Data platform Splunk continues to make acquisitions as it works to build out its recently launched observability platform. After acquiring Plumbr and Rigor last month, the company today announced that it has acquired Flowmill, a Palo Alto-based network observability startup. Flowmill focuses on helping its users find network performance issues in their cloud infrastructure in real time and measure their traffic by service to help them control cost.
Like so many other companies in this space now, Flowmill utilizes eBPF, the Linux kernel’s relatively new capability to run sandboxed code inside it without having to change the kernel or load kernel modules. That makes it ideal for monitoring applications.
“Observability technology is rapidly increasing in both sophistication and ability to help organizations revolutionize how they monitor their infrastructure and applications. Flowmill’s innovative NPM solution provides real-time observability into network behavior and performance of distributed cloud applications, leveraging extended Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF) technologies,” said Tim Tully, Splunk’s chief technology officer. “We’re excited to bring Flowmill’s visionary NPM technology into our Observability Suite as Splunk continues to deliver best-in-class observability capabilities to our customers.”
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While Spunk has made some larger acquisitions, including its $1.05 billion purchase of SignalFx, it’s building out its observability platform by picking up small startups that offer very specific capabilities. It could probably build all of these features in-house, but the company clearly believes that it has to move fast to get a foothold in this growing market as enterprises look for new observability tools as they modernize their tech stacks.
“Flowmill’s approach to building systems that support full-fidelity, real-time, high-cardinality ingestions and analysis aligns well with Splunk’s vision for observability,” said Flowmill CEO Jonathan Perry. “We’re thrilled to join Splunk and bring eBPF, next-generation NPM to the Splunk Observability Suite.”
The companies didn’t disclose the purchase price, but Flowmill previously raised funding from Amplify, Felicis Ventures, WestWave Capital and UpWest.
