Splunk goes visual

The addition of visualisation tools to complex data analytics capabilities has a long and honourable history and has found many applications over the years. It is no real surprise, therefore, that the vast volumes of machine data now regularly produced by large and complex data processing environments should become the next target for the technology.

Neither is it too much of a surprise that Splunk, as one of the major vendors in machine data aggregation, management and  analysis, should be amongst the leading vendors to start applying visualisation capabilities.

This has been added as part of a major upgrade, Version 6, of its Enterprise platform for machine data. Enterprise 6 is claimed to deliver analytics up to 1,000 times faster than previous versions, and uses patent-pending technology to quickly unlock the value of machine data to IT and business users alike.

The new version is designed to make it easier for business users to dig deeper into analytic tasks without the help of IT departments, or knowledge of coding and query languages. It comes with usability and management enhancements that are claimed to make users’ lives easier and more productive. The new tools will also provide machine data analytics to a new set of users, as well as an improved experience to established users of Splunk.

Enterprise 6 introduces three innovations designed to make analytics faster and easier for existing users. These breakthroughs also open up the value of gaining insights from machine data to an entirely new audience of business users.

Pivot opens up the power of analytics to non-technical business users and analysts with a simple drag-and-drop interface to explore, manipulate and visualise data. This includes the ability to click and drag pre-built visualisations and quickly build complex queries and reports without learning a query language.

The Data Models addition provides a more meaningful representation of underlying machine data and a deeper understanding of relationships in the data, making this data more useful to a broader base of users.

The new High Performance Analytics Store is a patent-pending transparent acceleration technology that delivers analytics performance up to 1,000 times faster than any previous version of Splunk Enterprise.

The new version also includes powerful productivity features for users with a completely redesigned user experience that delivers simpler, more intuitive actions and easier personalisation. An enhanced search experience brings search and reporting together so users can author rich, dynamic reports and build visualisations, tables and custom searches faster than ever before. It is also easier to deploy, configure and manage, even when scaling out deployments.

It adds a more powerful developer environment with an integrated web framework. This includes Simplified Cluster Management, delivering easier management of Splunk deployments by monitoring high availability, automating search workloads and easier applications deployment via a centralised dashboard. Forwarder Management supports big data scale with easy configuration and visual management of thousands of forwarder configurations across multiple geographies.

Enhanced Dashboard Editing lets users build interactive dashboards and user workflows without writing advanced code and enables one-click access to develop in the Splunk web framework. An Integrated Web Framework enables developers to quickly build custom Splunk applications, customise dashboards or add advanced functionality using standard web technologies such as JavaScript and Django.