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Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Splunk Observability Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 6, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.2
Organizations gain significant returns from Microsoft Defender for Cloud through improved security, cost savings, and enhanced productivity.
Sentiment score
7.8
Splunk Observability Cloud boosts ROI with enhanced visibility, reducing downtime and enabling faster issue resolution and improved collaboration.
Defender proactively indexes and analyzes documents, identifying potential threats even when inactive, enhancing preventative security.
Identifying potential vulnerabilities has helped us avoid costly data losses.
The biggest return on investment is the rapid improvement of security posture.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.6
Microsoft Defender for Cloud support varies, with premium users receiving better service, while others face repetitive explanations and variable expertise.
Sentiment score
7.4
Splunk Observability Cloud receives high support ratings, though some users rely on in-house expertise and community resources.
Since security is critical, we prefer a quicker response time.
The support team was very responsive to queries.
They understand their product, but much like us, they struggle with the finer details, especially with new features.
They often require multiple questions, with five or six emails to get a response.
They did respond to us, but they did not explicitly inform us about the feature's absence.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is praised for scalability, seamless integration, and adaptability across environments, despite potential cost implications.
Sentiment score
7.8
Splunk Observability Cloud is praised for scalability, despite some cost concerns and challenges with large data sets.
We are using infrastructure as a code, so we do not have any scalability issues with Microsoft Defender for Cloud implementation because our cloud automatically does it.
It has multiple licenses and features, covering infrastructures from a hundred to five hundred virtual machines, without any issues.
Defender won't replace our endpoint XDR, but it will likely adapt and support any growth in the Microsoft Cloud space.
We've used the solution across more than 250 people, including engineers.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is stable and reliable, with minor issues in response times, connectivity, and update-related downtimes.
Sentiment score
8.3
Splunk Observability Cloud is highly stable, with users praising its reliability, minimal bugs, and quick resolution of minor issues.
Defender's stability has been flawless for us.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is very stable.
Microsoft sometimes changes settings or configurations without transparency.
I would rate its stability a nine out of ten.
We rarely have problems accessing the dashboard or the page.
 

Room For Improvement

Users desire improved automation, integration, transparency, controls, and documentation for better management and protection in Microsoft Defender for Cloud.
Splunk Observability Cloud needs better integration, pricing, scalability, customization, and support to improve user experience and expandability.
Microsoft, in general, could significantly improve its communication and support.
It would be beneficial to streamline recommendations to avoid unnecessary alerts and to refine the severity of alerts based on specific environments or environmental attributes.
The artificial intelligence features could be expanded to allow the system to autonomously manage security issues without needing intervention from admins.
There is room for improvement in the alerting system, which is complicated and has less documentation available.
Customers sometimes need to create specific dashboards, particularly for applicative metrics such as Java and process terms.
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Defender for Cloud offers competitive pricing, but complex models and hidden costs can be concerns for enterprise buyers.
Splunk Observability Cloud is costly but valued, with variable pricing and potential for discounts or negotiations to reduce expenses.
Every time we consider expanding usage, we carefully evaluate the necessity due to cost concerns.
We appreciate the licensing approach based on employee count rather than a big enterprise license.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is pricey, especially for Kubernetes clusters.
It appears to be expensive compared to competitors.
 

Valuable Features

Microsoft Defender for Cloud enhances security through advanced threat protection, multi-cloud integration, AI capabilities, and automated incident responses.
Splunk Observability Cloud integrates data, monitors performance, and enhances visibility with user-friendly dashboards and real-time threat detection.
The most valuable feature for me is the variety of APIs available.
This feature significantly aids in threat detection and enhances the user experience by streamlining security management.
The most valuable feature is the recommendations provided on how to improve security.
For troubleshooting, we can detect problems in seconds, which is particularly helpful for digital teams.
Splunk APM provides a holistic view of the application.
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Ranking in Container Management
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (7th), Container Security (4th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (2nd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (4th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (4th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (4th), Compliance Management (3rd)
Splunk Observability Cloud
Ranking in Container Management
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (11th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (9th), Cloud Monitoring Software (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 1.1%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Observability Cloud is 0.5%. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Container Management
 

Featured Reviews

Vibhor Goel - PeerSpot reviewer
A single tool for complete visibility and addressing security gaps
Currently, issues are structured in Microsoft Defender for Cloud at severity levels of high, critical, or warning, but these severity levels are not always right. For example, Microsoft might consider a port being open as critical, but that might not be the case for our company. Similarly, it might suggest closing some management ports, but you might need them to be able to log in, so the severity levels for certain things can be improved. Even though Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides a way to temporarily disable certain alerts or notifications without affecting our security score, it would be better to have more granularized control over these recommendations. Currently, we cannot even disable certain alerts or notifications. There should be an automated mechanism to design Azure policies based on the recommendations, possibly with AI integration. Instead of an engineer having to write a policy to fix security gaps, which is very time-consuming, there should be an inbuilt capability to auto-remediate everything and have proper control in place. Additionally, enabling Defender for Cloud at the resource group level, rather than only at the subscription level, would be beneficial.
Lakshmi Padaga - PeerSpot reviewer
Collaborates performance metrics with log data to pinpoint the exact cause of issues and offers error detection
Splunk APM is a robust tool with many capabilities. There are always areas for potential improvement to enhance its functionality and user experience. For Splunk APM, there could be simplified navigation, like streamlining the user interface to make navigation more intuitive for our users, especially those new to APM, which can enhance usability. We can provide more customization options for dashboards and visualizations to help users tailor the platform to their specific needs. There could be more integration capabilities with a wider range of third-party tools and platforms would also be beneficial. By focusing on these areas, Splunk APM can enhance its value proposition, improve user satisfaction, and better meet the evolving needs of organizations monitoring their application performance.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
15%
Retailer
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How is Prisma Cloud vs Azure Security Center for security?
Azure Security Center is very easy to use, integrates well, and gives very good visibility on what is happening across your ecosystem. It also has great remote workforce capabilities and supports a...
What do you like most about Microsoft Defender for Cloud?
The entire Defender Suite is tightly coupled, integrated, and collaborative.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Cloud?
The cost is generally reasonable. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Plan 2 costs $15 per server, per month. For a normal customer with ten to twenty servers, the cost is about $300 per month, which is a...
What do you like most about SignalFx?
The most valuable feature is dashboard creation.
What needs improvement with SignalFx?
There is room for improvement in the alerting system, which is complicated and has less documentation available. We sometimes encountered issues in setting up alerts. The custom detector could be m...
What is your primary use case for SignalFx?
The main purpose of using Splunk APM is to optimize our application. We use Splunk APM primarily to understand how the application works, how it uses resources, and its response time in connection ...
 

Also Known As

Microsoft Azure Security Center, Azure Security Center, Microsoft ASC, Azure Defender
Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Defender for Cloud is trusted by companies such as ASOS, Vatenfall, SWC Technology Partners, and more.
Sunrun, Yelp, Onshape, Tapjoy, Symphony Commerce, Chairish, Clever, Grovo, Bazaar Voice, Zenefits, Avalara
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Splunk Observability Cloud and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,963 professionals have used our research since 2012.