Splunk Inc. and Syncsort have formed an alliance that aims to unlock large quantities of mainframe data.

Splunk provides real-time Operational Intelligence, which Wikipedia defines as “real-time dynamic, business analytics that delivers visibility and insight into data, streaming events and business operations.” Syncsort specializes in managing large amounts of mainframe data. The companies said their partnership will address customers in industries like insurance, telecommunications and finance,  which are heavy users of mainframes.

In particular, they plan to address machine-generated data, such as application logs, business process logs, call detail records, file systems and audit logs. This information can be used in a  wide variety of applications ranging from  information security to mapping.

Splunk has recently formed other partnerships, including an alliance with Tableau, as it seeks to expand applications of its analytics engine. The Syncsort partnership addresses a small but valuable population of IBM z/OS mainframe operating system users. Syncsort claims that 87 of the top 100 US companies are customers.

Organizations with large mainframe installations have a lot of data but often lack the tools to analyze it. Offloading work to Hadoop can potentially unlock the value of that data while freeing up  expensive legacy equipment for other tasks.

photo credit: TreyGeek, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain