The explosion of information coming from connected devices is dominating the analytics discussion today, but in all the talk about exploiting machine-generated transmissions, surprisingly little attention is being given to the growing amount of data getting funneled back into the Internet of Things for mobile consumption. The proliferation of smartphones and tablets in the enterprise, after all, didn’t occur in a vacuum.

But the number of headlines is hardly proportional to the fast expanding list of vendors that are embracing that new reality. The latest to join the club is log processing stalwart Splunk, which has just launched a new mobile application aimed at allowing users to dig into the operational details that underlie business activity even when they’re outside the office.

The aptly named Splunk Mobile App serves as a local client that provides access to the core functionality in the company’s flagship platform through a specially-built  server agent which handles most of the computational heavy lifting. It’s the latter that is the central link in the chain, acting as an intermediary between the user’s mobile device and their company’s Splunk Enterprise deployment. It converts dashboards produced in the environment from the native SimpleXML into a more mobile-friendly format and checks for notifications which, if found, are promptly pushed down to the end-point without any human intervention.

For workers, that means being able to conveniently view and query the vast amounts of server logs, sensory transmissions and other machine-generated data sitting in their corporate networks instead of having to go through the motions of logging in directly. The automatic alerting feature complements that capability by making it possible for users to schedule and receive updates on specific metrics.

Administrators, meanwhile, can leverage the management console built into Splunk’s mobile server to regulate exactly what it is that employees are accessing and tweak how the app handles requests based on the specific requirements of their organizations. The free agent works on Windows XP or higher as well as Linux distributions based on version 2.4 and upwards of the kernel.

The app itself can also be downloaded at no charge by Splunk customers but is only available for the iPad and iPhone on launch. Considering Google’s dominant share of the mobile platform market, however,  it’s safe to assume that the client will eventually make its onto Android, the only question is when. Since no plans for a compatible version have been announced at this point, users of the search giant’s operating system are probably in for a prolonged wait.

The launch nonetheless represents a major milestone for Splunk, whose mobile presence had previously only extended to BugSense, the application diagnostics and crash reporting tool it acquired last September for an undisclosed sum. The expansion of its product footprint beyond the desktop is natural and long overdue extension of the company’s efforts to make its offering more accessible than the traditional enterprise analytics solutions it is seeking to disrupt.

feature image courtesy Splunk