SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM) vs. Splunk Cloud Platform

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
SolarWinds LEM is security information and event management (SIEM) software.N/A
Splunk Cloud Platform
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
Splunk Cloud Platform is a data platform service thats help users search, analyze, visualize and act on data. The service can go live in as little as two days, and with an IT backend managed by Splunk experts.N/A
Pricing
SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)Splunk Cloud Platform
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)Splunk Cloud Platform
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)Splunk Cloud Platform
Features
SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)Splunk Cloud Platform
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
Comparison of Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) features of Product A and Product B
SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)
8.9
Ratings
14% above category average
Splunk Cloud Platform
9.0
Ratings
15% above category average
Centralized event and log data collection9.00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Correlation8.00 Ratings9.70 Ratings
Event and log normalization/management8.00 Ratings9.70 Ratings
Deployment flexibility10.00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Integration with Identity and Access Management Tools8.00 Ratings9.30 Ratings
Custom dashboards and workspaces9.00 Ratings9.70 Ratings
Host and network-based intrusion detection10.00 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Data integration/API management00 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Behavioral analytics and baselining00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Rules-based and algorithmic detection thresholds00 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Response orchestration and automation00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Reporting and compliance management00 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Incident indexing/searching00 Ratings9.30 Ratings
Best Alternatives
SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)Splunk Cloud Platform
Small Businesses
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LevelBlue USM Anywhere
Score 3.9 out of 10
LevelBlue USM Anywhere
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Score 3.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Sumo Logic
Sumo Logic
Score 9.4 out of 10
Sumo Logic
Sumo Logic
Score 9.4 out of 10
Enterprises
Sumo Logic
Sumo Logic
Score 9.4 out of 10
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Score 9.4 out of 10
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User Ratings
SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)Splunk Cloud Platform
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(0 ratings)
9.9
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.3
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.5
(0 ratings)
7.2
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)Splunk Cloud Platform
Likelihood to Recommend
Solarwinds SEM is great for generating reports for investigation purposes. Once you set up the connectors you can walk away and the product runs without needing maintenance. It was however pretty difficult to create the reports and alerts when now starting out and it can be very intimidating for new users.
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I will highly recommend this software because using Splunk
Cloud has helped us become more proactive about handling our security concerns
and better manage our environment. It is one of the finest security software
that is easy to use and also provides analytics. It has excellent features like
creating dashboard security and managing features etc. So you must give it a try once!
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Pros
  • SolarWinds easily provides the much needed visibily into changes in an Active Directory (AD) environment. Email alerting can be configured to alert a team if an account is locked out, disabled by another users, or if users and/or computers accounts are created.
  • SolarWinds allowed a searchable audit feature. Microsoft Windows can be configured to log many different parts of a system, but search those logs can be difficult. SEM allows you to search for specific users or events.
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  • With Splunk Cloud you get the advantage of moving from POC to Production in a matter of days rather than in months allowing the Business to gain a lot.
  • Takes you away from managing infrastructure/administration, allows saving time & money. Reduce the overall TCO (Total Cost of Ownership)
  • Move from Reactive to Proactive Monitoring
  • Highly secure environment at your finger-tips
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Cons
  • Compared to other SIEMs, there are features that are missing. Machine learning, automatic event correlation, ability to correlate multiple sources together.
  • The UI is clunky, and the *New* event log analyzer page felt really disjointed from the rest of the product.
  • In my experience, the dashboards were almost unusable. They persisted across login per device, and even then they sometimes would reset and go back to the ''Getting Started'' look.
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  • Some of their more advanced features, like ITSI, Machine Learning, or Security Analytics, can be very challenging to setup and configure.
  • Splunk Cloud support has been a challenge in the past. They are getting better, but they have had problems responding in a timely manner to issues.
  • These are only some minor observations of things I have had to deal with. In general, Splunk is a solid product that is fantastic to use.
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Likelihood to Renew
It is pretty likely that we will renew SEM when the time comes up. It is easy to use and maintain so there isn't much of a need to replace this product. It is also a pretty fair price for the capabilities provided by the SEM
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Ease of use and have all the features we need
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Usability
It is very good - but you get what you pay for. The intent is not for a Fortune 500 that needs more "heavy lifting" with SolarWinds Security Event Manager & for whom the price tag is not (much of) a consideration.
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What it does well:
- Powerful SPL query language for advanced users
- Excellent visualization dashboards
- Comprehensive documentation and community support
Where it needs work:
- Steep learning curve for SPL syntax
- Non-Intuitive UI for beginners
- Complex administration and data model configuration
- Search performance degrades with poor query optimization
Bottom line: Enterprise-grade tool requiring dedicated training investment. Best for teams with experienced analysts.
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Support Rating
The quality of support can vary depending on whom you end up speaking with. I was fortunate enough to work with a support representative who was very familiar with the product. He had even authored some of the support documentation on the website. On the flip side, I had two other experiences where I was simply directed to online training material.
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Splunk Cloud support is sorely lacking unfortunately. The portal where you submit tickets is not very good and is lacking polish. Tickets are left for days without any updates and when chased it is only sometimes you get a reply back. I get the feeling the support team are very understaffed and have far too much going on. From what I know, Splunk is aware of this and seem to be trying to remedy it.
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Alternatives Considered
The compare well against the others - the pricing models for all but Splunk (free version) are based on EPS/TB consumed... the problem they pose is guesstimating the price tag per month. SolarWinds Security Event Manager gets around that.
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Microsoft Dynamics is far more complex and far more costly to implement and configure in comparison to Splunk. It can be useful for integrations into existing Microsoft databases. Grafana is quick and easy to deploy and configure. However, it lacks the scale required for an enterprise of our size. It is great for smaller test cases.
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Return on Investment
  • It saves a lot of time when we had issues trying to figure out where the user account lockout was coming from.
  • With it being an affordable SIEM, we are able to have the ability to do the actions associated with a SIEM and the advantages of not “breaking the bank account”.
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  • Splunk Cloud has had a positive ROI in helping more efficiently track the cause of Help Desk Tickets.
  • The billing model which is based on the amount of data from logs uploaded doesn't alert if a threshold is approaching. This can have a negative ROI.
  • The training that I have taken while in-depth and focused is pretty expensive.
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ScreenShots

SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM) Screenshots

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