Splunk expands machine learning capabilities across platform Posted on : Sep 26 - 2017

Splunk has always been data central for IT operations info, but as the logs fill up with ever-increasing amounts of data, it has become impossible for humans to keep up. Recognizing this, Splunk started building in machine learning and artificial intelligence last year, and this week they are enhancing those capabilities to make it easier to surface the data that’s most critical.

The company has been adding intelligence across the platform, in some cases enabling companies to build their own custom machine-learning powered applications on top of Splunk’s data store, while also introducing automation for those customers who would rather not get their hands dirty in the coding.

 “With traditional monitoring you have alert fatigue [from too much information]. We want to use data training and pattern recognition to at least group alerts and surface things that matter most. We’ve taken a two-pronged approach in terms of machine learning. We have the manual stuff for folks who want to work their own models using [a tool like] Scala. We also have the machine learning capabilities baked into the solutions to quickly go in and do things with machine learning,” Jon Rooney, head of product marketing at Splunk told TechCrunch.

Specifically, Splunk wants to become the hub of data coming in and out from sources as varied as security, operations, continuous deployment and the emerging Internet of Things. Then ideally, it wants the software to take action in an automated fashion. Using machine learning takes humans out of the monitoring part of the equation and only alerts them when absolutely necessary, assuming the machine learning models have been tuned correctly.

The Splunk Machine Learning Toolkit has several new key features designed for the DIYers. First of all, there is a new data cleaning tool to get the data ready for the model. Next, there are machine learning APIs to import open source and proprietary algorithms and apply them in Splunk. Finally, there is a machine learning management component to integrate user permissions directly from Splunk into custom machine learning applications. View More