BMC's Track-It! (formerly Numara Track-It!) is an IT asset management, IT help desk, and license management solution.
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Splunk Enterprise
Score 8.4 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.
Track-It! is great for a small-to-medium sized enterprise that has a fairly small IT department but needs far more control of tickets than just email and spreadsheets. It scales well enough as IT departments grow, adding techs is simple enough, as is changing the workflow. A large company would probably be better off with a different solution. The lack of easy customization, and the shortcomings it has in workflow templates (which would be a nightmare for project management) means it won't scale up that far.
Pros: Splunk is very well suited if you have multiple log sources of related data. All of them can be correlated and tasks can be automated based on the requirement. Other than alerts, Splunk can also run a specific script of your choice, based on some defined conditions. Cons: If you have a few logs but a large number of log sources, Splunk can be very expensive.
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.
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.
We have rarely needed to use Support for BMC Track-It!, but in the times that we did need to use it, they were excellent. The biggest issue is that after not paying for support for about three years, now that we NEED support, it is too expensive for us to receive. This is due to the way their support is billed. So long as you never drop support, then you should be fine.
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.
BMC Track-It! is much more bare bones compared to ServiceNow products, and if your department has the money, ServiceNow is a much better option. Not only is the Knowledge Base much easier to create and publish articles, but the asset management in BMC Track-It! is practically useless. BMC Track-It! is more cost effective, and with a small amount of technicians there's likely no reason to need a bigger solution, but it leaves a lot wanting.
I wanted to learn a new language that I can quickly master and implement. Splunk is easy, fun to use and best of all, it can be developed in hours not days or weeks. Splunk is fundamentally a programming language that is minimal but yet powerful enough to collect, analyze and visualize data.
The biggest positive impact it had on ROI was that the software itself didn't require any expensive ongoing maintenance contracts since it was installed and managed by our organization.
The negative aspect of this is if there was a major problem with the software, then it would require contacting the vendor, at which point it could become expensive for a service call.
