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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 (20th), Server Monitoring (9th), Active Directory Management (8th)
Splunk Enterprise Security
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
375
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (2nd), 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 3.1%, up 2.8% compared to last year.
Splunk Enterprise Security, on the other hand, focuses on Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), holds 7.4% mindshare, down 10.0% since last year.
Server Monitoring Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor3.1%
Zabbix18.1%
Checkmk8.1%
Other70.69999999999999%
Server Monitoring
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Splunk Enterprise Security7.4%
Wazuh7.3%
IBM Security QRadar5.6%
Other79.7%
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.
reviewer1469784 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
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

"SolarWinds SAM has provided us with dynamic thresholds based on historical trends and requirements. The threshold gets configured automatically, so it's no longer necessary to configure it manually every time."
"There are many valuable features, including the network configuration manager, and the network performance manager."
"The initial setup was relatively easy, and we didn't have to install anything. All we had to do was put on the devices we wanted to monitor."
"AppInsight for SQL: Enables us to see the relevant error log entries on the same page as performance parameters."
"Solarwinds has an open database that allows you to do serious integrations. It doesn't matter which service desk you have, you can implement and integrate it with SolarWinds."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its interface, which is used for monitoring."
"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."
"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 stability and reliability of Splunk Enterprise Security is outstanding. It's a software and product that anybody can really pick up and use."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is a huge value-add to us because I can confirm that our security team treats it as a normal component of their daily operations."
"The biggest advantage I can see in Splunk Enterprise Security is the big data analytics."
"The solution's most valuable feature is the dashboard, which allows us to see everything on the same page and provides easy visibility into problems."
"Compared to IBM QRadar, Splunk Enterprise Security offers faster alert resolution."
"Our clients are easily able to modify and evolve their implementations."
"Incident detection is the positive impact I have seen from Splunk Enterprise Security; it probably saved the company from financial losses because of the early detection of the incidents."
"The ability to rapidly diagnose problems in production and non-production, across hundreds of log files, is the most valuable feature."
 

Cons

"SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor could improve by having a cloud version. They have an observability platform but it still needs to be maintained by us."
"Solarwinds should come up the same monitoring system for other certificate expiration alert apart from SSL."
"A lot of times, we have to do a lot of manual cleanups."
"The setup was complex. We had local support to assist us."
"I believe that some of the trends, environmental maps, and items like those found in Orion would be very beneficial."
"The stability, flexibility, and ease of use could be improved."
"The technical support was better in previous years. With the launch of the premium support service, the normal support has declined."
"Some custom applications cannot be monitored, and a lot more applications need to be included."
"It would be nice if Splunk reduced the cost of training. Their training sessions are way too costly."
"Data retention can be better. If we want to look at the data for five months or six months, that is not available to us. We only have a history of 20 or 30 days. After that, the information gets lost. That is a drawback."
"Splunk's reporting functionality would benefit from enhanced customization capabilities, allowing users to tailor reports to their specific needs for better data visualization and analysis."
"Splunk's high cost, despite its recognition in our region, prevents many organizations from adopting Splunk Enterprise Security, suggesting there's room for improvement in their pricing strategy."
"My organization does not completely utilize risk-based alerting in Splunk Enterprise Security as it's not fully mature."
"The Splunk platform is not unified. We have all of these different tools and they feel a bit disjointed."
"Cybersecurity and infrastructure monitoring have room for improvement."
"This is a costly solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive."
"When compared to other licensed models in the market, it stands out as one of the more cost-effective options."
"The tool is available for my company at a good price point."
"We pay around $ 2,000 to $ 5,000 yearly for the solution."
"The price is too high."
"The solution's price is reasonable. Though it's on the higher side, the tool is worth the money."
"Pricing and licensing is fair for what you get. It does have a great bang-for-the-buck appeal."
"Understanding the counts of objects to monitor will determine the licensing need. In terms of pricing, it’s not cheap but it’s not expensive as larger vendors whose products don’t have all the features or integrations."
"The price of this solution is expensive. However, it has great features. If you want a great solution you need to pay a price matching the features."
"The Splunk Enterprise Security license is expensive."
"Setup cost is cheap: It is free, it is user-friendly, and it is fast."
"I think that most of the monitoring solutions are expensive."
"The pricing and licensing of the product are quite high."
"Truly evaluate the data you want to ingest and go slow. Pulling in data that can provide no use to your mission only wastes data against your license."
"It's a yearly subscription."
"It's definitely worth it."
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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
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

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 Business109
Midsize Enterprise50
Large Enterprise264
 

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 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.
879,899 professionals have used our research since 2012.