TheCube – Splunk .conf2012 – Rick Yetter, Systems Administrator, Apollo Group, with Jeff Frick and Jeff Kelly

Wikibon Analyst Jeff Kelly and SiliconANGLE Executive in Residence Jeff Frick are back at TheCube covering Splunk’s .conf2012 at the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The two Jeffs had the pleasure of interviewing System Administrator, Rick Yetter, of the Apollo Group – the parent company of the University of Phoenix.

And like every Splunk customer, they get to answer the question: How do you use Splunk?

According to Yetter, they started using Splunk to for big data security analysis and just like many others before them, when they saw what Splunk can do, they just started to use it on everything else.  They soon realize that there were a lot of business intelligence data in the logs aggregated by Splunk, painting a picture of how their users were behaving.

But what paved the way for Splunk broadening its reach within the Apolo Group started with the development of their Android application.  When they launched it, they experienced zero outage and described it as a perfect launch, as they were able to circumvent some problems before they affected any users.

Yetter also explained that they have three levels of visibility: the executive view that showed critical time outs, dependency timeouts, and Android vs. iPhone usage.  And when their executives saw how they were using Splunk, they wanted more.

“That event was in October of last year and that was an exciting time, it was a lot of fun to see the adoption of Splunk go from just a small group of security, small group of application analysts, or developers all the way up to a broad spectrum business users,” Yetter recalled.

Yetter also explained the importance of using Splunk correctly, as it allows businesses to quickly analyze what happens when they have a site outage, what caused it, and what’s the best way to circumvent the situation.

“If you’re using Splunk in the correct manner, it will get the right visibility,” Yetter stated.

Yetter also noted how customer-friendly Splunk is in the sense that whenever you encounter problems using their software, they’re always ready and willing to help you and answer all your questions.

A very interesting question was raised by Kelly.  He asked Yetter as to what types of disruptive patterns he is seeing in terms of big data in general.  According to Yetter, he sees Splunk as the most disruptive technology for big data, as Splunk helps correlate all pertinent information in one view compared to traditional data warehouses that are too rigid for that ability.

To view the full interview with Yetter, click here.