By Splunk June 27, 2008
Dear CEO, CTO, CIO, and other Company Leaders,
Consider this letter a wake-up call.
As an individual responsible for setting the vision of your company, please be aware that the people who work for you now, those smart, intelligent, high-tech individuals who believe in your vision, who are extremely proud of serving you, do not want to let you down.
Every day, these individuals work hard for you and you pay them well for their services. They are system and network administrators, security analysts, application developers, infrastructure architects, QA testers, and various other IT consultants.
As these individuals attempt to move your company forward towards explosive growth and expansion, incredible innovation, and unbounded profitability, you are either not aware of or not focusing enough on “how” they are striving to realize your vision and make it a reality.
Of course, you are probably thinking it’s not your job as a company leader to worry about “how” things are done so much as “why” or “when“. After all, that’s what being a company leader is all about, right?
Indeed, this may be true, but the reality is you need to be aware of the “how” more now than ever.
The reason you are NOT aware is because the people who work for you may not have the opportunity to tell you how or YOU may not be curious enough or interested enough to ask.
This could be a costly oversight on your part.
I know. As a technical pre-sales engineer, I work with these individuals all day long and I can tell you that they are struggling to keep your company accelerating towards the vision you set and the profits you seek. They are struggling because there is so much machine-generated data to keep up with, it’s humanly impossible to succeed without a tool like SplunkTM. Trust me, I hear this all the time.
When I ask them how they discovered SplunkTM, they always say they were tasked with an initiative or directive from you. Or maybe you delegated a project to them based on recent pressures to meet some new compliance mandate, audit controls, security concerns, or perhaps all of the above.
Of course, as soon as they discover, download, install, and prove out for a fact that SplunkTM meets every single one of the requirements you’ve tasked them with (plus several other things that could save you money), they naturally recommend that you budget for and purchase SplunkTM right away. After all, you want them to get the job done AND save money too, right?
But again, you may never get a chance to hear about it.
Why?
Well, like I said, maybe you are not curious enough or interested enough to ask.
Or maybe you HAVE asked and they’ve TRIED to tell you, but their voice was muted but someone who stands between you and them.
Or maybe they HAVE gotten through to you and told you they need SplunkTM to get the job done faster, better, and cheaper, but since you’ve never heard of SplunkTM, you simply dismiss it and seek some other company’s product that will end up costing you more.
So I guess my question to you is this: Are you willing to sacrifice your vision by only focusing on the “why“?
Seriously, are you willing to not ask questions and seek out the truth regarding “how” your vision will be carried out?
Look around your company right now. Right this minute. Ask around. I am willing to bet that someone who works for you right now has already downloaded SplunkTM and is currently evaluating it. Maybe even several people or teams within your company are splunking IT data as you read this very sentence in an attempt to save you money and you are not aware.
Do it now and awaken!
Sincerely,
Eric Garner
Senior Sales Engineer
www.splunk.com
splunk> take the sh out of IT
P.S. if you are not a Company Leader, please forward this letter to the appropriate person. If this letter can help raise awareness about SplunkTM within your company, then I will know it was worth my time to write it.
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Thanks!
Eric Gardner