Machine data software maker Splunk is one the biggest success stories to have emerged out of the still-maturing analytics industry, and right now it seems that universities are among the highest priorities on its clientele list.

The company released an overview of its performance in this area, which claims that over 275 academic institutions use its software and highlights some of the key areas to which they apply the technology.

Splunk says that the University of Melbourne in Australia, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Lone Star College System and and Virginia Tech are among its newest customers in this segment. These intuitions and the rest leverage its analytics software for a number of different purposes, starting with BYOD.

“Universities have some of the most complex IT infrastructures in the world, and this makes them extremely vulnerable,” said Mark Seward, senior director of security and compliance marketing, Splunk. “It’s the ultimate bring-your-own-device (BYOD) situation. Security threats are constantly evolving. Splunk collects massive amounts of data and helps users detect unknown and persistent threats. Splunk’s powerful search language and visualization capabilities deliver real-time views and true service-level reporting.”

The bottom line is also something that’s benefiting from this more immediate insight. The University of Texas and the University of Connecticut are among those that use Splunk to automate monitoring and improve operations. Rutgers also realized value in yet another area by creating dashboards that visualize course registration trends –  standard indicators like activity spikes and demand, alongside anomalies and errors can raise red flags before it’s too late to take action.

Machine data is very hot right now. Just a few days ago Loggly, a company that offers a cloud-based log data analytics solution, raised an impressive $5.7 million in Series B funding.  True Ventures, Trinity Ventures and Matrix Partners participated in the round.