Are there any plans to have the Splunk App for Jenkins available for Splunk Light?

[aranega]

Currently, the Splunk App for Jenkins (https://splunkbase.splunk.com/app/3332) is not available on Splunk Light.

Is there any plan to add this app?

Thanks.

[acharlieh]

NOTE: As I am only a fellow Splunk customer, I cannot speak for Splunk, Inc. but I hope that the following reasoning makes sense.

In short: I would doubt that there are currently plans to let Splunk Light run additional apps. But I would recommend talking to your Splunk Sales Rep, and / or filing a P4 case if you are able to give feedback to Splunk, Inc about this desire, as more data points they have the better they can serve their customers.

Regarding the Splunk App for Jenkins itself, its current state is that it is not officially supported by Splunk, Inc, despite being developed by an individual who happens to work for Splunk. Sometimes in the description it'll say something to this effect, but if you look on Splunkbase page, you'll see under "built by" there's an individual's name for the attribution. This means it was built by and supported by the individual. If you compare this to the built by attribution for the Splunk App for AWS, an app like this I would expect to be fully supported by Splunk, Inc. (unless otherwise stated in the description of the app).

This distinction is important because Splunk Employees as a whole are a very helpful bunch and they often share apps they developed to help them solve particular problems either while helping other customers and partners, or just for themselves. Having the apps out there of course helps other Splunk employees, partners, and Splunk Enterprise customers, by either solving their particular problem or at least giving ideas that might help solve the problem in their environment. But with any community developed app, there is not a full team behind it at Splunk, Inc, and thus Splunk, Inc. cannot guarantee continued development of the app to work with future versions of Splunk or Jenkins, if for no other reason than simply Bus factor. If they cannot guarantee the app would work easily in future releases of both products this introduces risk to the experiences of their Splunk Light customers (who, being targeted as Small / Medium IT shops, may not have the resources to dedicate to fiddling with getting a Splunk app supposedly supported by Splunk working again). As a result I would expect that the first thing that would have to happen is that a full team would have to get behind and make the App for Jenkins a fully supported app.

Assuming that the risks to perception around allowing the not fully supported app are acceptable to Splunk, Inc... the second thing we would need to consider is the business case, because lest we forget Splunk, Inc. is a publicly traded company. Currently one of the selling points for Splunk Enterprise over Splunk Light is the ability to use any and all custom apps, versus Splunk Light which only has a handful of apps as is documented in the comparison sheet. Taking a very narrow view of the problem, the more apps Splunk,Inc. allows people to run on Splunk Light, the weaker this aspect of the case for a customer to convert from a Splunk Light to a Splunk Enterprise license becomes. (Yes there are other features that Splunk Enterprise has over Splunk Light that may be attractive for customers in particular situations but in this particular aspect). From a strict dollars perspective, it is in Splunk Inc's interest to have all their customers buy the more expensive, fully featured product as opposed to the less expensive, less featured product, thus they might not be inclined to alter the license to allow such.

(There also may be development costs to adapt the app to Splunk Light's UI... despite Enterprise and Light being the same product at it's very core, you'd want a seamless experience on either platform, but IANA App Developer, so I'm not sure about that aspect).

All that said, it is also in the interest of Splunk, Inc to sell the limited product versus no product at all. If allowing Splunk Light customers to install a particular app would help better meet the needs of the targeted market of Small / Medium IT shop, and enable selling to more Splunk Light to customers who would not otherwise buy Splunk Enterprise, then it's possible that this is a choice that Splunk, Inc. might choose to make. Splunk, Inc does listen to their customers and potential customers. You can see this reflected in the passion of the Community that Splunk Inc has around it, and the number of Splunk Employees who participate in IRC and Slack (customers can request a Slack invite through the Nebraska User Group Site) chats as well as Usergroups. But they are not mind readers, so I would highly encourage you to reach out to your Account Rep and/or file a case to express the benefits you feel allowing this app install would give to you and to other Splunk Light customers. (And in the meantime you can always set up a download trial of Splunk Enterprise separate from your Splunk Light installation and just try out the Jenkins app, to see how it's collecting data and if it'd actually provide value for you in your environment as well).