Splunk Enterprise vs. Symantec Asset Management Suite

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.

Incentivized

If your organization has more than 50 computers and you have a dedicated IT Staff to manage the software then Symantec Asset Management Suite would be a great fit for your organization. The IT Staff can customize and configure the software and console to fit your organization's direct needs. It will speed up software installations and help to keep your computers running smoothly by applying patches and other necessary software updates in a timely manner. It will also help you manage your asset inventory so you know exactly where each computer is located, its IP address, and the users logging into the machine. If your organization is small and only has around 20 computer users then I would not recommend investing in the Symantec Asset Management Suite. Managing 20 computers is a task that is pretty easy to manage even if you do not have a dedicated IT Staff within your organization.

Incentivized

• It is very useful in creating custom rules for analyzing system logs and display relevant information. The query language is very easy to learn.
• We can create custom UI to visualize the output of our data. The interface is very flexible. It also allows the sharing of rules among users.
• There is an open online community to help others. Stackoverflow also has a splunk community. These resources make it more convenient to learn.

Incentivized

• Asset tracking - Very important in a business
• Reports - Keep track of what programs are installed, who has which computer, etc.

Incentivized

• Splunk light limits number of users to 5. Wish there was a flexible license, where one could add more users.
• Splunk light does not let you add > few realtime alerts. Wish there was a flexible license, where one could add as many realtime alerts as wanted.
• Better insight into daily ingestion values

Incentivized

• Ability to tie into and be supported by RHEL, CentOS, and any other Unix based OS. I know that they could tie into some different systems, but weren't truly supported.
• Altiris was how we deployed to multiple computers all at once, Altiris Agent sometimes stops, and can be an issue to have it update in the Console.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

When properly setup and configured, Splunk is extremely reliable.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Smooth without too many major issues.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

We compared a lot of products Pulseway, Asset Panda, GoCodes, Service Now, BMC TrackIT, Sysaid, Landesk. After checking all these, found Symantec is the only one which fulfills all my organization's requirements. Glad to find a great choice by doing a proper survey. I would suggest others to go for this too.

Incentivized

Splunk can scale in to the petabyte per day range which of course is awesome

• 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.

Incentivized

• Increased productivity by PC Support
• Faster compliance in a zero day situation
• Reporting and visibility that lead to tangible action
• Implementation can be cumbersome and technical support may be required.

Incentivized