It appears Splunk threw in the towel on Software as a Service (SaaS) and replaced Splunk Storm with a hosted software model. We were always skeptical a company with such a phenomenally successful enterprise software business would disrupt its own business with a serious SaaS offering. Yesterday’s announcement of Splunk Cloud proves the doubts were justified.
Storm always seemed half-hearted, missing many features from Splunk’s software product, and we heard Splunk sales execs would steer customers away from Storm for reasons including scalability. Was Splunk Storm used to mollify analysts who urged it to make a SaaS offering prior to IPO to defend its flank from companies like Loggly?
Now #SplunkCloud takes the main role as the services offering while Storm is left as a “free entry level product,” which we read “code for dead-end with no new features planned.” Splunk Cloud is basically a hosted version of the Splunk Software, meaning it doesn’t compete with the mothership product. It’s most likely more expensive.
While that may sound the same as SaaS, it is not and never will be. SaaS is disruptive to traditional software models for many reasons including:
- Shared multitenancy: true cost efficiency
- Elasticity (up and down): natural and easy
- Evolution speed: Since launching Loggly Gen2 service on Sept. 3, we’ve had over 1,000 new signups, along with two major feature releases
Our position as the most popular cloud-based log management service is strengthened, and we’ll continue to lead the disruptive change focusing strictly on logging in a SaaS model.
–Charlie Oppenheimer, CEO, Loggly

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