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reviewer2238915 - PeerSpot reviewer
Splunk Engineer at a logistics company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Helps optimize the business by speeding up trouble ticket resolutions
Pros and Cons
  • "We have a lot of teams using Splunk and they would be blind without it."
  • "We have problems doing upgrades and operating alternate new versions."

What is our primary use case?

Our customer is an internal department. We have about 150 teams that use Splunk and we provide Splunk for all of them. Our IT is currently setting it up for one of them. This customer is really impressed by the Glass Tables, possibilities for management, and the Showcase.

The department that uses ITSI runs the public buses for Switzerland. They use it to collect data about the cars. We will build Glass Tables for them. It's a management summary for tickets. They use it to collect data about the solution flow regarding the response time and ticketing flow. 

How has it helped my organization?

It helps optimize the business by speeding up trouble ticket resolutions.

We have a lot of teams using Splunk and they would be blind without it.

What needs improvement?

We have problems doing upgrades and operating alternate new versions.

The migration of the existing glass tables needs improvement. There were at least two upgrades where we had to heavily update the existing glass tables to get them to work with the new version. 

That's something that Splunk could improve on. They should simplify the upgrade process. 

How are customer service and support?

I have never used their support. We solve our problems by ourselves. 

Buyer's Guide
Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence)
October 2024
Learn what your peers think about Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: October 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Splunk's ability to predict, identify, and solve problems in real-time a five out of ten.

I would rate Splunk an eight out of ten. It has great potential but it is a little complex to set up.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Jitesh Karavadra - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Engineer (E3) at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
We can create visualizations, monitor product performance, and track metrics
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable features of Splunk ITSI are event analytics and service insight."
  • "Splunk ITSI's UI needs to be more interactive and user-friendly."

What is our primary use case?

We use Splunk ITSI to empower users to visualize their data and transform it into actionable insights. For instance, if they desire to monitor CPU memory usage, they can leverage this tool to achieve that. Additionally, users can effectively search for alerts and trigger email notifications based on specific criteria. Moreover, Splunk ITSI supports the creation of entities that can represent physical or abstract concepts. This flexibility allows users to conduct any desired search on their data and subsequently create informative dashboards for visualization purposes.

We implement Splunk ITSI for our customers because it is the best in the market.

How has it helped my organization?

The most significant organizational benefit is leveraging data for various purposes. Based on the data collected, organizations can create visualizations, monitor product performance, and track metrics like CPU and RAM usage to identify potential issues and optimize operations.

Splunk ITSI helps to right-size the resources required to match demands. Splunk also offers on-prem and cloud options. 

The incident management team of Splunk is helpful when we have to escalate an issue.

Splunk ITSI assists our customers in decreasing the number of incidents. They can escalate cases and seek help for any issue, as Splunk can potentially identify the problem as related to an add-on, a different application, or something else entirely. This allows them to contact the appropriate team and work towards a resolution promptly.

It helps customers reduce the mean time to detection by using a real-time search rules engine feature. This enables users to process events in real time, leading to faster detection and response times.

Splunk ITSI assists customers in decreasing the mean time to resolution. A dedicated episode review page allows customers to create and manage groups of related events. Customers have complete control over their episodes and can acknowledge, resolve, build, or take other actions. A specialized dashboard with visualizations facilitates the resolution process, enabling customers to resolve episodes or actively automate this task. Both manual and automated options are available for episode resolution.

The analytics module includes a policy feature that allows users to automate actions, trigger events, add comments, and modify episode status. 

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features of Splunk ITSI are event analytics and service insight. Event analytics allows me to set up any query on raw data logs and ingest them into Splunk. This data can then be used to trigger events based on specific conditions. For example, I can create a ServiceNow incident, send an email, add comments, or perform custom actions when the system's CPU usage exceeds 90 percent. The Glass Table feature enables users to create dashboards, add services, and visualize data through various queries and tables. 

What needs improvement?

Splunk ITSI's UI needs to be more interactive and user-friendly.

The real-time search functionality is reliant on Splunk. Occasionally, ITSI customers encounter problems due to real-time search issues. As of the most recent release, a resolution for this issue has not been implemented. Additionally, search clusters are not currently supported in the cloud environment.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Splunk ITSI for two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

If the data volume is excessive, we may encounter stability issues. Splunk can handle datasets as large as one or two million, but performance might be affected due to the time required for REST calls. Overall, however, Splunk is a reliable solution.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Splunk ITSI is scalable.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support team is highly responsive and helpful. Customers can contact them directly for assistance with any issues they encounter. The team will diligently work to identify the root cause of the problem and, if necessary, consult with developers for further investigation. Developers will then promptly analyze the issue and provide a workaround or solution as soon as possible.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

Customers are responsible for the infrastructure and deployment of Splunk ITSI on-premises. However, the Splunk TechOps team can assist customers throughout the cloud-based deployment process.

The deployment is straightforward. First, we must install Splunk and extract ITSI in the apps folder. One person can handle the deployment.

What other advice do I have?

I rate Splunk ITSI nine out of ten.

Splunk ITSI is loaded with features and keeps adding more with each release.

The cloud version of Splunk ITSI requires no maintenance, unlike the on-premises version. While maintaining the on-premises version isn't complex, any issues arising from setup or parameter changes become my responsibility. In contrast, TechOps handles cloud maintenance, ensuring complete care.

I would recommend Splunk ITSI to others.

The cloud version of Splunk ITSI is more accessible to work with and to scale.

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. The reviewer's company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Integrator
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Buyer's Guide
Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence)
October 2024
Learn what your peers think about Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: October 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.
reviewer2500152 - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal architect at a retailer with 1-10 employees
Real User
Offers a return on investment but needs to improve in the area of revolving around dashboards
Pros and Cons
  • "The solution's scalability is fine."
  • "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."

What is our primary use case?

I use the solution in my company for event management and areas consisting of episodes.

How has it helped my organization?

Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) has helped our organization correlate events into episodes.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature of the solution is event analytics, and it is because that was our core function when we moved from NOC to IBM Netcool Network Management and then from IBM Netcool Network Management to Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence).

The main benefit I have experienced from using Splunk ITSI is that it has been helpful to have one consolidated tool.

My organization monitors multiple cloud environments using the product. In terms of the ease or difficulty one may have when trying to monitor multiple cloud environments, it is tricky. You have to learn and test things out.

It is important for our organization that Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) provides visibility into our cloud-native environment, but I would say that it is done in the dev and production environments.

Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) has helped us with the organization's business resilience. My impression of Splunk's ability to predict, identify, and solve problems in real-time, is that with the new AI feature set coming in, users can apply that logic to the episodes.

I have experienced cost efficiencies by switching to Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence). The doc suggests that too has one pane of glass to go into the system and do automation straight from one page because they get hit with thousands of alerts and alarms every day, and we try to correlate that to a simplistic event.

I have experienced time to value using Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) over a couple of months.

Splunk's unified platform helps consolidate networking and IT observability tools but not security because our company is not in that space. The consolidation of tools impacts our organization since I feel it is easier to have fewer tools than more.

What needs improvement?

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.

In the next release of the tool, the product should offer a dashboard ID in the correlation search.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) for five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

In the early days, the Java-based engine was kinda buggy, and some of the interfaces for Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) and event analytics needed to feel new and not outdated. It still kinda feels outdated, and I feel like Splunk hasn't really put a lot of thought into such a specific area in the last few years.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution's scalability is fine.

How are customer service and support?

The solution's technical support team is okay. For most of the stuff I escalate, I have to always wait for a response from tier-two or tier-three level support.

I am used to solving stuff myself and providing a lot of debugging as to what tier-one or tier-two level support would do, and by the time I get to the aforementioned spot, I see that I have to wait and explain a lot of cycles because I am doing the same research as level one or level two support. I rate the technical support a five out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

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

I have experience with Tivoli Netcool, which is a legacy event system from IBM that has the same or similar approach as Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence). I saw that Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) provides the same features as Tivoli Netcool.

How was the initial setup?

When it came to the deployment part, Splunk's professional services did not know much of what our company needed, considering the level that we were expecting from the product. I come from a telco background where the company used to deal with 1,00,000 alarms a day, and event analytics wasn't something that was really built for it in the beginning when I first deployed it. There were a lot of learning curves that I had to go through to deal with the tool. As I continued to grow with the product, I started pitching probably around 20 ideas at a time to the team, and a lot of my ideas actually made it to Splunk's GA launches. I worked with Isha, Ross Wilkinson, and another person who was right in the middle between them. Though I had spoken to the senior VP of a particular sector and pitched the idea of using Fandom for IT automation, it eventually died out.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model. I use the cloud services from AWS.

What about the implementation team?

Splunk directly helped with the product's deployment.

What was our ROI?

I have experienced an ROI using the tool, considering the efficiency it offers so that we do not have to take care of certain functions.

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

Pricing was pretty good, and it is possible to just add on the features we want.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I considered Resolve systems for automation and a tool named Moogsoft. Moogsoft has a lot better visual capabilities and looks better than Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) when it comes to event analytics. I am hoping that with a better dashboard, Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) can build a better UI layer.

What other advice do I have?

I feel like there is a lot more that can be done in the tool, but I don't know if it is going to be a dying product or if Splunk Observability will try to take over some of the core functions of Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence).

I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises

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

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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reviewer1164867 - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Designer at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
Top 20
Provides end-to-end visibility, improves our incident management process, and reduces our alert noise
Pros and Cons
  • "One particularly useful feature of Splunk ITSI is the ability to create custom services."
  • "We experience occasional delays in receiving solutions from Splunk technical support. Splunk's support for P3 cases seems inadequate, as they frequently switch support personnel. For instance, in a single P3 case, we had three different technical support representatives assigned. We were ultimately forced to escalate the issue to our account manager to get it resolved. In essence, we never receive complete support from a single point of contact; instead, the support team keeps changing, necessitating us to explain the problem from scratch each time."

What is our primary use case?

We use Splunk ITSI to collect the infrastructure metrics and visualize them.

How has it helped my organization?

Splunk ITSI provides end-to-end visibility into your IT environment. It displays key performance indicators for various services. If a KPI is red, indicating an issue, clicking on the corresponding service will take you to the server for further investigation. Splunk ITSI can also automatically trigger incidents for critical issues, allowing your support team to resolve them quickly.

It has significantly improved our incident management process. Previously, we relied solely on a service indicator that simply displayed the service status. If the indicator turned red, we would then manually create an incident report. Now, we've implemented static thresholds that automatically trigger incidents to be added to our queue. This is a major advantage.

Splunk ITSI has reduced our alert noise by 30 percent.

Since implementing Splunk ITSI, we've significantly reduced our mean time to detection. Previously, we relied on receiving incident reports, which caused delays.

Splunk ITSI has reduced our mean time to resolve.

What is most valuable?

We collect infrastructure metrics from various servers, including Windows Services. One particularly useful feature of Splunk ITSI is the ability to create custom services. This functionality makes it easy to identify specific functions that are malfunctioning or experiencing problems. With this information, we can quickly troubleshoot and fix the issues.

What needs improvement?

In Splunk ITSI, thresholds automatically trigger incidents when a service value falls below the threshold. This prevents us from automatically triggering alerts for situations where the service value is within the acceptable range. We've identified this as an issue with the ITSI product and are working with Splunk for guidance on how to implement the desired behavior.

While the overall Splunk documentation is detailed, the documentation for specific premium apps, like Splunk ITSI, is more brief.

The technical support has room for improvement.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Splunk ITSI for one year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I would rate the stability of Splunk ITSI nine out of ten.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Splunk ITSI is a scalable solution, meaning it can handle increasing amounts of data and users as our needs grow.

How are customer service and support?

We experience occasional delays in receiving solutions from Splunk technical support. Splunk's support for P3 cases seems inadequate, as they frequently switch support personnel. For instance, in a single P3 case, we had three different technical support representatives assigned. We were ultimately forced to escalate the issue to our account manager to get it resolved. In essence, we never receive complete support from a single point of contact; instead, the support team keeps changing, necessitating us to explain the problem from scratch each time.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

How was the initial setup?

The initial deployment is a straightforward process. However, the time it takes can vary depending on whether we're installing for the first time or performing an upgrade. For a first-time installation, Splunk ITSI typically takes around 30 minutes. Upgrading an existing installation requires additional time to clean up previous configurations; this process usually takes about 40 minutes to complete.

Two people were involved in the deployment.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We are using Splunk Enterprise software. We contacted Splunk to demo ITSI, and we were impressed with its functionality and the included options. Therefore, we decided to try ITSI exclusively and did not evaluate any other vendors.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Splunk ITSI eight out of ten.

We're currently working on implementing adaptive thresholds. This functionality would analyze service trends over the past seven days automatically set thresholds and generate incidents based on that data. Successfully implementing this would be a significant achievement, but we're encountering some technical challenges. We've opened a support case with Splunk to address these issues, and we're hopeful for a resolution within the next few weeks.

We have around 150 people using Splunk ITSI.

Two people are responsible for the maintenance of Splunk ITSI in our organization.

I would rate the resilience of Splunk ITSI nine out of ten.

In my experience starting my career with Splunk, I haven't encountered any marketing tools that can quite compare. Splunk offers a comprehensive set of features and well-organized documentation. The detailed and clear documentation that Splunk provides is something I particularly appreciate.

I recommend Splunk ITSI.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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reviewer1393194 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Operations Manager at 3M Company
Real User
Enables us to quickly identify what services are impacted by underlying infrastructure concerns
Pros and Cons
  • "The modeling required to setup ITSI has been very helpful in providing us a better understanding and a logical view of our services. The modeling is flexible and can be as granular or high level as our needs dictate."
  • "ITSI could benefit from a security model that would allow operations team members to get involved in model building, KPI implementation, and model maintenance, while maintaining appropriate segregation of duties."

What is our primary use case?

We use ITSI mainly for IT Infrastructure Operations Monitoring. The service model health scores allow us to identify when KPIs are starting to impact our services and to proactively manage our environments. To date, we have leveraged this data within Splunk to enable alerting so that we can solve incidents in real-time, but we are growing into our usage of the ITSI model for predictive modeling of our environment. Our infrastructure includes commodity hardware, mid-range, mainframe, on-premise data center, and cloud offerings. (Please note that these views are my personal opinions and not those of my employer)

How has it helped my organization?

The modeling required to setup ITSI has been very helpful in providing us a better understanding and a logical view of our services. The modeling is flexible and can be as granular or high level as our needs dictate. This flexibility also means that you need to gather a detailed understanding of your services, processes, and applications in order to build a useful model. ITSI is allowing us to more quickly identify what services are impacted by underlying infrastructure concerns.  

What is most valuable?

The health scores and glass tables are extremely valuable and useful. These provide flexible visibility options to convey the meaning of the big data analysis being performed by Splunk behind the scenes. Glass tables allow you to create graphical displays that convey critical meaning with a simple clean look and feel. The deep dive also provides the ability to dig into metrics and KPIs, which are useful to isolate the time frame involved and that should be focused on. Once in the deep dive, you can quickly identify the first KPI or metric to impact the health score and focus your efforts on it. 

What needs improvement?

ITSI could benefit from a security model that would allow operations team members to get involved in model building, KPI implementation, and model maintenance while maintaining appropriate segregation of duties. To date, all of our ITSI development is being done by our Splunk Admins, while our KPIs and much of the modeling work are managed by our Splunk developers. Future development of templates and ready to use add-ons could facilitate faster time to value, as many IT infra and even Packaged Application data models are consistent across organizations and could be plugged in easily. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Splunk ITSI for two years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

This is a stable solution.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is extremely scalable, and can have high data storage costs. 

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer service has been very responsive to our needs. 

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

No, we did not replace another solution with ITSI. We used it to enhance existing solutions. 

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was fairly straightforward, but we had help from Splunk professional services. 

What about the implementation team?

We had help from Splunk professional services. They were extremely knowledgeable. 

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

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I was not involved in the evaluation for ITSI. 

What other advice do I have?

This is a powerful solution requiring configuration to meet your needs. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud

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

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Jamiu Olaide - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Consultant at a tech consulting company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Consultant
Top 10
Great service analyzer, infrastructure review, and the ability to retire an entity
Pros and Cons
  • "One of the excellent features is the service analyzer, which is truly impressive."
  • "I believe the refresh time should be faster."

What is our primary use case?

We utilize Splunk ITSI to enhance our IT operations within our infrastructure. Our goal is to monitor only the most critical KPIs. Additionally, we have access to a detailed overview of the KPI services and entities, allowing us to identify issues in real time. 

We deploy Splunk ITSI both on-premises and in the Splunk cloud. 

We implemented infrastructure monitoring using ITSI to track various aspects such as latencies and specific components like CPU and memory. I can now provide detailed information about the specific cause of CPU-related issues. The problem lies in determining the process through which we can obtain a high-level overview of our services. When we delve deeper, we have access to numerous details to identify the KPI responsible for disrupting the service application. I can now explore ways to monitor its performance and locate the service in question. With ITSI, we can receive alerts and easily navigate to the precise location to resolve the problem.

How has it helped my organization?

The end-to-end visibility of Splunk ITSI in our network environment depends on the individual utilizing it. While it may be present, it is crucial to possess a solid understanding of ITSI. In order to illustrate this aspect, we require a well-defined use case that demonstrates our intention to employ ITSI. Overall, I would describe the end-to-end view as highly effective. It facilitates seamless data acquisition and enables us to easily analyze the data afterward.

Splunk ITSI can be utilized for predictive analytics to prevent incidents before they happen. It is regarded as the superior option for observability. While observability is commendable, we also make efforts to view data from SignalFX and leverage ITSI's capabilities to analyze and access large volumes of data. ITSI serves as a tool for analytics, but we can also employ it for observability, albeit SignalFX remains our primary choice for that purpose.

Splunk ITSI has helped us streamline our incident management, particularly through its correlation searches and event policies. With these features, we can efficiently handle multiple tasks by grouping them together under correlations. We can easily search for and identify these tasks and then review them in-network, allowing us to determine the specific episode and identify any high alerts. This enables us to drill down and investigate further, depending on our proficiency with ITSI. Additionally, we have the ability to create a dashboard for editing reviews. This way, we can access our episodes, drill down into our dashboard, and examine the detailed information about the issues we are facing.

ITSI has helped reduce our alert noise by thirty percent. We don't need to extract a large amount of information from our correlation strategies. We can simply refine them and obtain the essential details, thus avoiding unnecessary noise in our environment. We just need to grasp the main idea.

Splunk ITSI has helped us reduce our mean time to detect by approximately fifteen percent. I have been collaborating with individuals who also utilize ITSI for the past five years, and we have observed its continuous improvement each year. The mean time to detect is contingent upon our level of dedication to ITSI in that aspect.

Splunk ITSI has helped us reduce our mean time to resolve by approximately fifteen percent. If we also have a good dashboard alongside it, we can drill down and go straight to the issue.

What is most valuable?

One of the excellent features is the service analyzer, which is truly impressive. Additionally, we have the infrastructure review, which allows us to assess our infrastructure comprehensively. That is fantastic! Furthermore, the latest ITSI connects the new tenant we have for tenant management. This feature enables us to retire an entity instead of merely deleting it, and if needed, we can easily reactivate it. There are numerous exciting new additions. Splunk ITSI itself is highly interactive, making the overall service experience truly remarkable.

What needs improvement?

Splunk ITSI could function even better, particularly when it comes to refreshing the service infrastructure. If we could have the option to go back not just sixty minutes, but also one or five minutes, it would enhance our capabilities.

The service analyzer component is excellent, particularly the default analyzer. However, I believe the refresh time should be faster. If it also takes five minutes to complete, as suggested by the KPI requirements, then the refresh time should be significantly reduced. If the data doesn't load within five minutes, our service and KPI will not function properly. Therefore, it is crucial to make it faster.

I would appreciate having more customizable dashboards to assist with in-depth analyses.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Splunk ITSI for two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Since I started using Splunk ITSI, it has remained stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Splunk ITSI is scalable.

How are customer service and support?

The documentation for Splunk Doctors is excellent, particularly when it comes to addressing installation issues. However, when it comes to Splunk Processing Language, Splunk itself is unable to assist us. I would recommend relying on the documentation as a valuable resource.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is complex. Even if we have installed ITSI, we still need to install the other apps that accompany ITSI. Perhaps we want to work on this matter, so it depends on whether I am deploying it in a large environment or just a single environment with minimal activity. Therefore, we need to include all of these in the architecture. The ITSI app is one component, but the other apps that derive from it must also be taken into consideration.

We have a tool that we use in our team to expedite the deployment process. However, we are unable to disclose the details as it is a proprietary system. On an average day, if we have access to ITSI, I can personally complete the task within a few hours due to my prior experience. However, for someone without technical expertise, it may take up to a day. Although one knowledgeable person can complete the deployment, it is easier with two people.

What was our ROI?

I have witnessed a significant return on investment in that aspect. However, it ultimately depends on the customer's use case. Everyone desires to acquire Splunk, but not everyone understands its functionality in that aspect. So, if we have a customer and a strong use case, and we know what they want, we will definitely be able to achieve it. But if we don't have a customer and lack knowledge about it, it will just remain as is.

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

Splunk ITSI is expensive; however, with the appropriate use case, it justifies the cost.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?


What other advice do I have?

I rate Splunk ITSI an eight out of ten.

Anyone who is considering a point monitoring system instead of Splunk ITSI should know that with ITSI, we gain access to several other features. Even just with the service analyzer, we can observe our KPIs and identify their affected components. We can determine which settings are causing the issues and make informed decisions, such as trying alternative options. We can also evaluate if a particular KPI has significant importance, as it has a substantial impact on the overall order of operations. This provides us with a detailed perspective in terms of data and other relevant aspects. While it may not offer a purely granular view, having everything consolidated into a single interface is extremely convenient. Working with ITSI requires a considerable level of willingness and experience. However, as we are transitioning towards various new tools, including the ability to easily integrate plug-and-play devices, the only issue with ITSI might be the initial setup. Once we have it implemented, we will have the capability to accomplish all our desired tasks.

The way Splunk sells ITSI is not the way we use it. We can make much better use of ITSI. The most important aspect, in my opinion, of ITSI is the episode review. For instance, when we encounter an issue that is not immediately visible, how can we evaluate that aspect? Therefore, ITSI is beneficial. From my perspective, we need individuals to sit down and explain how it works, as it can be confusing initially. However, once we have a clear understanding, it works well.

In my organization, my team is the only one working with ITSI. We handle all deployments, and typically, we deploy on public cloud infrastructure such as Azure, AWS, and GCP. Nowadays, most deployments are cloud-based. Additionally, with the rapid growth of Splunk Cloud, installation is not a concern as it is taken care of. Our focus is on the implementation if we choose to go the Splunk Cloud route. However, we still handle the installation process ourselves, so we need to ensure our preparedness in that regard.

We have roughly 20 people in our organization that use Splunk ITSI.

In the beginning, we need to ensure that the data we receive is valid. Once we have confirmed its validity, we can rest assured that the system will generate alerts, eliminating the need to worry about maintenance.

I recommend Splunk ITSI for organizations that are interested in IT operations, monitoring, or analytics. By ensuring optimal utilization of Splunk ITSI, organizations can achieve a good return on investment that justifies the purchase.

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. The reviewer's company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
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reviewer1289544 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director INTS IT Resiliency at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Can predict incidents before they impact your customers
Pros and Cons
  • "We liked the built-in calculation of health scores."
  • "We also faced challenges relating to UI development."

What is our primary use case?

I work for the Royal Bank of Canada. I work in a group called Investor and Treasury Services IT. We take care of all the IT systems within the Investor and Treasury Services arm, which is a global unit. My role is to ensure that we have the visibility and capabilities to ensure our systems are resilient so we can resolve any problems that may arise very quickly, and move on. My role generally deals with everything from application performance management to maintenance automation. Overall, my single goal is to increase the resiliency of our applications and gain better insight into how our operations are working from an IT operations and application maintenance perspective. 

What is most valuable?

We liked the built-in calculation of health scores. We were able to adjust the different parameters, and really build out that health score — the RAG status (Red, Amber, Green), which is very powerful from an executive perspective. At the time, we were having a lot of issues from a stability perspective. It condensed everything, allowing our executives to easily ensure that everything was running smoothly: were there any incidents overnight? Those kinds of things. That way, when our CIO woke up and got the call from the head of IMTS, he knew whether or not there was going to be trouble.

What needs improvement?

Something that we did find with the product (they may have resolved since then), had to do with the ability to contextualize the data sources. For example, we might bring in data for 50 applications from one source, but for each one of those applications, we would have to set up a different data source connection. Because of this, I had to set up one connection each for application A and then B and then C, rather than being able to set up one connection and then segregate the data coming in for those dashboards. That was probably the biggest challenge that we faced. We also faced challenges relating to UI development — being able to get the UI the way we wanted it to look performance-wise. Some of the customization levels of the UI just weren't there.

For how long have I used the solution?

We used this solution for roughly one year. We were in a POC state for about a year, but we decided not to move forward with the prospect as a whole. The organization didn't want to invest in the product.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability issues we experienced were not with the Splunk ITSI product itself. The biggest challenge that we ran into was getting good, consistent data. We're a very large organization; getting at some of the data can be very difficult, especially since a lot of the data isn't centralized in one area.

Overall, it's a very stable product. It ran really well during the time that it was up and running. We didn't have any production issues at all with it.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We were running just a single instance, but we were pulling in data for about 250 applications.

How are customer service and technical support?

The technical support with Splunk is really good. We didn't have any issues. Now, part of that is, we are Royal Bank of Canada and because of that, we have a certain cache with the vendors and they tend to bend over backward to make sure that they take care of us.

I wouldn't say it's special for the Royal Bank of Canada, but I would say that like any other support, having the right relationship with the vendor makes all the difference in the world. With Royal Bank of Canada being the largest financial institution in Canada, the top 15 in the world, we're afforded certain privileges. A smaller IT operations shop is probably not going to get the same kind of visibility into the products as a company like RBC, mainly because when Splunk wants to advertise that they're doing something, they want to be able to say that they're doing it with RBC, not an unknown corporation down the street.

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

No. We weren't using a different solution at all before; Splunk IT Service Intelligence was an opportunity area that we were looking into.

We had already had Splunk in our environment more than anything else. We've been running Splunk from a log aggregation and search perspective for about six or seven years now. When we were looking at what that next step looked like, it was just a natural evolution to move into ITSI.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straightforward.

Deployment was relatively quick mainly because it was a POC. We didn't go through all the regular rigor that we would with a production application. So we were able to have it up and running in production in a matter of three to four weeks. That included provision of the service, which takes time within a large organization like ours. 

What other advice do I have?

My biggest piece of advice would be to make sure you have access to the data that you need and know what that data is. The product itself is going to do what it's going to do; there are no issues with that. However, it's gaining access to all those things in the background, that's the problem. If you're a smaller organization or you're highly centralized, getting access to that data may be really simple. For an organization the size of RBC, with the amount of segregation across the organization and the amount of division within the organization, it's more challenging. For this reason, our infrastructure partners use a different tool. They don't use Splunk, they use ELK. They're very much down that road, so getting access to data when the team that you're trying to partner with has a different solution, can sometimes be more difficult.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of eight.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
reviewer2499633 - PeerSpot reviewer
Splunk Architect at a government with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
Top 20
The time it takes to pinpoint an issue, from when it's triggered to resolution is quick
Pros and Cons
  • "Having a structure on how to resolve incidents is the most valuable aspect."
  • "They should make it easier to use. Many people are new to it. It is hard and has a steep learning curve."
  • "They should make it easier to use. Many people are new to it. It is hard and has a steep learning curve."

What is our primary use case?

We have a couple of different use cases including incident management, correlation, and mapping out incidents.

What is most valuable?

Having a structure on how to resolve incidents is the most valuable aspect.

It is pretty important to us that it offers end-to-end visibility. That's how we do the ITSI incident setup. It needs to have an overview.

It has helped improve the business' resilience. Splunk's ability to predict, identify and solve problems in real-time is pretty good. I've been a Splunk customer for almost six years.

The time it takes to pinpoint an issue, from when it's triggered to resolution is where I've seen the most value out of Splunk.

We have seen time to value using ITSI. It took a few months to see this value. 

What needs improvement?

They should make it easier to use. Many people are new to it. It is hard and has a steep learning curve.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Splunk ITSI for one year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The product is pretty stable.

How are customer service and support?

We had a support person who was instrumental in getting it set up.

I would rate support an eight out of ten. It's nice to have the help but we'd also like to be independent and that's taking a bit of time to get onboarded. 

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is easy. We had someone come in. It took around a month or so and he's still with us helping to implement.

What other advice do I have?

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten. I'm getting up to speed with it. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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