Splunk adds specific KPI predictive analytics with Splunk IT Service Intelligence 4.0

The general ramp up of the ITSI predictive analytics solution also includes new integrations with VictorOps and Splunk App for Infrastructure.

Faya Peng, Senior Director, Product Marketing, IT Markets

ORLANDO – Today, as the Splunk .conf18 kicked off in Orlando, Splunk announced a new version of Splunk IT Service Intelligence [ITSI] designed to predict and prevent problems. This new 4.0 version enhances Splunk ITSI’s predictive analytics through a series of new capabilities.  KPI Predictions are a net-new addition that predict KPIs like customer experience, application workload and infrastructure health. It expands predictive cause analysis into specific services that underly a predicted issue. to proactively remediate and resolve it before customer experience is impacted. ITSI has also been fully integrated with the recently-acquired VictorOps, which streamlines the monitoring, detection, alerting, and response process, as well as with Splunk App for Infrastructure, a new free offering that Splunk also announced at the event.

“Splunk IT Service Intelligence (ITSI) is our solution for IT monitoring and analytics,” said Faya Peng, Senior Director, Product Marketing, IT Markets. “It is a premium focused monitoring and analytics solution for the IT side of the house that uses AI to predict problems. “Customers can use AI to predict imminent outages and their service health, as well as the overall end-customer experience, and how it could be affected by these outages. If you want a full-service level IT monitoring solution, this is what you use. It sits on top of Splunk Enterprise, and is also available in the cloud as well.”

KPI Predictions significantly advances the predictive capabilities that Splunk ITSI provides, to make them much more granular than before in the way they identify specific KPI issues.

“Earlier the year, we announced predictive capabilities when we released Splunk ITSI, but with this new release, we are able to give a lot more detail all the way down into the underlying KPIs,” Peng said. “Before, Splunk ITSI would warn you that the health score would degrade. With this, it now points to KPIs, so you can identify the probable cause more accurately. It makes it much easier to identify, remediate and resolve issues.”

Peng indicated that the algorithmics model that guide KPI Predictions will give a window of warning so that issues can be addressed before customer experience is affected.

“It will happen 30-45 minutes before it hits the system,” she said. “The product already had deep dive investigative capabilities, but with this, we have added a predictive lens. There are other monitoring solutions on the market, but because IT has become so complex and super-dynamic, we believe that our  predictive capability sets this apart. It’s really exciting, where our predictive capabilities are starting to take us.

This release also includes two key internal integrations, with VictorOps and Splunk App for Infrastructure.

Splunk acquired DevOps incident management provider VictorOps this summer, and it has been integrated with Splunk ITSI 4.0.

“VictorOps is a collaborative incident response solution – a virtual war room at the speed of DevOps,” Peng said. “With this release, the ITSI alerts integrate into it. It is a separate offering, but has now been beefed up with this.”

Splunk ITSI 4.0 also lets provides customers with an easy interface between Splunk App for Infrastructure and Splunk ITSI. The free Splunk App for Infrastructure is very similar to ITSI in terms of features, and is positioned for existing Splunk customers who already have an Enterprise deployment and license.

“Splunk App for Infrastructure is an app that allows you to monitor what’s going on with preconfigured panels,” Peng said. “It is a companion experience to ITSI, to give the same curated experience. It does so some additional analysis, however.” This includes providing ITSI customers with more detail at the server level.”

The integrations are likely to be of great interest to Splunk channel partners.

“For partners, the improvements to predictability are pretty powerful, as they are for customers,” Peng said. “The integrations are of special interest to partners however, because they assist them to build a broader ecosystem for their customers.”