CISO Tribune

Vendor comparison · 2 companies

SolarWinds vs Splunk

SolarWinds sells monitoring, observability and service management capabilities on a platform offered in self-hosted and SaaS deployment models. Splunk sells a data platform for security, observability, and AI, and says the platform unifies petabyte-scale machine data wherever it lives. CISO Tribune files both under SIEM. This page sets the two records side by side: what each sells, where it is based, who owns and funds it, the customers it names and its recent news, each fact numbered to its source.

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  • SolarWinds
  • Splunk
SolarWinds vs Splunk: Products, Customers and Funding Compared
SolarWindsSolarWinds sells monitoring, observability and service management capabilities on a platform offered in self-hosted and SaaS deployment models.solarwinds.comSplunkSplunk sells a data platform for security, observability, and AI, and says the platform unifies petabyte-scale machine data wherever it lives.splunk.com
What it sells
  • Security Event Manager[1]An on-premise SIEM tool built with threat feeds designed to automatically detect and respond to user, application and network threats.
  • SolarWinds Observability SaaS[6]Observability delivered as SaaS, built to connect data from web applications, their services, and cloud and hybrid infrastructures.
  • SolarWinds Observability Self-HostedSelf-hosted observability that can be deployed behind a firewall or self-hosted in AWS, Microsoft Azure or GCP.
  • Splunk Cloud Platform[12][22][23][24]A platform to collect, index, and visualize data in the cloud.
  • Splunk Enterprise[1][12][14][17][18][22][24]A platform to collect, index, and visualize data using an on-premises engine.
  • Splunk Enterprise Security[1][14][17][18]A Splunk solution for security operations.
  • Federated Search[15][19]A search layer across the data estate.
  • Splunk AI Assistant[19]A natural-language entry point to the search workflow.
  • Splunk Edge Processor[21]A processor that applies cryptographic functions to data as it flows on-premises.
  • Splunk AI Toolkit[20]Guided workflows to build and deploy models.
  • Splunk Log Observer Connect[22]An integration that links logs to Splunk Observability Cloud.
Categories
Headquarters
Not stated on its pagesSan Jose, United States[4]
Founded
Not stated on its pages2003[3]
Ownership and funding
Not stated on its pagesOwned by Cisco[2][15][16][25]
Named customers
Not stated on its pages
Recent news
Not stated on its pages
  • September 15, 2026Cisco released Cisco AI POD for Splunk, which brings Splunk AI features to on-premises customers on Cisco infrastructure with NVIDIA computing.[10]
  • May 28, 2026Splunk reported that Cisco has completed its acquisition of Galileo, with plans to integrate Galileo technology into Splunk Observability.[25]
  • April 9, 2026Cisco agreed to buy AI observability startup Galileo Technologies to add its agent monitoring tools to the Splunk observability platform.[11]
  • February 18, 2026Splunk announced that its hosted AI models are generally available for Splunk Cloud Platform customers.[23]
  • January 16, 2026Splunk announced the release of Splunk Enterprise 10.2 and Splunk Cloud Platform 10.2.[24]
G2 and Gartner Peer Insights
  • G2: listed, seen November 10, 2026[4]
  • Gartner Peer Insights: Not stated on its pages
  • G2: listed, seen November 3, 2026[16]
  • Gartner Peer Insights: Not stated on its pages
Who it fits
SolarWinds offers a choice of self-hosted, SaaS or hybrid deployment. SolarWinds offers small business IT solutions and IT education solutions for students, staff and faculty. The federal government is a customer of SolarWinds. SolarWinds Service Desk can be used across the entire organization as an enterprise service management solution.From its own pages, Splunk sells mainly to organisations that want security, observability, and AI data on one platform. Splunk describes SOC teams that index authentication and firewall data for real-time detections. Splunk describes a healthcare organization that monitors logs from medical devices. Splunk offers material for CISOs and boards on priorities, budgeting, compliance, and success metrics. Splunk describes deployments on Splunk Enterprise and Splunk Cloud Platform.
Last verified
October 14, 2026October 10, 2026

Where they overlap

  • SolarWinds and Splunk are both filed under SIEM.

Where they differ, field by field

  • SolarWinds's primary category is Network visibility and traffic brokering; Splunk's is SIEM.
  • Splunk is also filed under SOAR and security automation and Security data lakes and pipelines.
  • SolarWinds lists Security Event Manager, SolarWinds Observability SaaS and SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted. Splunk lists Splunk Cloud Platform, Splunk Enterprise, Splunk Enterprise Security, Federated Search, Splunk AI Assistant and 3 more.
  • Splunk is headquartered in San Jose, United States.
  • Splunk was founded in 2003.
  • Splunk is owned by Cisco.
  • Splunk publicly names Carrefour, Intel, FINRA, Alaska Airlines and Honda of Alabama.

What it sells: SolarWinds

What Security Event Manager does[1]
Security Event Manager comes with hundreds of pre-built connectors that gather logs from various sources, parse their data and put it into a common readable format. Security Event Manager has built-in File Integrity Monitoring capabilities to monitor and alert on suspicious or potentially malicious activity in sensitive files. Active Response provides preconfigured, customizable actions for incident response based on which trigger conditions are satisfied. SEM provides hundreds of out-of-the-box reports for HIPAA, PCI DSS, SOX, ISO, DISA STIGs, FISMA, FERPA, NERC CIP, GLBA, GPG13 and more.
What SolarWinds Observability SaaS does[6]
The application performance monitoring solution collects metrics, logs, traces and user experience data. It is extensible with an open-source framework, a public API and out-of-the-box third-party integrations. Through Platform Connect, SolarWinds Observability, the SaaS-delivered observability solution, can consume data from self-hosted Hybrid Cloud Observability.
What SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted does
AIOps capabilities are part of SolarWinds Service Desk, SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted and SaaS. Customers running self-hosted Orion modules on version 2022.2 or later are using the SolarWinds Platform. Self-hosted Hybrid Cloud Observability data can be consumed by SolarWinds Observability through Platform Connect.

What it sells: Splunk

What Splunk Cloud Platform does[12][22][23][24]
Splunk Cloud Platform is described as a way to collect, index, and visualize data in the cloud. Splunk says data can be brought in with agents, Splunk-supported integrations, and developer add-ons.
What Splunk Enterprise Security does[1][14][17][18]
Splunk names Splunk Enterprise Security among its solutions that use pre-written macros. Splunk describes AI Assistant in Security as available to cloud customers of Splunk Enterprise Security.
What Federated Search does[15][19]
Federated Search is described as the unifying search layer across the data estate. It covers Splunk-managed locations and supported customer-managed stores such as Amazon S3 and Snowflake.
What Splunk AI Assistant does[19]
Splunk AI Assistant provides a natural-language entry point to the search workflow. With Agent Mode enabled, an analyst can describe the investigation to perform instead of constructing each search.

Questions about SolarWinds and Splunk

What do SolarWinds and Splunk sell?
SolarWinds sells Security Event Manager, SolarWinds Observability SaaS and SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted. Splunk sells Splunk Cloud Platform, Splunk Enterprise, Splunk Enterprise Security, Federated Search, Splunk AI Assistant and 3 more.
Are SolarWinds and Splunk in the same category?
They share SIEM. SolarWinds's primary category is Network visibility and traffic brokering and Splunk's is SIEM.
Where are SolarWinds and Splunk headquartered?
Splunk is headquartered in San Jose, United States.
When were SolarWinds and Splunk founded?
Splunk was founded in 2003.
Who owns SolarWinds and Splunk?
Splunk is owned by Cisco.
Which customers do SolarWinds and Splunk name?
Splunk publicly names Carrefour, Intel, FINRA, Alaska Airlines and Honda of Alabama.
Who are SolarWinds and Splunk sold to?
SolarWinds offers a choice of self-hosted, SaaS or hybrid deployment. From its own pages, Splunk sells mainly to organisations that want security, observability, and AI data on one platform.
What have SolarWinds and Splunk announced recently?
September 15, 2026: Cisco released Cisco AI POD for Splunk, which brings Splunk AI features to on-premises customers on Cisco infrastructure with NVIDIA computing.

About SolarWinds

SolarWinds sells monitoring, observability and service management capabilities on a platform offered in self-hosted and SaaS deployment models. Customers running self-hosted Orion modules on version 2022.2 or later are using the SolarWinds Platform. The Orion Platform was an infrastructure monitoring and management platform restricted to self-hosted deployment. Through Platform Connect, SolarWinds Observability, the SaaS-delivered observability solution, can consume data from self-hosted Hybrid Cloud Observability. SolarWinds offers a choice of self-hosted, SaaS or hybrid deployment.[3][5][9]

SolarWinds Observability SaaS is an observability solution built to connect data from web applications, their services, and cloud and hybrid infrastructures. The application performance monitoring solution collects metrics, logs, traces and user experience data. AIOps capabilities are part of SolarWinds Service Desk, SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted and SaaS. Self-hosted observability can be deployed behind a firewall or self-hosted in AWS, Microsoft Azure or GCP. SolarWinds AI works across the portfolio to deliver intelligence, automation and optimization. Root Cause Assist provides users with context and concrete starting points for investigating and resolving issues. Alert clustering groups related alerts and identifies common root causes. Customer data submitted to SolarWinds AI features is not used to train or fine-tune underlying third-party foundation models.[6][7][8]

Avior is built on the SolarWinds platform. Users set goals and guardrails for Avior, which carries out work while the team governs the outcome. Avior can take action to reduce alert noise, close compliance gaps, automate backups and remediate config drift. SolarWinds ingests alerts and tickets from SolarWinds Observability, Service Desk and 200+ third-party tools and correlates them into one incident.[3]

SolarWinds Security Event Manager is an on-premise SIEM tool built with threat feeds designed to automatically detect and respond to user, application and network threats. Security Event Manager comes with hundreds of pre-built connectors that gather logs from various sources, parse their data and put it into a common readable format. SEM has hundreds of built-in correlation rules that watch the network and piece together data from the various log sources to identify potential threats in real time. Security Event Manager can automate responses when correlation rules are triggered, including blocking IPs, changing privileges, disabling accounts, blocking USB devices and killing applications. Security Event Manager has built-in File Integrity Monitoring capabilities to monitor and alert on suspicious or potentially malicious activity in sensitive files. Security Event Manager includes a built-in USB defender for file and USB activity. SEM provides hundreds of out-of-the-box reports for HIPAA, PCI DSS, SOX, ISO, DISA STIGs, FISMA, FERPA, NERC CIP, GLBA, GPG13 and more. SolarWinds sells Server & Application Monitor, Web Performance Monitor, Security Event Manager, Patch Manager and Access Rights Manager.[1][9]

SolarWinds Service Desk brings incident management, service request management, ticket routing, approvals, agentic AI and SLA management together in one workspace. SolarWinds Service Desk software connects IT asset management with configuration management. SolarWinds Service Desk centralizes the information teams use to manage IT assets across their lifecycle. SolarWinds Service Desk tracks hardware, software, licenses, contracts, vendors, warranties, assigned users, locations and related ticket history. SolarWinds Service Desk includes a service portal, service catalog, knowledge base and Virtual Agent capabilities. SolarWinds Service Desk supports ITIL-aligned incident, workflow automation, problem, change and release management practices with configurable workflows. SolarWinds AI generates a short summary of the comments and communication on a ticket. The Service Desk AI virtual agent can answer user questions and support troubleshooting. Relevant infrastructure alerts can be turned into Service Desk tickets. SolarWinds Service Desk can be used across the entire organization as an enterprise service management solution.[7][10][11]

SolarWinds sells Network Performance Monitor, NetFlow Traffic Analyzer, IP Address Manager, Network Configuration Manager, Log Analyzer, Virtualization Manager and Storage Resource Monitor. NetPath is used to visualize critical network paths. SolarWinds offers monitoring for the performance of applications running in DigitalOcean Droplets. The SolarWinds Deployment Service program is valid for 60 days from purchase, with the option to extend. Deployment packages are offered for lite (up to 5 hours), small (DS Level 1, up to 30 hours), medium (DS Level 2, up to 75 hours) and large deployments (DS Level 3, up to 125 hours). SolarWinds Certified Service Providers deliver partner-led professional services and premium support add-ons in EMEA, APJ, LATAM and North America. Federal deployment work is delivered by U.S.-citizen engineers with security clearances and complies with federal and defense regulations.[9][12]

SolarWinds holds ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification for the information security management system supporting development, maintenance, operations and support of its products and services. SolarWinds shares compliance reports such as SOC 2 and ISO 27001 upon request. SolarWinds conducts regular external penetration tests using independent, accredited third-party firms. SolarWinds follows U.S. federal guidelines for secure software development described in the National Institute of Standards & Technology Secure Software Development Framework (SSDF). The federal government is a customer of SolarWinds.[1][3][8][10][12][13]

SolarWinds on the record

Sources

SolarWinds full record

  1. [1]Security Event Manager - View Event Logs Remotely | SolarWindsSolarWinds · undated page, accessed October 14, 2026 · Tier A
  2. [2]SolarWinds productsSolarWinds · undated page, accessed November 2, 2026 · Tier A
  3. [3]Observability, Database, and IT Service Management | SolarWindsSolarWinds · undated page, accessed November 2, 2026 · Tier A
  4. [4]SolarWinds Observability Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2G2 · undated page, accessed November 2, 2026 · Tier C
  5. [5]Orion Platform now self-hosted on the SolarWinds Platform | SolarWindsSolarWinds · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  6. [6]Application Performance Monitoring | SolarWindsSolarWinds · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  7. [7]AIOps Solutions & AI-Powered IT Operations | SolarWindsSolarWinds · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  8. [8]Security Resources | SolarWindsSolarWinds · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  9. [9]Deployment Services | Customer SuccessSolarWinds · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  10. [10]IT Service Management Software Solutions | SolarWindsSolarWinds · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  11. [11]IT Asset Management Solutions | SolarWindsSolarWinds · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  12. [12]SolarWinds SolutionsSolarWinds · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  13. [13]IT Service Desk Software | SolarWindsSolarWinds · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A

Splunk full record

  1. [1]ProductsSplunk · splunk.com · undated page, accessed September 27, 2026 · Tier A
  2. [2]Cisco completes acquisition of splunkCisco · newsroom.cisco.com · published March 18, 2024 · Tier A
  3. [3]Get the most out of splunk infrastructure monitoring and splunk itsiSplunk · splunk.com · published November 17, 2020 · Tier A
  4. [4]Contact usSplunk · splunk.com · undated page, accessed October 10, 2026 · Tier A
  5. [5]CarrefourSplunk · splunk.com · undated page, accessed October 10, 2026 · Tier A
  6. [6]IntelSplunk · splunk.com · undated page, accessed October 10, 2026 · Tier A
  7. [7]FinraSplunk · splunk.com · undated page, accessed October 10, 2026 · Tier A
  8. [8]Alaska airlinesSplunk · splunk.com · undated page, accessed October 10, 2026 · Tier A
  9. [9]HondaSplunk · splunk.com · undated page, accessed October 10, 2026 · Tier A
  10. [10]Cisco delivers trusted ai at scale through new splunk advancementsCisco · newsroom.cisco.com · published September 15, 2026 · Tier A
  11. [11]Cisco buys galileo strengthen splunks agentic monitoring capabilitiesSiliconANGLE · siliconangle.com · published April 9, 2026 · Tier B
  12. [12]Get Data In | Platform (last updated lastModifiedISO)Splunk · undated page, accessed October 28, 2026 · Tier A
  13. [13]Analytics Story: Warzone RAT | Splunk Security ContentSplunk · published May 13, 2026 · Tier A
  14. [14]Analytics Story: Trickbot | Splunk Security ContentSplunk · published May 13, 2026 · Tier A
  15. [15]Splunk | Data Platform for Security, Observability & AISplunk · undated page, accessed October 28, 2026 · Tier A
  16. [16]Splunk Enterprise Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & FeaturesG2 · undated page, accessed October 28, 2026 · Tier C
  17. [17]Using advanced macros - Splunk LanternSplunk Lantern · undated page, accessed November 3, 2026 · Tier A
  18. [18]L’IA au service de la sécurité | SplunkSplunk · undated page, accessed November 3, 2026 · Tier A
  19. [19]Investigating and searching across your data estate with Cisco Data Fabric powered by the Splunk platform - Splunk LanternSplunk Lantern · undated page, accessed November 3, 2026 · Tier A
  20. [20]Preparing data for use with the Splunk AI Toolkit - Splunk LanternSplunk Lantern · undated page, accessed November 3, 2026 · Tier A
  21. [21]De-identifying PII consistently with hashing in Edge Processor - Splunk LanternSplunk Lantern · undated page, accessed November 3, 2026 · Tier A
  22. [22]Using Log Observer Connect with Cloud Platform - Splunk LanternSplunk Lantern · undated page, accessed November 3, 2026 · Tier A
  23. [23]Splunk Launches Hosted Generative AI Models: Native-AI Insights, Zero Setup, Maximum SecuritySplunk · published February 18, 2026 · Tier A
  24. [24]Announcing Splunk Enterprise 10.2 & Splunk Cloud Platform 10.2 – Next Generation Querying & AnalyticsSplunk · published January 16, 2026 · Tier A
  25. [25]Splunk Observability + Galileo: Bridging the AI Trust GapSplunk · published May 28, 2026 · Tier A

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