Splunk, the creator of software for real-time operational intelligence, recently released Splunk Enterprise 5 that introduced improvements to the company’s big data collection and analytics software.

Splunk 5 collects and indexes an enterprise’s data to generate complex reports quickly, from data gathered across applications, websites, servers, networks and mobile devices:

“Technology needs to provide answers as quickly as users think of questions, regardless of the speed, complexity and scale of the underlying data [and] users need to be able to use their data in ways that help to achieve operational intelligence,” says Guido Schroeder, senior vice president of products, Splunk. “We need to put that technology in the hands of developers and IT professionals so they can innovate and drive new ideas. It is for these reasons and more that we created Splunk Enterprise 5.”

The improvements introduced will benefit developers as it provides improved security controls in data collection and analytics product and the product is now more intuitive for end users.  As an added bonus, creating reports are now 1000 times faster with the update, it now allows PDF file creation so it can be sent to different platforms such as Linux, Unix, Windows and Mac, the data is collected even during an outage via Splunk’s Index Replication service, and users of Splunk Hadoop Connect incorporate the two systems together as data can be sent to Hadoop Connect or data from Hadoop can be sent to Enterprise 5.

Security is such a huge issue in the big data industry and Splunk’s improved security controls just makes their product more appealing for developers.  Splunk already offers in-house security and security-as-a-service aside from the numerous layers of security measures that scrutinizes data produced by a multitude of products.

Splunk Enterprise 5 is available for download for those who have a Splunk Enterprise license. The service is available to be used for free with use of 500 megabytes a day, universal indexing, accelerated reporting, Index Replication and a developer platform.  The full subscription is available for $6,000 for a 500 megabyte-per-day perpetual license, including first year support, or U.S. $2,000 per year for a term license including support. The full version has all of the features of the free version, while other features include: a distributed search, single sign on, PDF delivery, and access to premium Splunk apps.