Splunk is an American multinational corporation based in San Francisco, California, which produces software for searching, monitoring, and analyzing machine-generated big data, via a web-style interface. Splunk (the product) captures, indexes and correlates real-time data in a searchable repository from which it can generate graphs, reports, alerts, dashboards and visualizations. Splunk aims to make machine data accessible across an organization and identifies data patterns, provides metrics, diagnoses problems and provides intelligence for business operation. Splunk is a horizontal technology used for application management, security and compliance, as well as business and web analytics. Splunk has over 7,900 customers worldwide. The company was started in 2003 by co-founders Michael Baum, Rob Das and Erik Swan. The name “Splunk” is a reference to exploring caves, as in spelunking. Splunk is based in San Francisco, with regional operations across EMEA and Asia and has over 900 employees. Splunk is venture funded, having raised 40 million USD by 2007 and became profitable in 2009. In 2012, Splunk had its initial public offering, trading under NASDAQ symbol SPLK. In September 2013, the company bought Bugsense, a mobile device data analytics company.