Splunk is on track to become a billion-dollar company and you, the intrepid sysadmin/developer, are going to help us get there. Now, this is not a statement that I’m making as an analyst who “covers” the enterprise software market, and compiles a list of “top software companies to watch”. I’m writing this as Splunk’s Platform Architect, a techie whose goals are to ensure that what comes out of our development group is compelling and exciting to those that are actually working with the product.

It is this developer-centric ethos that sets us apart from so many of the other enterprise software firms and has already paid dividends on community goodwill. Instead of making prospective buyers jump through registration hoops just to view a guided webcast tour, Splunk provides fully functional software downloads to try out on your own data, inside your own network, free from webinar smoke and mirrors.

We don’t just want you to try out the software, we want you to try doing things that aren’t covered in our brochureware, things that sound ludicrous at first but are doable. In fact, in a perverse way, we hope that you do break our product because it reveals new limitations for us to solve, ultimately leading to a product that lets you do your job the way you want, yet easier and faster.

I’m pleased to announce that Splunk 3.0 has been released, and is available for download immediately! It’s been a very long road to GA, but I think it is worth the wait. With 3.0, exploring your unstructured data has never been easier, thanks to the new reporting interface. As always, we love user feedback so try it out and let us know what you like and what you don’t — either to me, or to support@splunk.com. Stop guessing about what’s going on in your datacenter and start getting answers with Splunk.

Splunk 3.0 beta 2 is out, and we’re looking for users to show us what kinds of things in IT infrastructure they want to report on. If you haven’t tried it out yet, the next version of Splunk lets you generate ad-hoc reports on anything you want, on-the-fly, so you can forget about spending hours crafting SQL queries, or fiddling around with report templates.

Come sit down with the interface team at Splunk HQ and tell us what reports are valuable to you, and we’ll try to make it happen with our upcoming release. Don’t want to drive to our office? We’ll send a car to chauffer you here and back. Need a cold beer to loosen up while you talk? We have kegs here. Want to catch a Giants ballgame nextdoor while you’re in the neighborhood? The tickets are on us. Email me if you’re interested.

Two-dot-oh is out the door! I’m excited to announce that the new Splunk Base represents a big step forward in fostering collaborative troubleshooting, with the introduction of our Splunk-fortified wiki system. I usually don’t get giddy over my projects, but I have to say that there are some very cool features. This sentiment is starting to be echoed by many others, like CNet and Computerworld.

First on the list is the integrated forum system. The main wiki engine is used to parse forum posts, meaning that you can use the wiki words, and all the wiki syntax in any forum post. Additionally, like all objects in Splunk Base, the discussions can be tagged, which then link them to other simliarly tagged wiki entries, event types, and source types. Splunk Base also makes creating new forums a snap. If you want a new forum dedicated to Python Twisted troubleshooting, you create a wiki word like forum:PythonTwisted from any wiki page. Splunk Base will ask for a description, and then you’ll have a new forum ready to go!

My name is Johnvey, I create web sites, and I hate computers.

Many a time have I contemplated forming a support group for computer professionals who’ve grown to loathe the very tools that sustain their livelihoods. Now don’t get me wrong, I love the internets in its wholesomely unadulterated form, dancing hamsters/Star Wars Kid/PBJ time included. But there was a point in the last few years when the honeymoon period was over and I saw computers in a different light — a light that was illuminated by a blue screen of death, or more recently, the multilingual translucent grey screen of death.

I imagine that marriage is an accurate analog to my relationship with computers, and that all my computer problems have degraded from “configuration issues” to “petulant machine that won’t stop throwing this retarded error” (disclosure: I am not married, so my only basis for comparison would be vicarious experiences through eavesdropping on the subway). Countless hours have been pissed away trying to decipher what “node no longer exists” or “pseudo-terminal will not be allocated” really means.