

Microsoft System Center and Splunk Observability Cloud compete in the enterprise IT management arena. Based on feature comparison, Splunk appears to have an edge in data visualization and integration, making it favorable for cloud-centric operations.
Features: Microsoft System Center offers integration with Microsoft products, streamlined automation for Windows environments, and comprehensive tools for enterprise-level management, including hypervisor control and endpoint management. Splunk Observability Cloud provides robust data integration, custom dashboards, and strong alerting capabilities, offering extensive end-to-end visibility across environments.
Room for Improvement: Microsoft System Center needs better integration with non-Microsoft products, a more intuitive interface, and improved documentation. It also faces issues with server consumption and cloud monitoring. Splunk's challenges include high costs, complex configuration, and expensive data ingestion; it requires enhancements for cloud-native support and third-party tool integration.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Microsoft System Center is complex, requiring on-premises deployment and thorough expertise, with customer service needing better responsiveness. Splunk Observability Cloud, due to its SaaS nature, offers flexible deployment across hybrid environments, although configuration to optimize performance is necessary. However, its customer service is criticized for complexity and documentation.
Pricing and ROI: Microsoft System Center incurs high licensing costs but offers ROI in about eight months through automation. Splunk, despite high pricing, offers competitive features with pay-as-you-go models that align well with scaling enterprises, requiring yearly costs but providing cost-effective adaptability.
Using Splunk has saved my organization about 30% of our budget compared to using multiple different monitoring products.
Anyone working in front-end management should recognize the market price to see the true value of end-user monitoring.
I have definitely seen a return on investment with Splunk Observability Cloud, particularly through how fast it has grown and how comfortable other teams are in relying on its outputs for monitoring and observability.
As a partner, I cannot create a ticket directly; I have to involve the end user's email to create one, so using the Software Assurance ID to create a ticket directly is not possible, making it very challenging for me.
On a scale of 1 to 10, the customer service and technical support deserve a 10.
They have consistently helped us resolve any issues we've encountered.
They often require multiple questions, with five or six emails to get a response.
Microsoft System Center is scalable, allowing integration even if I have different sites.
We've used the solution across more than 250 people, including engineers.
As we are a growing company transitioning all our applications to the cloud, and with the increasing number of cloud-native applications, Splunk Observability Cloud will help us achieve digital resiliency and reduce our mean time to resolution.
I would rate its scalability a nine out of ten.
I would rate its stability a nine out of ten.
We rarely have problems accessing the dashboard or the page.
Unlike NetScout or regular agents for APM, RUM has many problems during the POC phase because customer environments vary widely.
The disadvantage of Microsoft System Center is related to the many integrated services; if one service is failing, then all features will be affected.
The out-of-the-box customizable dashboards in Splunk Observability Cloud are very effective in showcasing IT performance to business leaders.
The next release of Splunk Observability Cloud should include a feature that makes it so that when looking at charts and dashboards, and also looking at one environment regardless of the product feature that you're in, APM, infrastructure, RUM, the environment that is chosen in the first location when you sign into Splunk Observability Cloud needs to stay persistent all the way through.
There is room for improvement in the alerting system, which is complicated and has less documentation available.
Splunk is a bit expensive since it charges based on the indexing rate of data.
It is expensive, especially when there are other vendors that offer something similar for much cheaper.
It appears to be expensive compared to competitors.
In Microsoft System Center, all the features are integrated already, whereas in ManageEngine, you have to license each feature individually to access those features.
Splunk provides advanced notifications of roadblocks in the application, which helps us to improve and avoid impacts during high-volume days.
For troubleshooting, we can detect problems in seconds, which is particularly helpful for digital teams.
It offers unified visibility for logs, metrics, and traces.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| Splunk Observability Cloud | 2.4% |
| Microsoft System Center | 0.7% |
| Other | 96.9% |


| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 7 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 4 |
| Large Enterprise | 10 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 20 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 10 |
| Large Enterprise | 46 |
Splunk Observability Cloud offers sophisticated log searching, data integration, and customizable dashboards. With rapid deployment and ease of use, this cloud service enhances monitoring capabilities across IT infrastructures for comprehensive end-to-end visibility.
Focused on enhancing performance management and security, Splunk Observability Cloud supports environments through its data visualization and analysis tools. Users appreciate its robust application performance monitoring and troubleshooting insights. However, improvements in integrations, interface customization, scalability, and automation are needed. Users find value in its capabilities for infrastructure and network monitoring, as well as log analytics, albeit cost considerations and better documentation are desired. Enhancements in real-time monitoring and network protection are also noted as areas for development.
What are the key features?In industries, Splunk Observability Cloud is implemented for security management by analyzing logs from detection systems, offering real-time alerts and troubleshooting for cloud-native applications. It is leveraged for machine data analysis, improving infrastructure visibility and supporting network and application performance management efforts.
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