Data analysis company Splunk is announcing a series of price slashes, but at the same time is pledging 100 percent uptime guaranteed in a move that has already garnered much media attention.
Some observers are questioning if the cloud service will be able to follow its promises of cutting prices while maintaining near-perfect uptime for users.
According to Splunk, prices for its service will be reduced 33 percent, a massive cut that has some analysts questioning if it will be a good business move. Splunk is hopeful that by reducing prices, it can add a large number of new customers.
It is, in many ways, a move aimed at battling the likes of Amazon, who reduced its average price by 51 percent for its Simple Storage Service cloud option, while Google announced a 32 percent cut for its Compute Engine services. Splunk appears to be following suit, as competition in the cloud-based world continues to drive prices lower.
The moves should give users more options and better service as they move their data into the cloud.
Splunk currently has roughly 8,000 customers who use the company's IT-operations-oriented data analysis platform. Splunk launched Cloud last year in the hopes of giving users easier access to software on Amazon Web Services.
"It's not a difficult problem, across multiple Amazon availability zones, to set up cloud infrastructure to guarantee uptime, so I'm confident they'll be able to hit 100 percent and I don't think it's just a BS marketing gimmick," said MindTouch CEO Aaron Fulkerson in an interview.
The cloud has become a new battleground for companies. It's been the site of a number of new innovations to cloud and networking technology. Last month, Tech Times reported on Microsoft's purchase of Trend Micro, a leader in data-threat and data-protection efforts for both networking and email solutions. By giving Microsoft Office 365 a boost, Trend Micro sees that the cloud is the wave of the future and by allowing companies the ability to centrally manage their networks, it will increase productivity.
And with companies like Splunk viewing the market as open, the effort to increase its customer base by reducing prices could be a litmus test for the sector going into the last few months of the year. The cloud has become one of the leading digital solutions for businesses, and with prices being reduced and services bolstered, it could help continue the growth that has been seen over the past few years.
