ServiceNow Cloud Observability vs Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) comparison

ServiceNow and Splunk are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. ServiceNow is ranked #39 with an average rating of 7.5, while Splunk is ranked #11 with an average rating of 8.2. ServiceNow holds a 0.4% mindshare in APM, compared to Splunk’s 0.7% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of ServiceNow users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Splunk users who would recommend it.

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Read 4 ServiceNow Cloud Observability reviews

790 Views
766 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Splunk ITSI (IT Service Int...

Read 50 Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) reviews

2,969 Views
1,663 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Splunk ITSI (IT Service Int...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

ServiceNow Cloud Observability and Splunk ITSI are both comprehensive monitoring solutions. ServiceNow Cloud Observability has an edge in support, while Splunk ITSI is preferred for its advanced features.

Features: Users value ServiceNow Cloud Observability for its integration capabilities, real-time insights, and straightforward deployment process. Splunk ITSI is praised for its deep analytics, customizable dashboards, and advanced features.

Room for Improvement: ServiceNow Cloud Observability users seek enhanced scalability, better compatibility with third-party tools, and improved expandability. Splunk ITSI users desire simpler configuration options, reduced complexity, and less setup intricacies.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: ServiceNow Cloud Observability is commended for its straightforward deployment process and responsive customer service. Splunk ITSI's deployment is seen as somewhat complex, but its customer service remains effective.

Pricing and ROI: ServiceNow Cloud Observability has a competitive pricing model and delivers solid ROI according to reviews. Splunk ITSI’s pricing is higher, but users feel it justifies the cost through its comprehensive features and performance benefits.

To learn more, read our detailed ServiceNow Cloud Observability vs. Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow Cloud Observability vs. Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence)

July 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 863,331 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

39th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Splunk ITSI (IT Service Int...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

11th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Alerting and Incident Management (4th)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of ServiceNow Cloud Observability is 0.4%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) is 0.7%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Prashant-Sharma

Senior Software Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

Provides effective observability and offers robust alerting and monitoring capabilities

We use some SDK to integrate like tips in our code, in our Java code or whatever code, rightly, Skylight or whatever. So, the SDK that we use is not very easy to get a hold of. So, a person who is more experienced is able to write proper code so that an operation can have an operation name to set. So, SDK would be improved for developers so that the integration and code will get easier. The support team could be better. Because of the different versions of different tactics of integrating reactive code base, the documentation is not very clear if someone has to be onboard. I would rate the documentation of Lightstep a five out of ten. It could need improvement. Currently, what happens is, suppose in a stream, we have lots of spans. So if there is something I can filter, for example, in a single trace, there are ten calls with it. And if I have to filter, I have to go inside the individual trace to get the call. In future releases, I want to see if it is possible to filter them at a very high stream level. So, for example, I want to filter the calls only from service A, ten calls, and I want to filter only two calls out of ten. So, instead of doing that filter at the trace level, can I do it at a stream level.

Read full review

Srinivasulu Soolluru

Splunk ITSI Developer at Tata Consultancy

It speeds up incident response by automating alerts and ticket creation

When configuring a dashboard, we can write search criteria. Based on the search criteria, the dashboard shows all the alerts, including the alert time, creation time, and a summary description of the alert. When you add an extra column, such as the user that triggered the alert, the next time he refreshes the dashboard, he wants to know that the alert is acknowledged. We want to improve that comment feature. In the Service Analyzer, we monitor the network infrastructure services and have a KPI for each service. When the value exceeds the threshold value, we can add the colors. For example, we can set it to green when the threshold value is within the limit. If it is red, then the value has passed the threshold. We want more colors in the service analyzer to display all these features.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution Lightstep/ServiceNow has a couple of pretty advanced functionalities to help us investigate a deviation and help the development teams have better observability in the environment using distributed and complex services."

"The UI is very intuitive."

"To a certain extent, it is possible to save on the costs of the product."

"The ability to create a stream based on different parameters, operation name, service name, URL, tags, and URI part, is one valuable feature."

"ITSI provides a visual representation of complex tools and context, using color coding and other features to make it easy for anyone at the monitoring or service desk to use."

"The KPS used to automate the integration policy is the most valuable feature of Splunk ITSI."

"Splunk ITSI offers a valuable visualization tree that allows us to map and analyze dependencies and co-dependency within our environment."

"The solution's most valuable feature is the aggregation of the metrics and the relative ease of getting them away from search."

"We save substantial time on monitoring tasks because we don't have to search for what we need. Everything is packed, so you can drill down to the end values by just doing the kit. We don't spend a lot of time on this. Splunk ITSI is easy to use and not time-consuming."

"What I like the most is the event correlations. It's a file structure, and ITSI has a correlation layer where you can normalize the events from different sources. Once these events are normalized, you set up rules to aggregate them into different or the same attributes. After the rules are defined, you can automate the process to solve the issue automatically."

"The root cause analysis is very helpful for us."

"The most valuable feature is event correlation, which ensures that only one ticket is generated per issue, eliminating duplicates and reducing noise from multiple alerts."

More Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) pros

Cons

"The support team could be better. Because of the different versions of different tactics of integrating reactive code base, the documentation is not very clear if someone has to be onboard. I would rate the documentation of Lightstep a five out of ten. It could need improvement."

"The design of this solution is not very intuitive and probably could come with more friendly tips for beginners."

"The dashboard and graphics must be improved."

"In terms of licensing, users would want the product to offer them the ability to tailor the tasks offered in the solution to suit their needs."

"While Splunk has existing add-ons, they are unreliable and do not provide accurate results."

"It is pretty okay. I am not sure whether the current release has already moved to the new framework where instead of the glass tables, we can directly use the Dashboard Studio. It would be nice to have that integrated into the same framework."

"The biggest improvement area is making it open to developers. Right now, it is very closed. It can only be downloaded by people who have a license to and not everyone. If it is open to everybody, more people will use it."

"We're getting alerts with delays of maybe five minutes, however, we'd like to see real-time alerting in the future."

"Some of our customers occasionally require the development of the connectors when there are no native connectors so that we can develop in Python or for customer slash comments as well. If they could adjust that, it would be ideal."

"Microservices is the only area where Splunk ITSI can be improved. When things come from one EC2 instance to another, there's a lack of exposure to microservices, so we can't know what's happening. Apart from that, it's doing pretty well."

"Splunk ITSI could benefit from including more features that other solutions support, such as vulnerability management modules."

"ITSI currently lacks the capability for automated response, mitigation, and remediation."

More Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive. I rate the tool's pricing model an eight out of ten."

"The pricing of Splunk is a bit high."

"It depends on how big an organization is. If we have a lot of resources, the licensing needs to be upgraded. If we have a small environment, the licensing cost is definitely going to be less."

"The cost of the modules is a bit high for non-global companies, making it difficult for them to afford Splunk ITSI."

"I wouldn't say there's been an issue with the solution's pricing because we went through the AWS marketplace and negotiated directly with Splunk."

"Splunk ITSI is expensive compared to other tools."

"Splunk ITSI is expensive."

"Its pricing has been changed as per the market. You get a good support service with it as well. They have 24/7 customer support. There is a portal, and if you are having issues, they are available in order to resolve them. So, its pricing isn't too much."

"It is interesting. I am not involved that much lately, but if I recall correctly, you license primarily on the volume of data that you are using in Splunk ITSI, but there is no way Splunk can ever check if that is true, so that is interesting. We are not doing it, but someone can pretend to just use 10%, and it would be super cheap. It is tricky, but it is more tricky for Splunk than for us."

More Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

863,331 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

19%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Computer Software Company

13%

Retailer

11%

Financial Services Firm

19%

Government

11%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about LightStep?

The UI is very intuitive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with LightStep?

There are a lot of workflows and connectors. In terms of licensing, users would want the product to offer them the ability to tailor the tasks offered in the solution to suit their needs.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for LightStep?

I use the solution in my company since it has multiple tenants available. Basically, what happens in business is that you have a hybrid setup model, and for that, you extensively use a cloud platfo...

See all answers

What do you like most about Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence)?

Our mean time to detect is down to five minutes.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence)?

Pricing can vary significantly based on the selected modules and deployment choices. Splunk ITSI tends to be more expensive compared to some open-source solutions.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence)?

Splunk ITSI could benefit from including more features that other solutions support, such as vulnerability management modules. This would help manage vulnerabilities effectively, allowing my organi...

See all answers

Comparisons

Grafana vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Compared 32% of the time

Datadog vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Compared 30% of the time

Dynatrace vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Compared 18% of the time

IBM Instana Observability vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Compared 11% of the time

Splunk Observability Cloud vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Compared 10% of the time

More ServiceNow Cloud Observability Competitors

ServiceNow IT Operations Management vs Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence)

Compared 15% of the time

Dynatrace vs Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence)

Compared 13% of the time

OpsRamp vs Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence)

Compared 9% of the time

BigPanda vs Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence)

Compared 9% of the time

Splunk Observability Cloud vs Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence)

Compared 8% of the time

More Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

June 2025

Download ServiceNow Cloud Observability product report

Buyer's Guide

Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence)

June 2025

Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) report

Download Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) product report

Also Known As

LightStep

No data available

Overview

ServiceNow Cloud Observability is a comprehensive platform designed to enhance visibility, control, and performance monitoring of your IT infrastructure and applications. It seamlessly integrates log management, trace management, metrics monitoring, and infrastructure monitoring in real-time, leveraging AI and machine learning for automated tasks and actionable insights. With benefits including improved visibility, faster incident resolution, enhanced application performance, simplified IT operations, and reduced costs, this cloud-native solution is ideal for businesses of all sizes with complex IT infrastructures. It integrates seamlessly with ServiceNow IT Operations Management (ITOM), supports OpenTelemetry standards, and provides AI-powered insights along with pre-built dashboards and reports.

ServiceNow

Splunk IT Service Intelligence (ITSI) is a powerful analytics-driven monitoring and analytics solution that provides real-time insights into the health and performance of IT services.

It enables organizations to proactively identify and resolve issues, optimize service delivery, and improve overall IT operations. With its advanced machine learning capabilities, ITSI automatically detects anomalies, predicts future events, and prioritizes alerts based on business impact.

The solution offers a centralized view of IT services, allowing users to visualize and analyze data from multiple sources in a single dashboard. ITSI also provides customizable KPIs, service-level agreements (SLAs), and key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure and track service performance.

With its intuitive interface and powerful analytics capabilities, Splunk ITSI empowers IT teams to deliver reliable and efficient services, ensuring maximum uptime and customer satisfaction.

Splunk

Sample Customers

InVision, Twilio, Lyft, Yext, DigitalOcean,

TransUnion, Cox Automotive, Carnival Cruises, Leidos, Econocom, National Ignition Factory, Entrust Datacard, Molina Healthcare, United States Census Bureau

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow Cloud Observability vs. Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence)

July 2025

Free Report: ServiceNow Cloud Observability vs. Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence)

Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow Cloud Observability vs. Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

863,331 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our ServiceNow Cloud Observability vs. Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) report.

See our list of best Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability vendors.

We monitor all Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.