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Splunk

Splunk sells its platform, security and observability offerings under one set of Splunk General Terms, with Capacity measured in the units set by its Purchase Capacity and Limitations page (daily ingest, vCPU, Splunk Virtual Compute, hosts and product-specific units), activity-based, workload, ingest and entity pricing, yearly on-premises verification and overages invoiced at list price.

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Overview articleSplunk licensingSplunk sells its platform, security and observability offerings under one set of Splunk General Terms, with Capacity measured in the units set by its Purchase Capacity and Limitations page (daily ingest, vCPU, Splunk Virtual Compute, hosts and product-specific units), activity-based, workload, ingest and entity pricing, yearly on-premises verification and overages invoiced at list price.Cited · Edited 2026-10-02 · 12 references

Guides

Splunk Enterprise license managementCited · Edited 2026-10-02Splunk Cloud Platform subscriptionsCited · Edited 2026-10-02Splunk Enterprise Security and ITSI licensingCited · Edited 2026-10-02Splunk Observability Cloud licensingCited · Edited 2026-10-02

Licensing Data

From the Splunk catalog: how usage is counted, the rules that apply, the programs licences are bought through and the SKUs. Backed by 63 verbatim excerpts from 16 Splunk documents.

Products

All 13 Products

Monitoring Software 7

Splunk APM, Splunk Cloud Platform, Splunk Enterprise Rapid Adoption Packages, Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring, Splunk Log Observer, Splunk Observability Cloud, Splunk Synthetic Monitoring

Security Compliance Software 4

Splunk Enterprise Security, Splunk Enterprise Security Essentials, Splunk Enterprise Security Premier, Splunk OT Intelligence

AIOps Tools 1

Splunk Agent Observability

IT Alerting Software 1

Splunk On-Call

Product History

All acquisitions
  1. Cisco acquired SplunkAnnounced 2023-09-21 · Closed 2024-03-18 · About USD 28 billion equity value, USD 157 per share in cash (as announced)

    Cisco acquired Splunk, a security and observability software vendor. Splunk products continue under the Splunk name, and Cisco said it would combine them with its network, security and observability portfolio.

    Legacy productBecame
    Splunk EnterpriseKept Splunk Enterprise · Workload measured in vCPUs, or ingest and entity pricing
    Splunk Cloud PlatformKept Splunk Cloud Platform · Workload measured in Splunk Virtual Compute units
    Splunk security and observability productsMerged into Cisco security and observability portfolio · Cisco said it would combine Splunk with its network, security and observability offerings
    Licensing impact
    • Cisco told Cisco customers to contact their Cisco account managers and Splunk customers their Splunk account managers, so existing contracts continued with the same account contacts after the close.[3]
    • Splunk's published pricing models remain activity-based, workload (SVCs or vCPUs), ingest and entity pricing, on Splunk's own pricing pages.[4]
    • Cisco stated that it would combine Splunk with its networking, security and observability solutions, so Splunk products may increasingly be packaged with other Cisco offers.[2]
    Sources and full product history
  2. Splunk acquired SignalFxClosed 2019-10-02

    Splunk acquired SignalFx, a SaaS real-time monitoring and metrics vendor for cloud infrastructure, microservices, serverless functions and container environments. SignalFx Infrastructure Monitoring and SignalFx APM became part of Splunk's observability portfolio, now sold as Splunk Observability Cloud.

    Legacy productBecame
    SignalFx Infrastructure MonitoringMerged into Splunk Observability Cloud (Infrastructure Monitoring)
    SignalFx APMMerged into Splunk Observability Cloud (Application Performance Monitoring)
    Licensing impact
    • Splunk states that the SignalFx acquisition, completed on 2 October 2019, added real-time observability for microservices, serverless functions and container-orchestrated environments such as Docker and Kubernetes.[1]
    • Splunk's current product catalogue lists Infrastructure Monitoring and Application Performance Monitoring as capabilities of Splunk Observability Cloud.[1]
    Sources and full product history
  3. Splunk acquired VictorOpsClosed 2018

    Splunk acquired VictorOps, a DevOps collaborative incident management vendor, in June 2018. The product is now sold as Splunk On-Call.

    Legacy productBecame
    VictorOpsRenamed Splunk On-Call
    Licensing impact
    • Splunk lists the VictorOps acquisition in June 2018 as adding collaborative incident management capabilities to its portfolio for DevOps and IT customers.[1]
    • Splunk documentation refers to the product as Splunk On-Call (formerly VictorOps), sold in Starter, Growth and Enterprise versions.[2]
    Sources and full product history

Litigation

All cases
  1. Splunk Inc. v. Cribl, Inc.US District Court for the Northern District of California · 2025
    On appeal
    Lessons learned
    • A general click-through licence such as the Splunk General Terms applies alongside any partner agreement and can be breached even when the partner agreement is not.
    • Internal Business Purpose and competitive-use restrictions are enforced: using a vendor's software to market a competing or complementary product was not a fair use.
    • Copying software to reverse engineer, test and troubleshoot interoperability with an uncopyrightable protocol was held a fair use, and the licence's reverse-engineering exception for statutory rights preserved that use.
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