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reviewer2499597 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Lead at a manufacturing company with 201-500 employees
Real User
Top 20
Jul 7, 2024
Helps predict, identify, and resolve problems in real-time
Pros and Cons
  • "Alerts are a huge benefit because we can customize them to each business unit's needs."
  • "Using basic natural language in English instead of writing a regex expression will be helpful."

What is our primary use case?

Our Splunk Cloud Platform centralizes logs from all OT assets, allowing OT business units to request various insights. These insights can include how often assets cycle down, memory storage usage, or data consumption over time. They can then configure dashboards to receive alerts based on these specific metrics.

How has it helped my organization?

The biggest benefit I have seen using the platform is the alerts because most of our sites are remote in the middle-of-nowhere deserts. If something goes down, they don't have direct eyes on them. Thanks to Splunk's automated alert that notifies us if something is down, we can quickly respond to it before it affects any other systems.

We do have several cloud environments that we're using because we got the Splunk Cloud Platform last month. We are integrating them all into one location, so we are still determining the ease of monitoring all the cloud environments using the Splunk Cloud Platform. Before having Splunk, it was a huge issue because we had to go to different locations. Having it all in one location under Splunk will make it much better for us.

It is important, especially for our cloud team to have end-to-end visibility into our cloud-native environments through Splunk Cloud Platform. The more visibility we have the better it is.

Splunk Cloud Platform has significantly reduced our mean time to resolve because instead of us having to go out to the site or having somebody on the site tell us a few hours later there is an issue, it could be within minutes now that we can resolve the issue. After all, as soon as it goes down, we get the logs, we get notified, and then we can immediately go in and check it out. So it is a significant amount of time that Splunk is helping us reduce for resolution.

Splunk Cloud Platform's ability to predict, identify, and resolve problems in real time has been huge, especially because our business units are operational technologies. They generate revenue for us. That's how our business stays afloat because we're in the energy sector. So If something goes down or if they want a quick dashboard, the biggest thing we're to be using as well besides the alerts is the dashboards showing how quickly we're remediating vulnerabilities and showing where they are vulnerable. That's going to be huge for the business side and will help us a lot.

Splunk Cloud Platform helps consolidate network security and IT observability tools. The cyber group gets all the alerts, but we can direct it to which person we want to send the alert to. That's good because they can go to IT, which is where we're at, Cyber, which can potentially help fix the problem, and then networking too in case something goes down. That is one of the requests is if an on-site asset goes down, the network team can see why it's off the network. So it's good that it spreads out everywhere, and whoever can help fix it can be on top of it.

What is most valuable?

Alerts are a huge benefit because we can customize them to each business unit's needs. Splunk automates the process and sends email notifications directly, which saves me time.

What needs improvement?

The AI features will be a huge improvement for Splunk. Using basic natural language in English instead of writing a regex expression will be helpful. For example, I can tell Splunk AI that I need to get the logs from last week between eight AM and ten PM on a specific asset. Instead of me going in, doing the regex expression, and then having to Google what it is because it's super hard to do sometimes. That is the biggest area for improvement. Hopefully, it will be released soon because that will simplify things for me and non-technical people. 

Buyer's Guide
Splunk Cloud Platform
February 2026
Learn what your peers think about Splunk Cloud Platform. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: February 2026.
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For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the Splunk Cloud Platform for one month.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Splunk Cloud Platform is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Splunk Cloud Platform can handle terabytes of data.

How are customer service and support?

The support has always been great for the few times I have used it.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

The deployment is super easy. We deployed the Splunk Forwarder file and from there, we have a batch file, a PowerShell file, and it runs in the background. The users don't even know it's being installed.

What about the implementation team?

The implementation was completed in-house.

What was our ROI?

In regards to a return on investment, the metrics are the biggest thing. Data is everything. The business units enjoy the dashboards that Splunk Cloud presents. And it is quick to present them.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Splunk Cloud Platform fell within our budget so we pulled the trigger and implemented it.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Splunk Cloud Platform ten out of ten. All the applications I need are readily available in a user-friendly dropdown menu. Exploring them is a breeze, and the platform's speed is impressive.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
reviewer2491965 - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure Engineer at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Top 10
Jun 26, 2024
Excellent reporting and dashboarding, but it is expensive
Pros and Cons
  • "Dashboarding has been very powerful. I work with a lot of different customers, so being able to tailor the data for different customers has been valuable. I am able to make visuals and have reports where they can self-serve."
  • "It would be nice to see more comparisons between Splunk and other log management tools. There are some legacy tools that people are often coming off. It will ease the transition if you are coming off a Windows LogViewer or any other logging tool. Splunk could offer more advice on how to transition into it or onboard it."

What is our primary use case?

We mainly use it for the purposes of analyzing application logs to get a bit of understanding of what is normal application performance and then use that to highlight errors and inconsistencies when they occur.

How has it helped my organization?

Resilience is incredibly important to us. We are in the medical field. It is insurance. When people are using our service, we should be able to provide that. Having that resilience is key for us because we are helping people. The resilience that Splunk offers has been valuable in that regard. There is peace of mind for us and our customers.

We have multiple cloud vendors that are being utilized in Splunk. It has been useful. Splunk is able to handle a lot of things out of the box. There is a good bit of value in being able to make sense of multiple types of logs in one environment and being able to cross-reference them. It has just taken a lot of effort out of that.

We have integrated it with other tools. At the moment, it has been with Cribl as a pipeline tool so that we can be agnostic with Splunk in some regards. Cribl handles the logs being sent to Splunk, and then from there, if there is anywhere else where we want to send them, Cribl can handle that too. That has been our main integration. The ease of integration varies. Splunk offers out-of-the-box support for some tools and applications. Integration with them has been quite simple. Other things have been a bit more difficult. Integration can be more difficult if it does not have a Splunk base, but there is a good range of things that are available out of the box.

Its reporting has been excellent. We have integrated it with tools like ServiceNow, so we are able to create an instance for teams and integrate it with our NOC. The reporting has been incredibly valuable.

I come from a monitoring background. I knew from the get-go the value that we could get from Splunk, but we actually started to see its value once we started enforcing logging standards. It made it very easy for us to validate if something was or was not following our standards.

It has been great from the compliance perspective. It began to show value to some of our customers when they were able to search multiple applications because of the standards and compliance built into it.

It has had an impact on the decision-making processes in our organization. It has been mainly around compliance. Given it is a financial and medical sector, decisions have been made around what information we are storing in the logs and how we are managing the data that comes directly from Splunk.

It has been good for helping our organization access data for compliance and privacy regulations. It has been useful for pinpointing things. We are able to ensure that we are abiding by those standards. It has been incredibly useful in that space.

What is most valuable?

Dashboarding has been very powerful. I work with a lot of different customers, so being able to tailor the data for different customers has been valuable. I am able to make visuals and have reports where they can self-serve.

What needs improvement?

It would be nice to see more comparisons between Splunk and other log management tools. There are some legacy tools that people are often coming off. It will ease the transition if you are coming off a Windows LogViewer or any other logging tool. Splunk could offer more advice on how to transition into it or onboard it.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I have not had any issues related to stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

This is outside of my department, but it seems like it would be easy to scale up. However, there is a cost concern. That always seems to be the linchpin when people discuss Splunk. It comes at a cost.

When it comes to extensibility, they make it relatively simple, but it is an expensive tool. There are always going to be conversations that need to be had.

How are customer service and support?

The quality of the answer has been good. We have had to leverage the support only a small number of times. We found the actual portal to get support difficult. Some members of the team were not able to raise certain types of requests. However, when we got through to support, we had no issues.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Prior to Splunk, we had a mixture of things. LogViewer and Graylog were used. Some folks had their logs locally. There was not one central system. 

I was not directly involved in decision-making, but some of the things that I called out as useful were the analytical tools that Splunk offers. We can very quickly get to the root cause by using its query language. It provides a lot of power with little effort. That is what initially drew me to it.

Moving to Splunk allowed standardization. That is the key. It does not matter which part of the company you are from. Splunk has given us a mechanism to say that we expect the logs to look like this, and we all are going to abide by that. It has made standardization a lot easier. Previously, you would not know what you were getting while dealing with a logging problem.

How was the initial setup?

I was involved in its deployment only in a small cluster. I was mainly involved in setting up standards around logging. It was challenging. It was dense, but it was manageable. The feature set of Splunk allowed us to know what we could or could not do.

The main part of maintenance is the ingestion of new logs. New teams and applications get stood up every day, or a new cloud vendor comes in, so there is some maintenance involved there.

What about the implementation team?

We had Splunk technical support. We had a mixture of people from other departments. We had some folks from security, and we had some folks from operations. There were 15 regular faces and 2 Splunk contractors. We involved other teams on an ad hoc basis, but the core team had 15 people.

Overall, we had 20 to 30 people who directly worked with Splunk in some way or for some period of time. We also had to involve all of the teams to get their feedback and educate them on how to use Splunk.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I do not personally deal with that side, but from discussions, I know that it is one of the more expensive tools. I do not have anything to compare it with.

What other advice do I have?

New users should focus on the Splunk free courses. They are an excellent resource. If you are a customer, you should take up the search and reporting classes. That is probably going to be what 99% of people are using it for day to day. If you are a sysadmin user or someone setting up the instance, there are free classes for managing licenses and ingesting data. I would highly recommend them. The free classes are a great start, and if you think it would be valuable, take some of the paid classes as well. They are incredibly detailed.

When it comes to security, we definitely have a stricter attitude when things are going to the cloud because they are not fully in our control. Going to the cloud is always a little bit scary, but we have put in a refined approach for the data going into Splunk.

I have not made much use of federated search. I have come across it, but it is not something I have leveraged.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten. What it does, it does well, but I do have qualms with it here and there. There are obvious features that are missing from time to time, but I am happy with what is there.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Splunk Cloud Platform
February 2026
Learn what your peers think about Splunk Cloud Platform. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: February 2026.
883,692 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Software Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Real User
Top 20
Apr 16, 2024
Helps to improve our incident response time, provides multiple search modes, and is stable
Pros and Cons
  • "Splunk Cloud Platform's search modes are a powerful feature."
  • "The Splunk Cloud Platform dashboard could benefit from some improvements."

What is our primary use case?

My manager typically requests dashboards, alerts, and scheduled reports. Based on their specific requirements, I create reports and dashboards that visualize the data. We leverage the Splunk Cloud Platform to fulfill these needs.

Additionally, my teammates may approach me for insights. I analyze the data and provide them with these insights, which they then use for team meetings and further data analysis. This ultimately helps them make informed decisions.

How has it helped my organization?

Splunk Cloud Platform improves our incident response time by enabling the retrieval of large data volumes. The platform offers impressive search speeds, and we don't need additional SQL commands to optimize response times.

We saw immediate benefits from the Splunk Cloud Platform. Being able to access and analyze logs provided valuable insights.

Splunk's impact on decision-making is significant. I have access to all the data I need, and it is always reliable.

What is most valuable?

Splunk Cloud Platform's search modes are a powerful feature. There are 3 main modes: Fast, Verbose, and Smart. These modes allow us to customize our search based on our needs, which can significantly improve our response time.

What needs improvement?

Splunk Cloud Platform's dashboard could benefit from some improvements. While it functions adequately, it appears very minimalistic. It's built using a simple XML format, and while newer dashboard options have been released, it still lacks the visual capabilities of tools like Power BI and Tableau. While I understand these are different platforms, having a more powerful dashboard option for the Splunk Cloud Platform would be valuable.

There is a lack of comprehensive learning materials offered by Splunk to prepare for their certifications.

Splunk uses SQL as its search language. One challenge I've encountered is with subsearches used in joins. These subsearches can only handle a maximum of 50,000 entries. If our data set is larger, we won't be able to join it using a subsearch. This limitation has been a significant obstacle for me. I've searched the Splunk community forums, and even reached out to my colleagues and seniors for a solution, but haven't found a definitive answer yet.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Splunk Cloud Platform for 2 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is reliable. In my experience working with virtual machines, any search lags are likely due to the VMs themselves, not Splunk.

I would rate the stability 8 out of 10.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Splunk Cloud Platform is horizontal scaling. So it is easy to scale based on the data we are using.

I would rate the scalability of Splunk Cloud Platform 9 out of 10. 

How was the initial setup?

Deploying Splunk Cloud Platform requires knowledge of the Splunk architecture, the deployment server, and the components.

What was our ROI?

We have seen a return on investment.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The certifications are costly.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Splunk Cloud Platform 8 out of 10.

The maintenance required is minimal.

The resilience of Splunk is good.

I recommend the product.

Splunk Cloud Platform is a powerful tool for handling big data. To get the most out of it, understanding both the developer and administrator sides is beneficial. The platform offers broad compatibility with various technologies and allows for easy scaling to accommodate your needs.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Senior analyst in investigations at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 20
Jul 8, 2024
Helpful in dealing with malware investigations and anomalies
Pros and Cons
  • "In terms of the benefits of the product, I would say it is my go-to tool."
  • "The expensive nature of the product is an area of concern that needs to be considered for improvement."

What is our primary use case?

I work on corporate investigations and incident response. I use Splunk Cloud Platform to investigate user frauds, cases related to malware investigations, and anomalies.

How has it helped my organization?

In terms of the benefits of the product, I would say it is my go-to tool. Regarding getting all the data from Windows event logs, and considering the other reporting tools we have in our company like Forcepoint, Proofpoint Email Protection, Office 365, or Microsoft Defender, we have to search and get all the data in one place and to do so, Splunk Cloud Platform is super valuable.

What is most valuable?

The solution's most valuable features are search, reporting, and dashboards.

Splunk Cloud Platform is useful in our organization's monitoring of multiple cloud environments involving cloud services like AWS. I cannot speak about the ease or difficulty of using the tool to monitor multiple cloud environments since I am not on the administration side.

Considering the product's ease of use, the tool offers me the ability to search all the data and get it in a format before giving it to an investigator so that they can get it in a format they can understand.

What needs improvement?

The expensive nature of the product is an area of concern that needs to be considered for improvement.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Splunk Cloud Platform for twelve to fourteen months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The product has been pretty stable for me. I have never seen any outages in the tool, and it has been a pretty solid solution.

How are customer service and support?

I have no experience with the solution's technical support team.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I was not using any other solution in the past.

How was the initial setup?

I don't know anything about the product's deployment phase.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I know that Splunk Cloud Platform is an expensive product.

What other advice do I have?

I rate the tool a ten out of ten.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Raul Lapaz - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Sec Eng at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Aug 24, 2023
Does not require backend maintenance, is easily integrated and utilized
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature is we don't have to deal with any back-end server maintenance because the solution is cloud-based."
  • "The on-premises version of Splunk includes all the integrations, while the Cloud platform lacks certain integrations and is limited in terms of the number of supported apps."

What is our primary use case?

We utilize the Splunk Cloud Platform for log ingestion related to security and troubleshooting purposes.

How has it helped my organization?

Splunk Cloud Platform helps us with our security incident response. The cloud security logs are integrated with all the cloud providers.

The federated search feature enables us to search between Europe and the US, from one Splunk instance to another, all from a single location. This federated search simplifies how we handle data, making it easy to swiftly search for and manage information.

We monitor several cloud environments and find it easy to utilize the Splunk Cloud Platform for this purpose. Each cloud provider offers its own prebuilt dashboard, or customers can create their own.

The Splunk Cloud Platform offers excellent visibility into multiple environments. In the past, we utilized hybrid integrations, and they seamlessly worked right out of the box.

The reporting functionality provided by the Splunk Cloud Platform resembles that of the on-premise platform. It is readily available without requiring integration or the installation of reporting visualizations.

From a security standpoint, the Splunk Cloud Platform provides us with comprehensive visibility into all security logs. This enables us to implement security incident responses with great efficiency. Additionally, we have discovered that internal employees, such as product teams, are utilizing the platform as intended for various other use cases. For instance, it has proven valuable in troubleshooting performance issues and monitoring within Kubernetes. As such, we are leveraging a wide array of use cases within the company.

Splunk is a highly mature software that has been in the market for many years, which greatly influenced our decision-making process. Another factor was the user-friendly nature of the latest version, making it easy to initiate. We don't require a large workforce for installing components; it's as simple as out-of-the-box. Consequently, minimal time investment is needed for training.

The Splunk Cloud Platform assists us in accessing data to meet critical compliance and privacy regulations. For instance, this is particularly important for regulations such as GDPR and HIPAA. We are utilizing Splunk Cloud with a specific focus on HIPAA compliance, allocating extra attention to this aspect. In the case of GDPR, Splunk offers a range of built-in capabilities. For instance, it allows for log masking. Moreover, there are novel features available in Splunk Cloud, such as ingest actions. This feature is exceptionally useful as it enables us to mask the data before it's ingested into Splunk. Consequently, this approach ensures our adherence to compliance regulations, exemplified by GDPR.

The Splunk Cloud Platform has had a significant impact on our organization's security posture. It serves as our primary visibility tool and is the main source of trust for all login activities. Without Splunk, we would lose essential visibility and access to security updates. Currently, Splunk stands as one of the primary tools we utilize due to its utmost importance.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is we don't have to deal with any back-end server maintenance because the solution is cloud-based.

What needs improvement?

The on-premises version of Splunk includes all the integrations, while the Cloud platform lacks certain integrations and is limited in terms of the number of supported apps.

The Splunk Cloud Platform is not a very mature solution; it has only been on the market for four or five years. While they have made significant improvements, there are still limitations, such as the absence of CLI access. Therefore, there are several limitations that still exist with the CLI. 

The standard support has room for improvement. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Splunk Cloud Platform for four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The Splunk Cloud Platform offers 99.9 percent availability, ensuring that we never experience downtime.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I would give Splunk Cloud Platforms' scalability an eight out of ten.

How are customer service and support?

Technical support needs more knowledgeable people.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We used Sumo Logic in the past, but it wasn't an enterprise-grade solution, so it couldn't support the scale we required. Additionally, Sumo Logic lacked support for many integrations. The Splunk Cloud Platform fulfills our scaling requirements and integration needs. Moreover, our team possesses skills that align well with Splunk, making it a better fit for us.

How was the initial setup?

The Initial deployment was very straightforward because we had the skills. But I would not say that this is straightforward without the skills. We need to learn at least the basics. 

The deployment took six months to create this multi-tenant environment because it's a highly specialized setting. It's distinct from a typical Splunk deployment that might only take a day or two. However, the process of configuring, migrating all the data from Sumo Logic to the new Splunk Cloud, and setting up the multi-tenant system along with product dashboards, required approximately six months of effort on our part.

What was our ROI?

We utilize Splunk in a multi-tenant manner, wherein we allocate costs back to the product teams in each department based on their usage. We are a healthcare company engaged in the development of healthcare applications tailored for doctors and hospitals. Splunk plays a pivotal role in assisting us with this endeavor. I would estimate that we have experienced a return on investment of approximately 30 to 40 percent.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The cost of the Splunk Cloud Platform is high, and in addition to the standard licensing fee, we also have a premium support fee.

Now, we are paying less because, instead of being charged based on ingestion, we are paying for SVCs, which stands for Splunk Virtual Compute. This implies that our costs have decreased. Despite ingesting a larger volume of logs, our expenses are lower than they were before. However, it's important to note that if our usage of the tool increases, our expenses will also increase. Therefore, this represents a distinct licensing model from Splunk's.

What other advice do I have?

I would give Splunk Cloud Platform an eight out of ten. Splunk Cloud has shown significant improvement over the past four years, and I highly recommend it.

We operate two distinct Splunk Cloud platforms: one in Europe and another in the US. These platforms are linked through a federated search. This setup ensures that specific data, such as European data stored in the AWS cloud, is directed to the European Splunk platform, while data from the US Cloud is directed to the US Splunk platform. However, it's worth noting that all users primarily log into the Splunk US Cloud. From this point, they have the capability to transmit data to the Splunk Europe platform.

We have around 400 users. 

The maintenance is primarily conducted by Splunk on the backend, and any on-premises maintenance we perform has been reduced by 80 percent.

The value that Resilience provides for SIEM solutions is significant for us. Therefore, if we inquire with various customers, they might provide different perspectives. However, concerning security, this holds substantial value. I would assert that it's the primary tool in our arsenal; indeed, we do possess other security tools, but the most frequently utilized one, which also delivers the utmost value, is undoubtedly Splunk.

The method to expand a SIEM system is achieved by extending the licenses. This expansion enables greater capabilities, increased log retention, and the ability to process more logs. In our specific scenario, we were previously restricted by the capacity of the ingest license. Our log ingestion was limited to, for instance, one terabyte per day. However, with the introduction of this new licensing model that's based on CPU usage, we now have the flexibility to ingest any amount of data while paying according to our actual tool usage. Consequently, if we intend to expand for additional servers, we simply need to contact Splunk and communicate our requirement for increased server capacity to enhance system performance. This process is streamlined because we aren't required to take any additional actions ourselves.

I would highly recommend Splunk Cloud because we don't require personnel for maintenance or server installation and management, as all these backend tasks are taken care of. Additionally, for those who are currently using a competitor of Splunk for SIEM purposes, I would also recommend transitioning to Splunk if they have the budget for it.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 20
Apr 16, 2024
Offers real-time monitoring, seamless integration, and improves security posture
Pros and Cons
  • "I like the Cloud monitoring console feature."
  • "Splunk currently manages the components, which restricts our ability to access them directly."

What is our primary use case?

We leverage the Splunk Cloud Platform for log ingestion. This allows us to create dashboards, alerts, and reports from security and application log data.

How has it helped my organization?

Splunk Cloud Platform offers real-time monitoring capabilities. It continuously ingests data from various sources, allowing us to track its flow. We can set up alerts to be notified of any anomalies, such as spikes in CPU or memory usage. These alerts can be configured to trigger email notifications, keeping us informed of potential issues. Additionally, Splunk Cloud Platform provides real-time dashboards that visualize the data as it's collected.

The federated search feature is useful for our cybersecurity team to complete their log analysis.

Splunk Cloud Platform offers seamless integration with other systems and applications. This is achieved through apps and add-ons developed by Splunk.

Splunk is a good reporting tool. It allows us to generate reports and attach them to emails in CSV or PDF format.

Splunk Cloud Platform has been instrumental in helping our cybersecurity team continuously monitor our data for anomalies and attacks. Its usefulness extends beyond security, though. Teams that ingest their logs into Splunk can monitor various services. If a service goes down, Splunk will trigger an alert. Splunk offers a robust monitoring suite, including dashboards, alerts, and reports. We can monitor system resources like memory and CPU consumption, application logs, Azure logs, and even Office 365 logs. For example, Splunk can reveal who sent emails, who participated in group email threads, and who added or removed members from Active Directory groups. This audit log capability allows us to investigate activity even months or years later. Splunk provides a wide range of use cases for our organization. We noticed these benefits as soon as Splunk started ingesting data.

Splunk has improved our decision-making process thanks to its clear dashboards that help us analyze information and make informed choices.

Splunk has been valuable as a compliance tool because it centralizes log ingestion. Any tool generating logs should be configured to send them to Splunk. This allows us to easily identify compliant applications – those whose logs are collected. Conversely, uncollected logs raise security concerns, as they represent a potential attack surface.

Splunk has significantly improved our organization's security posture. As a primary security tool, Splunk allows us to collect application logs, monitor activity for potential attacks, and conduct searches to identify suspicious behavior.

What is most valuable?

I like that Splunk Cloud Platform is managed by the vendor.

I like the Cloud monitoring console feature.

I like the support for all the apps and add-ons.

What needs improvement?

Splunk currently manages the components, which restricts our ability to access them directly. I would like to be granted read access to be able to review the components.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Splunk Cloud Platform for one and a half years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The Splunk Cloud Platform is stable as long as we perform proper maintenance to prevent bugs.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

This system is very scalable. That means it can be easily adapted to accommodate our needs. We can increase the number of licenses we use, or add more resources like CPU and memory. We can also request additional components, such as adding more user accounts if our team grows from four to eight members. Overall, the scalability of this system is a major advantage.

I would rate the scalability of Splunk Cloud Platform nine out of ten.

How are customer service and support?

Splunk Cloud Platform offers excellent technical support that is both knowledgeable and responsive.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is straightforward but it takes a month or two to complete because of the applications that need to be onboarded.

We first need to calculate the amount of data we need to ingest. Then, based on that amount, we can plan how much data we need to onboard and what components we'll need.

Two experienced people were involved in the deployment.

What about the implementation team?

The implementation was completed in-house.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Splunk Cloud Platform is more expensive than some of its competitors, but it offers a wider range of features.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate the Splunk Cloud Platform eight out of ten.

Splunk Cloud Platform is deployed in multiple locations.

Splunk Cloud Platform requires maintenance.

I recommend the Splunk Cloud Platform to others.

If you're using cloud services, Splunk Cloud Platform is a good option. It minimizes management overhead for you since Splunk handles the underlying infrastructure. Splunk Enterprise however requires more resources to manage.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Ritesh Vishwakarma - PeerSpot reviewer
Engineer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
Top 10
Sep 11, 2024
Gives us better buffering performance and lower latency if we use the right components
Pros and Cons
  • "In an enterprise, you need a universal or heavy forwarder. If you don't have that, you need an HSE token or API request call and all the different components. In Splunk Cloud, you just have one instance to search all the data in your index. You don't need to manage it because Splunk handles that."
  • "First-time users may struggle with the user interface. When I first used Splunk, I entered my username and password. After that, we get a dashboard on the left side with apps. At the top, you can click the gear icon to view the settings. Within those settings, there's a distributed console option with several settings. It's a bit overwhelming for a beginner. The user knows what they want and can search for it in the search bar. If I see several apps, my first instinct is to scroll down to find the app, or perhaps you will find that search and report. That bugged me when I was learning."

What is our primary use case?

One client wanted their data in a readable format. He was in the UK, but his data center was in the US, so he tried to forward his data to the indexer. Because of the time zones, he faced some time stamping issues. They reached out to us to open a case that got assigned to me.

I learned which US time zone the data center was in and set the time stamps in the future. We changed the preferences to convert it into GMT so that whenever the data is onboarded to the indexes via universal or heavy forwarder, we can fetch the data in real-time.

We primarily use virtualization and deploy in Docker containers. We seldom use any physical servers. It's mostly deployed in a cloud environment or a virtual machine. It's typically Docker but sometimes Azure.

How has it helped my organization?

Splunk Cloud saved us a lot of money because we're working with databases like MongoDB and Oracle and using Splunk as a sync tool. It has its own indexes that cut costs by 15 to 20 percent. 

It also improves our decision-making process. In one scenario, we compared the client's data from last year to this April and saw the year-on-year profit and loss. We could see which projects were successful. Compared to another SIEM or monitoring tool, it saved us time because the data is presented in a clean, customizable dashboard. 

What is most valuable?

In an enterprise, you need a universal or heavy forwarder. If you don't have that, you need an HSE token or API request call and all the different components. In Splunk Cloud, you just have one instance to search all the data in your index. You don't need to manage it because Splunk handles that. 

If you are using Splunk Enterprise, you need to understand, from A to Z, how the indexes and searches work and where the data is coming from. Splunk Cloud has a beautiful, user-friendly UI that lets you navigate all the settings.

It doesn't matter where the data comes from for integration. The dashboard gives you a brief overview. 

When we're onboarding all that data using heavy forwarders, Splunk gives us better buffering performance and lower latency if we use the right components. If I use a light or universal forwarder, it often doesn't parse on the other end. Our projects use heavy forwarders and put those data into the index services while defining which indexes they should index. We are also micromanaging where that data should be. 

The reporting is good so far. Sometimes, I help my clients improve their user experience. As an engineer, I would suggest that if a solution has back-end compatibility, clients should get out of their comfort zone and customize another app to create a dashboard or something else.

What needs improvement?

First-time users may struggle with the user interface. When I first used Splunk, I entered my username and password. After that, we get a dashboard on the left side with apps. At the top, you can click the gear icon to view the settings. Within those settings, there's a distributed console option with several settings. It's a bit overwhelming for a beginner. The user knows what they want and can search for it in the search bar. If I see several apps, my first instinct is to scroll down to find the app, or perhaps you will find that search and report. That bugged me when I was learning.

Application support is another problem. We created a custom Palo Alto app that isn't fully supported by the latest version of Splunk. We had to downgrade to older versions to use the custom app properly. That was one problem we faced daily with one client. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the Splunk Cloud Platform for two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I rate Splunk Cloud seven out of 10 for stability. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I rate Splunk Cloud eight out of 10 for scalability.

How are customer service and support?

I rate Splunk support six out of 10. They're knowledgeable, but their response times are sometimes slow. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We have Prometheus, but that only monitors Grafana and shows you a dashboard. Splunk is not just monitoring or grabbing data you search for. I've worked with cloud and enterprise. When we started using Splunk Cloud, we used it more like a dashboard to search data. Based on my understanding, I could create applications. 

After moving into the enterprise side, I understood Splunk even more, including its components, bucket lifecycles, and how the indexes and configurations work. It's not simply transferring data from one to another. I can grab data from any system that consists of raw data. Splunk can also identify those data in the timestamp index form. We don't have any other vendors to compare it to. 

How was the initial setup?

Deploying Splunk Cloud Platform is straightforward unless you use an automation tool like Ansible, Puppet, or Chef. It takes four to five hours. Installation can take a day in some cases, but it typically can be completed in less than five hours unless you're dealing with more complex data.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Splunk Cloud is affordable, depending on your license. I don't know how much it costs exactly, but my colleague said it depends on your licensing and which features you use. 

What other advice do I have?

I rate Splunk Cloud Platform eight out of 10. I would recommend this product. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. partner (consultant)
PeerSpot user
reviewer2499189 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior technical consultant at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Top 20
Jun 23, 2024
Offers good dashboards that show us search or user search activity

What is our primary use case?

It's a better pricing model. The main aspect is that we don't have to manage our infrastructure. Since we migrated, we've found we don't have as many outages. 

This allows our admins to focus more on the day-to-day onboarding instead of wasting time dealing with outages.

How has it helped my organization?

Our organization monitors multiple cloud environments. We monitor AWS. We have other logging platforms that monitor our infrastructure as well.

It's very important for our organization that Splunk Cloud Platform has end-to-end visibility into our cloud-native provider environments. With the increasing changes in technology, being able to consistently get insights into those new data sources in a quick amount of time is everything.

Moreover, we have seen a reduction in our mean lead time to resolve (MTTR). Our enterprise has some of those dashboards for incidents. Splunk is mainly used to resolve those incidents and identify what's wrong. Over year over year, these times are lower. And Splunk has helped with that. There's other operational things that are probably helping too, Splunk plays a big part, so it is helpful.

What is most valuable?

I like the Splunk Monitor console. I like how Splunk continually updates it with new features. We don't have to do anything on our end, we just get access to that. 

Splunk has some good dashboards that show us search or user search activity. There are some things that could cause the environment to go awry, like skip searches or searches that are more intensive. 

By being able to identify those, we could reach out to those customers and work with them on improving their standard practice. Since moving to SaaS, we're able to focus more on that.

What needs improvement?

There's one specific use case I work with. I work with some Splunk experts, and it lacks workload management rules.

It can identify specific dashboards e.g., or all-time searches. When I try to track back to the user, I don't have additional information within those logs to help me know, "This is the dashboard this guy accessed."

Instead of relying on those particular workload management logs, I have to do an investigation that takes time. It takes too much time when it shouldn't.

For how long have I used the solution?

It's only been a full year so far. We migrated recently.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Stability has been so far, so good. Data is growing, not just for us but for everyone. From what we've seen, it looks like it's handling it accordingly.

How are customer service and support?

We frequently engage with support now since we have a lot of incidents. They consistently ask for feedback on our support cases. We recently had something that was very urgent. Splunk was able to escalate it accordingly and get back to us with a solution. It means a lot to my management.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We've been with Splunk for several years now.

How was the initial setup?

For the cloud, the deployment is easy. 

We just have the standard. We download our packages, upload them via the cloud, upload our apps, and use the App Inspect. 

Before on-prem, we had some CI/CD pipelines to deploy on-prem. Those change calls lasted up to an hour and a half just to verify the change was successful and that everything was coming in as expected. 

Cloud is just uploaded and deployed in a matter of minutes. That's a big plus. It saves us time and a lot of hassle. 

What was our ROI?

We use our valuable time and do not waste effort. We just work on more important things like onboarding new data sources as log data continues to grow.

By being able to have more time to onboard data sources with customers, we provide our company more visibility and value into our entire environment.

What other advice do I have?

I have no major gripes other than some detailed grievances, so I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Splunk Cloud Platform Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: February 2026
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Splunk Cloud Platform Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.