Splunk Rolls out Cloud-Based Systems Monitoring Option

After months of beta testing, systems monitoring and data-analysis specialist Splunk (News - Alert) Inc. has made generally available its cloud-based service Splunk Storm, which is designed for organizations that develop and run applications in the public cloud, using services such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Heroku, Google App Engine and Rackspace (News - Alert).

Splunk Storm is designed to help developers diagnose and troubleshoot application problems, gain visibility and insight into cloud-based applications and monitor business metrics, according to Godfrey Sullivan (News - Alert), chairman and CEO of Splunk.

“As more organizations and developers move their projects to the cloud, we want to be there with them,” Sullivan said in a company statement. “Customers run Splunk Enterprise on premises and in clouds today, and now, Splunk Storm provides developers with an easy-to-use, subscription version of our software. Feedback during the public beta program has been extremely positive, with hundreds of active projects during the beta phase.”

Splunk Storm runs as a fully managed, multi-tenant service on AWS and dynamically provisions all the resources needed to store and analyze data. Splunk Storm offers:

• Monthly, pay-as-you-go pricing, payable by credit card
• No installation or maintenance of hardware or software
• The ability to scale storage up or down as needed, on demand, using a simple slider

Amazon officials said in a statement that building Splunk Storm on the AWS platform allows Splunk users to benefit from attributes of the cloud.

“We’re excited that AWS customers can now quickly gain operational intelligence about their cloud applications using this innovative new offering,” said Terry Wise, director of business development at AWS. “Building Splunk Storm on the Amazon Web Services (News - Alert) platform enables Splunk and its customers to benefit from the unique attributes of the cloud, including on-demand access, instant elasticity and the ability to pay only for what you use.”

Splunk Storm will appeal to organizations that need to add monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities to custom-built cloud-based apps on demand, according to Dennis Callaghan, senior analyst, enterprise software, at 451 Research.

“With a fully managed, pay-as-you-go service, Splunk has extended its delivery model to the cloud to target a new generation of developers and organizations who require on-demand services,” Callaghan said.

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