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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 (8th), Active Directory Management (8th)
Splunk Enterprise Security
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
392
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 3.0%, up 2.6% compared to last year.
Splunk Enterprise Security, on the other hand, focuses on Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), holds 7.1% mindshare, down 9.2% since last year.
Server Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor3.0%
Zabbix10.7%
Nagios XI6.1%
Other80.2%
Server Monitoring
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Splunk Enterprise Security7.1%
IBM Security QRadar5.2%
Wazuh4.6%
Other83.1%
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

"We use the solution as a central monitoring tool. We use it to monitor every transaction that has a relation to the organization’s infrastructure."
"The more valuable feature of this solution is the Exchange feature."
"One of the most valuable features are the reports. They're pretty good. Also, the ease of installation and customization for the client is another feature that we value. SolarWinds has a lot of features but these are the ones I like the most. We also like that the KPIs have the ability to be preset."
"We manage SolarWinds ourselves without outsourcing its services."
"As I mentioned in one of the other points: "Simplicity at its best"."
"The features like trends, capacity planning, recommendations, and diagnostics are the main items I focus on for added value."
"The solution has good alerts; notifications are sent via email to technicians, and you can filter the kinds of alerts you want to receive as well, which is excellent."
"SolarWinds is one of the best products on the market and if they eventually support the IBM Mainframe then it will be perfect."
"The main advantage of the solution is that it provides an easy setup platform in the new environment."
"The features of Splunk Enterprise Security that I appreciate the most are its flexibility and scalability, as it integrates disparate security solutions, offers many out-of-the-box apps through Splunkbase, enables straightforward customization, and supports efficient detection and alerting processes that improve overall business resilience."
"Splunk works based on parsing log files."
"The Splunk user community and forum are most valuable."
"The scalability of the solution is amazing because it can collect a lot of data and you can have your own structure to monitor this data."
"Aggregation searches have reduced time and difficulty of identifying trends and conditions which need to reviewed."
"I would assess the stability and reliability of Splunk Enterprise Security as good, as I have not had any issues with it."
"It can log more logs than other solutions. It's a good way to troubleshoot problems."
 

Cons

"In terms of the dashboards on offer, they should work to improve them."
"Mapping interactions between systems."
"The product does not explain why a problem occurred."
"The product needs to reduce its price."
"I had some stability issues. I lost my environment, but with the help of SolarWinds support, I was able to get back to a stable platform."
"SolarWinds' interface is slow, and this is a global concern."
"They should incorporate more artificial intelligence. There should also be more predictive features."
"I would like to see support for non-Windows or non-Microsoft domains, especially Apache and other non-Windows servers."
"If it could be made available as a service, this would be much better than as a product."
"We've sometimes faced issues with upgrades. The incident review dashboard sometimes breaks after updates. When we add a space or something in the description or anywhere in the SQL, the drill-down value may be reset with a blank value. Before rolling out any software, they should test it thoroughly and ensure clients won't have issues with the upgraded version. It should be compatible with all or most of the apps. All major issues must be addressed before rolling out the upgrade."
"An improved user interface along with multi-tenancy support would be beneficial."
"Its interface and usability can always be improved."
"Their technical support sucks."
"Better education for users would be beneficial as they often don't know what they don't know or how to look for certain features."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is complicated in terms of developing specific cybersecurity use cases."
"The technical support can be improved because sometimes when we call them, the issues are not resolved immediately and tickets take time to be addressed."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product might cost you $30,000 USD to buy, but scaling this solution requires the purchase of additional polling engines at $20,000 USD each."
"We are on an annual license to use the solution. The price of the solution is expensive. The price is based on a bunch of factors, such as the number of engines and elements."
"The solution is overpriced in terms of application management."
"The solution's price is reasonable. Though it's on the higher side, the tool is worth the money."
"The product is expensive."
"I think SolarWinds' pricing is very decent compared to other competitors in the market."
"Its licensing is on a yearly basis. It is just the standard price, but it can vary depending on the current rate of the dollar."
"The tool is available for my company at a good price point."
"The price is comparable."
"Splunk Enterprise becomes extremely expensive after the 20GB/month license."
"Price-wise, if you compare QRadar to Splunk for SIEM functionality then they are in the same range but when you integrate SOAR with these solutions, Splunk takes the lead and is more competitive."
"I've heard Splunk is often preferred over other options, but the cost can be prohibitive for smaller organizations."
"The price of Splunk Enterprise Security is high."
"While Splunk is more expensive than other solutions, we would still choose it because of its capabilities."
"The tool's licensing is good and we haven't received any complaints from the team handling it."
"The pricing seems good relative to the other vendors that we have had here. However, they need to find ways to be more flexible with the licensing and be able to deal with situations where we start generating more logs. Maybe having some controls in the Splunk interface to turn it off, so we don't have to change anything in our application."
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Server Monitoring solutions are best for your needs.
896,510 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 Business123
Midsize Enterprise52
Large Enterprise272
 

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.
896,510 professionals have used our research since 2012.