Splunk Goes Global with 11 New Innovation Hubs

Data-to-everything platform provider Splunk will be going global with its recently announced expansion plans encompassing 11 new innovation hubs spanning Canada, Poland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Spurred by its rapid growth in IT, security, and business operations, the analytics firm will be adding 1,000 more jobs to its current count of 5,000 employees.

“Splunk is helping organizations around the world solve their toughest IT, security, and business challenges with the power of data. As the growth of data continues to accelerate, so does the demand for Splunkers who can help our customers turn data into doing,” said Doug Merritt, president, and CEO of Splunk. “Splunk’s focused global expansion speaks to the company’s continued momentum, as we help customers around the world bring Data-to-Everything.”

Founded in 2003 by three friends Eric Swan, Michael Baum, and Rob Das – they came up with the idea for Splunk after talking about all the time they spent tracking down data hidden amongst log data files at their respective IT jobs. They realized there must be a better way to search for answers, and Splunk was born.

Venture investors August Capital, Seven Rosen, Ignition Partners, and JK&B Capital saw Splunk’s potential early on and bought in while the company was still beginning. In total, the company raised $40 million over five funding rounds from 2004 to 2011. The San Francisco-based tech firm went public in April 2012 and was valued at $1.6 billion at its IPO.

Splunk provides a selection of solutions designed to search through machine data and deliver operational intelligence to client-organizations who can then speedily resolve any problems that arise. Interarbor Solutions analyst Dana Gardner offered her explanation of what the firm provided – “companies have had this fire hose of data thrown at them,” she said. “Splunk whittles down this stream so they can exploit the data.”

The company has expanded rapidly since its inception through both organic growth and several acquisitions made over the last six years. As the amount of data needing to analyzed increased exponentially, so did the costs associated with Splunk’s services. With its successful transition from a software licensing model to SaaS, clients were able to have all their information processed without concern for ballooning costs. Moving to a subscriber model also gave Splunk a more reliable revenue stream. In its third quarter, 92 percent of the analytics firm’s revenue came from renewable revenue clients who signed long-term subscription contracts.

As far as Splunk’s expansion through acquisitions, one of its most notable was its deal to buy SignalFX for $1.05 billion made earlier this year. The cloud-monitoring company’s tools allow its IT and developer clients to improve the management and transparency of data stored in the cloud, on-premises, or in hybrid systems in real-time at scale. Splunk’s new suite of solutions opened a new revenue stream for the company and diversified its product offerings.

“Data fuels the modern business, and the acquisition of SignalFx squarely put Splunk in position as a leader in…. observability at massive scale,” said Splunk’s president and CEO Doug Merritt in a prepared statement. “SignalFX will support our continued commitment to giving customers one platform that can monitor the entire enterprise application lifecycle.”

More than 12,000 customers across 110 countries trust Splunk’s technology to monitor, report and analyze their cloud and on-premise systems.