager."
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is the network devices' performance monitor is the best."
"If you are looking for a single pane of glass to monitor Windows products then SolarWinds is your product."
"The most valuable features of Splunk Enterprise Security are its high-performance data collection, flexible query language, and its versatility across the organization."
"Splunk has saved our organization time by resolving problems in a quicker timeframe."
"Splunk has machine learning which is a valuable feature."
"The two features I appreciate most in Splunk Enterprise Security are the content management system and the inter-incident review dashboard."
"The indexing and data collection are valuable."
"Previously, it would take us days to properly analyze, triage, and respond to insider threats; now with risk-based alerting, we are able to reduce that to 10 minutes."
"The features of Splunk Enterprise Security that I appreciate the most include the SPL search."
"Splunk Enterprise Security helps my SOC team prioritize and investigate high-fidelity alerts more effectively by enabling us to quickly gather information, collaborate, and provide various teams with access to the same information, allowing them to follow the workflow to complete the task."
 

Cons

"SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is not stable. We have to maintain the platform and it goes down frequently."
"I think they need to make reporting easier and more simple & dynamic."
"The technical support team's response time could be improved."
"It should also be easier to upgrade SolarWinds. AppDynamics is harder to deploy but easier to upgrade. So AppDynamics takes a lot of time and effort to install, but you can upgrade it in minutes. SolarWinds is the opposite. It's easy to deploy, but upgrades take forever. To date, nobody can complete it on time, so the production environment is sitting idle."
"It lacks a user experience for measuring things like the end-to-end time for which a user waits for a specific response in the system. In the application layer, it has some very basic stuff. You have to build your own with manuscripts and things like that."
"Support for the IBM Mainframe is needed."
"A lot of times, we have to do a lot of manual cleanups."
"The tool’s report feature created issues for us. We needed to gain skills to use that feature. The tool’s customization is not easy since you have to reconfigure the whole system."
"The first thing that comes to mind is a little bit of UI improvement. It sometimes can be a little bit buggy or it can be a little bit slow, but that varies from customer to customer."
"Features related to content management must be improved."
"Splunk can improve its third-party device application plugins."
"The solution could improve by making it more business analysis oriented. The way it is now is designed more for developers."
"Sometimes the communication with support happens with multiple staff. They should reduce the time to resolution."
". Having a trial version or more training on Splunk would be helpful."
"Certain sections of the developer documentation could use some updating and clarification."
"Splunk Enterprise Security provides us with the relevant context to help guide our investigations, but it would be interesting to add even more context, for instance, in order to raise the level of risk."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I would advise potential buyers to wait until the end of the quarter, end of year, or other time to place orders. There are actually great deals to be had at those times if your budget cycle can match up."
"When compared to other licensed models in the market, it stands out as one of the more cost-effective options."
"Pricing is inexpensive, starting at 2440 euros. For that, you get the ability to monitor a couple of nodes and one year of maintenance and support."
"The solution's price is reasonable. Though it's on the higher side, the tool is worth the money."
"The product is expensive."
"I like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."
"Pricing and licensing is fair for what you get. It does have a great bang-for-the-buck appeal."
"I would rate the pricing for this solution a three out of five."
"The variables and the flexibility that Splunk provides are helpful, especially in a hybrid and multi-cloud environment."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is expensive. I would rate the cost an eight out of ten with ten being the most expensive."
"The price of Splunk Enterprise Security is high."
"Splunk's cost is very high. They need to review the pricing. They have to go back and totally readdress the market."
"Splunk is really expensive compared to all the other tools on the market, including Microsoft Sentinel."
"Splunk is not a cheap solution and the license is billed annually."
"Pricing and licensing is quite expensive. But for the value the product provides, it seems at par in the market."
"I think we recently switched to the SVC pricing compared to the ingest pricing."
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896,803 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

VS
Manager, Enterprise Risk Consulting at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
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
Educational Organization
13%
Financial Services Firm
8%
University
7%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise21
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business124
Midsize Enterprise52
Large Enterprise274
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?
There is definitely room for improvement besides simplifying its setup. As a non-technical person, I believe the dashboards could be improved. Everything we use appears on video walls, and we need ...
What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?
I am doing research as we currently have both solutions, and I am looking to see if we need both or can manage with one. Currently, the outcome indicates that we need both. The focus point is diffe...
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...
 

Also Known As

SolarWinds SAM
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
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 SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Splunk Enterprise Security and other solutions. Updated: May 2023.
896,803 professionals have used our research since 2012.