The Splunk that got sunk: Log-lover ends support for mobile apps

Splunk’s cooking up something new and mobile, which means its old mobile stuff is about to get sunk.

The company slipped out news of the imminent change late last week, revealing that as of August 13th, 2018, “we will no longer be supporting the Splunk Add-on for Mobile Access and the Splunk Mobile App”.

Both will keep working. But neither will be Splunk’s state of the art after mid-August either.

Their replacements will reflect an effort at “vastly improving some of the key functionalities in the current apps. In addition, we are working on providing easier access to Splunk data using different form factors and technologies.”

Different form factors? Splunk’s current mobile stuff works on iOS and Android, both of which offer smartphones and tablets. Unless Splunk has unusual insights into emerging client devices, we’re betting it’s either doing something with the augmented reality capabilities increasingly present and/or doing something with voice assistants.

It also looks like the company will give sysadmins a little work, as the Splunk Add-on for Mobile Access is the company’s tool for letting you log on to a Splunk instance that requires SSO user authentication. With that Add-on going, we imagine that secure access to Splunk may be done differently before too much time has passed.

Whatever the company is cooking, its in beta and you can sign up to test.

The Register met Splunk last week and was told the company thinks it has big news to impart at its annual conference in October 2018. The gap between the August 2018 deprecation for these apps suggests it might have something to announce in August. Or perhaps it’s waiting for the conference. Whatever happens, we’re watching! ®