Plausible Deniability

Every time I think of Splunk I think of people really really raring to go about something, and really sorta defensive if you don’t, you know, get it. It’s a bit creepy. However I must say, having downloaded and used the thing, that it just rocks in a number of ways.

One of the things that we really like about Splunk is that its API strategy is truly very good - even its competitors agree with that - and if it keeps going with it, it’s making itself relevant to several sides of the house outside security, such as IT Operations, and people who have to speak with auditors. Today’s announcements show execution on the strategy: the release of Splunk for Windows (capturing registry, event viewer, WMF and other Windows-y stuff) as a free upgrade to the overall Splunk license, and the release of Splunk for Change Management, a Tripwire-y kind of did-the-config-change, has-the-patch-really-been-installed kind of thing which it hopes will cause incremental upsells, taking its claimed average deal size of $30,000 to $40,000.

What we want to salute Splunk for, though, is for speaking English. Have a look at the first sentence of the Splunk for Windows Press Release

Splunk, the IT Search company, today announced Splunk for Windows, an application that integrates Microsoft’s System Center Operations Manager’s command-and-control view of a Windows infrastructure with Splunk’s IT Search.

Note the lack of certain terms there: “Leading.” “Cutting-edge.” “Solution.” “Platform.” “World’s first.” “Only.” Nope, Splunk called itself The IT Search company. That’s powerful stuff. Here’s something better:

Splunk is a Silicon Valley company inventing large-scale, high-speed indexing and search technology for IT infrastructures. The company’s freely downloadable software indexes and makes it possible to search and navigate data from any application, server or network device in real time. Logs, configurations, messages, traps and alerts, scripts and metrics. If a machine can generate it — Splunk can eat it. It’s easy to download, install and use, and is very powerful.

Again, jargon-free, not bragging too much (”high-speed” not “infinitely-scalable”) and it actually - and this is the very strange part - tells you what the company does for a living:

The company’s freely downloadable software indexes and makes it possible to search and navigate data from any application, server or network device in real time. Logs, configurations, messages, traps and alerts, scripts and metrics.

We just want to salute a company for taking the high road of using the English language to express itself in a marketing message. Good onya, Splunk.