Congratulations to Splunk! Operational Analytics is an exteremely interesting area rich with many complex problems: performance (processing complex queries over very large data sets), prediction (proactive diagnostics), and visualization (packing dense information in a human-friendly manner).

We at Pattern Insight are currently working on the next generation of logging software, called Log Insight. If you are a Splunk customer or thinking of buying them, take a look at at our product page [http://patterninsight.com/products/log-insight/] for information on a more sophisticated and complete solution.

Don't hesitate to contact me if you are on the job market and want to work on interesting data-mining problems (full-time only please).