Splunk and Kepware form alliance, using IT technology to gain new insights from industrial data

Splunk Inc. and Kepware Technologies have announced the availability of Kepware’s Industrial Data Forwarder (IDF) for Splunk. The forwarder, a plug-in for the KEPServerEX platform, enables customers to send industrial data from sensors, devices and control systems to Splunk Enterprise and Splunk Cloud.

Splunk users can now collect, search and analyse industrial data to improve operations, accelerate troubleshooting, perform preventive maintenance, strengthen security posture and improve productivity. The integration between Splunk Enterprise and KEPServerEX breaks down the industrial data and IT data silos to deliver new real-time insights that were previously unavailable. The solution enables easily configured access to the data produced by devices including PLCs, RTUs, PACs, DAQs and legacy controllers, communicating via more than 150 proprietary industrial protocols.

“The combination of Splunk’s machine data platform and Kepware’s Industrial Data Forwarder opens up a new frontier in analysing industrial data,” said Tapan Bhatt, vice president of business analytics, Splunk. “Industrial data holds great promise for a diverse range of industries including automotive, manufacturing and oil and gas. With Splunk and Kepware, these organisations have a new way to easily collect, correlate and explore industrial data at scale.”

“Kepware’s solutions represent the backbone of industrial data collection across a variety of industries,” said Brett Austin, president, Kepware Technologies. “As customers demand deeper insights from this data, our alliance with Splunk provides a unique and turnkey big data analytics solution to address their growing needs.”

“Given the diversity of devices and the variety of protocols in the Internet of Things market, getting insights from industrial systems has historically been a challenge to scale,” said Vernon Turner, senior vice president, IDC. “The combination of Splunk and Kepware creates an interesting alliance that ties industrial systems communications expertise together with a secure and scalable data collection, storage and analytics platform.”

To learn more about how to integrate Splunk Enterprise or Splunk Cloud with industrial data and the Internet of Things, please visit http://www.splunk.com/iot. To download Kepware’s Industrial Data Forwarder (IDF) for Splunk Plug-In, please visit http://info.kepware.com/idf-for-splunk.