What is Splunk?

A question I get asked often is, what is Splunk? What exactly does it entail and what does it do?

I used to simply answer often that Splunk is a Monitoring and Observation power tool that helps an individual or a company be able to keep track of Key Performance Indicators often referred to as KPI’s and displayed within a fancy visualization called a dashboard to the relevant stakeholders that are in use of said dashboard.

Just like you right now, probably scratching your head or even dozed off in la la land half way through that sentence, they would look at me and respond, “Oh cool! That’s really awesome!”, giving off that impression saying “I have no idea what you just said to me but I will act as though its perfect English so we move on from this conversation.”

Let me make this explanation a lot more relatable and simpler for you. We all love cars. We always dream about that one car that we would like to sit in, enjoy those lovely comfortable seats, cruising down the road with the windows down during a lovely warm sunny day, sunglasses on, enjoying the sweet breeze blowing through your hair and bumping to that lovely Michael Jackson tune of Beat it on the radio. Suddenly you get a call, and it interrupts your music. It’s Mom calling which shows on the dashboard screen in your car. You tap on the green call button to pick up. You have a conversation with mom for 5 minutes talking about travel plans to come home for Christmas. As this conversation is happening you are using Google Maps from your phone on the dashboard. When mom hangs up because Dad is about to feed the cat some dog food, your music resumes playing. You then get a weather update on dashboard that a storm may be coming. You are 25 miles from home and you realize that you are low on gas by looking at the panel. You also realize that your tire pressure is looking low so it’s the perfect time to stop by a gas station in order to fill up on some gas and pump up the tires with some air.

This right here, is just what Splunk does. The car is the company, you the driver or user, are the relevant stakeholder, the dashboard panel is the visualization dashboard within Splunk, the fuel gauge, the tire pressure gauge and the alerts when they are low are KPI’s being monitored and observed within Splunk and then being notified on what is determined to be failures or undesirable circumstances within the company. Just as you would rather get home and be safe before the storm comes down upon you, it is also the same way as the company would rather know about a possible forthcoming issue and put matters in place in order to avoid said issue and its drawbacks against the company’s performance.

Now you know, if you never did, what exactly Splunk is and what it does. And if anyone ever asks you to explain Splunk to them, well at least I am certain you can tell them this lovely example or think of a rather interesting way to explain such an amazing lifechanging tool.