Information technology monitoring and analytics provider Splunk Inc. today announced plans to buy Flowmill Inc., a Palo Alto, California-based startup with a software platform that helps enterprises gain better visibility into their networks.

The terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed. It’s expected to complete by Jan. 31, 2021. 

Troubleshooting networking issues can be tricky in large cloud and on-premises environments because it’s difficult to match data traffic streams to the systems generating them. Flowmill’s monitoring platform makes finding the source of traffic easier to help IT teams fix issues faster.

Behind the scenes, the platform uses a component of the Linux kernel called eBPF to match packets to systems and applications. Linux is the most widely used operating system in enterprise IT environments. The platform’s eBPF component, in turn, makes it possible to deploy code directly into the operating system kernel to collect low-level activity data about the applications running on top. It’s this low-level application activity data that enables Flowmill’s platform to identify which specific workloads are responsible for networking issues.

The technology’s ability to speed up troubleshooting isn’t the only reason Splunk is buying the startup. Companies can deploy Flowmill’s platform without modifying the applications or network they’re looking to monitor, which eliminates a time-consuming requirement associated with using traditional tools. Moreover, the startup says, its platform is useful for reducing networking costs in the public cloud because it makes it easier to identify applications that are consuming excessive amounts of bandwidth.

Splunk plans to fold Flowmill’s technology into its Observability Suite bundle of products for monitoring infrastructure and applications. The deal will help the company add eBPF-based monitoring capabilities to its feature set in a time when the technology is drawing growing interest from rivals and venture capitalists alike. Just last month, a new startup called Pixie Labs Inc. exited stealth with $9.15 million in funding and an eBPF-based monitoring platform for Kubernetes environments.

The purchase of Flowmill is the latest in a series of strategic startup acquisitions Splunk has announced recently. Last month, the company bought application monitoring provider Plumbr and website performance optimization specialist Rigor Inc. to expand its capabilities in the two startups’ respective focus areas.

Photo: Splunk