HxGN EAM (formerly Infor EAM) is a configurable enterprise asset management platform. The solution was acquired by Hexagon from Infor in late 2021.
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Splunk Enterprise
Score 8.6 out of 10
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Splunk is software for searching, monitoring, and analyzing machine-generated big data, via a web-style interface. It captures, indexes and correlates real-time data in a searchable repository from which it can generate graphs, reports, alerts, dashboards and visualizations.
EAM is a very capable application without necessarily making it a complex tool to use. The nice thing with EAM is that, thanks to its configuration capabilities, it can be implemented in a multi-stage manner where users can start simple and then later (and over time) expand the usage as they learn or better understand its full potential.
It's well suited for what I do, which is network security operations. And that's for anything from troubleshooting incidents, troubleshooting performance, troubleshooting for the purpose of a compliance and auditing. It's not best suited for users who are new in terms of they're new to the product and they have expectations that probably Splunk cannot meet.
We are using Splunk extensively in our projects and we have recently upgraded to Splunk version 6.0 which is quite efficient and giving expected results. We keep track of updates and new features Splunk introduces periodically and try to introduce those features in our day to day activities for improvement in our reporting system and other tasks.
EAM is overall simple to use, especially since the UI and individual forms can be configured per user group with simple clicks by a system administrator.
You can literally throw in a single word into Splunk and it will pull back all instances of that word across all of your logs for the time span you select (provided you have permission to see that data). We have several users who have taken a few of the free courses from Splunk that are able to pull data out of it everyday with little help at all.
The user support is better than average when comparing it to other software vendors we use. Normally they reply very quickly, but there is also a tendency to even reply too fast without fully analyzing or understanding the whole underlying problem. However, when we ask support to escalate something to the development team, this is done quickly as well.
Splunk maintains a well resourced support system that has been consistent since we purchased the product. They help out in a timely manner and provide expert level information as needed. We typically open cases online and communicate when possible via e-mail and are able to resolve most issues with that method.
The online course was simple clear and described the main capabilities of the solution. There is also an initial module that can be done for free so anyone can familiarize themselves with the functionality of this solution. On the other hand, however, there could be more free online courses. Maybe even with a certificate, this would broaden the group of people who are familiar with the platform while increasing familiarity with the solution itself.
HxGN EAM is relatively comparable. Much of the software solutions for large enterprise businesses offer relatively comparable features and functionality. For example, integration with our organization's asset management strategy. The set-up of the asset management is organization-specific depending on the type of assets. At our organization, it was primarily equipment and buildings. HxGN EAM stacked up well against the other major solutions such as SAP EAM, IBM Maximo, etc. It may be best to include it as part of the options assessed for a solution to consider.
I didn't get to fully evaluate Logstash as our corporation was already using Logstash, but both seemed like viable solutions to the problem that we were having. I wanted to evaluate Logstash some more, both did seem like they would work for the business needs that we had, we went with splunk as many teams were already using it.
Infor EAM works as well as the data contained. Management has to be dedicated to a change in culture and everyone must buy into this.
Infor EAM is very useful in exposing shoddy maintenance practices, or poor reaction to required maintenance. A company cannot be afraid to let the system work for them, and take the necessary actions to improve maintenance practices to prolong the life of their investments.
The only negative, is as mentioned above, Infor has the capabilities with KPIs and custom reports to easily identify unacceptable maintenance practices.
I don't have any numbers to share but Splunk has positively served as a 24/7 monitoring tool that has saved hours of work by self-detecting, saving statistics and alerting problems in the system or from external interfaces as soon as they happen.
Splunk dashboards does a solid job in collecting, analyzing data and creating reports that contain an entire day's activity and then automatically sent out to the business.
Splunk is very easy to learn and very useful to any program or business application.
