Datadog vs Splunk: 2023 Software Comparison

Datadog and Splunk both cover a lot of ground as application performance monitoring (APM) tools. Both offer broad monitoring and in-depth data analytics. Buyers looking for a high quality performance monitoring platform will likely find both on their list of strong candidates.
However, there are as many differences as similarities between these two solutions. In sum, they’re very different products that will appeal to buyers with different goals in mind. Here’s a look at both, how they compare, and their ideal use cases.
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Datadog vs. Splunk: Key Feature Comparison
The Splunk platform enables searching, network monitoring, and analyzing a vast amount of IT data to identify data patterns, provide metrics, diagnose problems and aid in business and IT decision making.
To understand the scope of Splunk: Security Information & Event Management (SIEM) can be considered just one small part of its feature arsenal. Beyond security, it takes in APM, compliance, automation, orchestration, forensics, as well as plenty of features related to IT service management (ITSM) and IT operations management (ITOM).
Splunk’s wide range of products and features are aggregated within the Splunk Observability Suite. The platform can be used to analyze, ingest, and store data for later use, as well as detect issues impacting customers. Overall, it offers a breadth of management that spans all of IT and security. Those wishing to manage SIEM, ITOM and ITSM in an integrated fashion will find Splunk to be a fine tool that can do the job. It offers plenty of real-time visualization and analysis features, as well as management and monitoring.
Datadog stops short of calling itself a complete SIEM, ITSM or ITOM platform. It is more focused on cloud monitoring and security. It offers the ability to see inside any stack or application at any scale and anywhere. Infrastructure monitoring, APM, log management, device monitoring, cloud workload monitoring, server monitoring, and database monitoring fall within its feature set.
Datadog is particularly astute at dealing with the performance and visibility of multiple clouds operating on the network and in managing cloud services. Datadog helps IT to drill down into performance data. It generates alerts about potential problems and helps IT to discover any underlying issues.
Datadog can assemble data from logs and other metrics to provide context that is helpful in minimizing incident response time. The user interface centralizes performance monitoring, alert management, and data analysis in one place. Recent additions to its platforms include network monitoring, security analysis, AIOps, business analytics, a mobile app, and an incident management interface.
Delving deeper into both tools, the best way to differentiate them is how they operate. The Splunk application takes more of a log management approach, which makes it ideal for managing and monitoring the large amount of data generated from the devices running on the network. Datadog, on the other hand, takes more of a monitoring approach geared toward analytics. Thus, Datadog tends to be favored by DevOps and IT teams to address cloud and infrastructure performance.
Splunk wins on breadth of features while Datadog wins slightly in terms of APM depth.
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Datadog vs. Splunk: New Features
Both companies have been active with new features and updates, with Datadog being by far the most frequent when it comes to product announcements. These include integration with Amazon Security Lake to make it easy for Amazon Security Lake users to send cloud security logs to Datadog in a standard format. This eliminates the need to build data pipelines to aggregate and route security logs to various security analytics solutions.
Datadog makes this possible via minimal configuration requirements. Once security logs are ingested, users can analyze and identify threats through out-of-the-box detection rules or by writing custom security rules.
In addition, Datadog has released Universal Service Monitoring, which automatically detects all microservices across an organization’s environment and provides visibility into their health and dependencies without any code changes. This complements Datadog’s existing infrastructure monitoring and application monitoring capabilities.
Finally, Datadog has released Cloud Cost Management to show an organization’s cloud spend in the context of observability data. This allows engineering and FinOps teams to automatically attribute spend to applications, services, and teams, track any changes in spend, understand why those changes occurred and include costs as a key performance indicator of application health.
Splunk’s announcements have tended to focus on financials, highlighting its position as an established player in the market that is well ahead of Datadog in the revenue stakes. But there have been a few recent product and service updates.
Splunk extended its collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS), with whom it is named the ISV Partner of the Year in North America. It, too, has released the Splunk Add-on for Amazon Security Lake to the Splunkbase content marketplace. This enables the creation of a security data lake from integrated cloud and on-premises data sources as well as from private applications. Joint Splunk and AWS customers can benefit via simplified sharing and analyzing of disparate security data by eliminating the step of normalizing the data first.
Datadog wins on new features and innovation.
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Datadog vs. Splunk: Management, Support, and Ease of Use
Splunk’s wide range of products and features are aggregated within the Splunk Observability Suite. The platform can be used to analyze, ingest, and store data for later use, as well as detect issues impacting customers.
Overall, Splunk offers a breadth of management that Datadog doesn’t attempt to rival. Those wishing to manage all security information and events (SIEM), all IT operations (ITOM), or all IT services (ITSM) will find Splunk far more complete by far than Datadog. There is no question that Splunk spans a lot more of the IT landscape than Datadog.
Thus, there are advantages for those that choose Splunk. For example, Splunk offers a wealth of real-time visualization and analysis features that Datadog cannot compete with. If real-time management and monitoring are vital, then this one is a no contest.
Splunk, however, isn’t easy to implement, according to user reports. Initial deployment can be accomplished via the cloud. Due to the size and complexity of Splunk, it isn’t for beginners. It requires a higher level of skilled internal resources as well as vendor support to deploy and operate. Users report that the sophistication of Splunk is mirrored in ease of use. Those very familiar with the platform will find it relatively easy to run. Everyone else has a steep learning curve.
Datadog installation, in contrast, is said to be straightforward, courtesy of the deployment of agents. But some command line scripting is required. It is relatively easy to customize dashboards and interfaces to the way you want them. The main interface covers a lot of ground. Great for experienced users, but it might be tough for new users who may be overwhelmed by the number of options.
Whereas Splunk wins hands down on breadth of management, Datadog comes out ahead on depth – at least across a limited feature set. Purely within APM and cloud services, Datadog offers better drill down and general management capabilities. Further, it is better at managing itself. Whereas Splunk relies on IT to notice and troubleshoot issues related to Splunk, Datadog generates alerts about potential or actual problems within itself and helps IT to identify the underlying issues.
This one is a split decision.
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Datadog vs. Splunk: Pricing
It is well known that Splunk isn’t a low-cost option. Once it ascended to become the darling of SIEM and ITSM a few years ago, it set its prices accordingly. The various modules within Splunk also have a reputation for being expensive.
Further, upselling can send the budget much higher i.e., if you want the SIEM module. If you need performance monitoring, that adds in an APM module, and slowly other modules creep in and the price tag rises. This is normal enough in IT. But when you are already dealing with a pricey platform, it is important to determine what you really need and what you can dispense with.
For example, Splunk offers a wealth of real-time visualization and analysis features that Datadog does not. If real-time management and monitoring are vital, then Splunk is the clear choice. But it does come at a price.
Real-time monitoring sounds great, but not everyone needs it enough for to pay this price premium. Datadog skips real-time and is quite a bit cheaper than its big rival. As for deployment, and support, Datadog also comes out well ahead in terms of keeping costs down. Splunk implementation and support costs can escalate as the software is rolled out.
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Datadog vs. Splunk: Bottom Line
Splunk and Datadog are both excellent tools designed to solve a great many challenges related to security and performance monitoring. You can’t go wrong too far wrong with either one. Both are strong in APM. In fact, both are regarded as leaders in the latest Gartner APM Magic Quadrant. Both also offer a lot of advanced features for your money that go far beyond APM. And both are trailblazers when it comes to innovation and future roadmaps.
In reality, though, it isn’t a case of one versus the other so much as it is a case of determining what you really need. Datadog is all about performance measurement for cloud services and is particularly adept at measuring the performance of databases and servers and measuring performance in a multi-cloud world. It doesn’t attempt to embrace the entire SIEM, ITOM, ITSM spectrum. Rather it takes one slice and does that portion really well. Those that have already deployed plenty of tools for security and IT management, therefore, may gravitate more toward Datadog to supplement ongoing efforts.
Splunk, however, is a much broader platform and toolset geared for a heavy duty large enterprise. Its log management approach often proves invaluable in rapidly analyzing log files and making sense of mountains of data so that IT knows what is going on. Whether it’s a performance slowdown or a security incursion, Splunk is a good way to stay one step ahead of trouble. Those needing an all-encompassing security and IT management platform, therefore, will find Splunk closer to their needs. Additionally, those with aging applications that are ready for a major management makeover will find Splunk a good fit. It covers a large amount of ground – if you have the budget for it.
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