The Top 3 ELK Stack Tools Every Business Intelligence Analyst Needs in 2017

A version of this post, updated for 2018, can be found here: The Top 5 ELK Stack+ Tools Every Business Intelligence Analyst Needs.

The world’s most popular log management platform, ELK Stack, has ultimately reflected its nifty, modernized capabilities with this recent statistic: each month, it is downloaded 500,000 times. So what makes ELK Stack and ELK Stack Tools just so attractive? In many cases, it fulfills what’s really been needed in the log analytics space within SaaS: IT companies are favoring open source products more and more. Since it’s based on the Lucene search engine, Elasticsearch is a NoSQL database which forms as a log pipeline tool; accepting inputs from various sources, executing transformations, then exporting data to designated targets. It also carries enhanced customizability, which is a key preference nowadays, since program tweaking is more lucrative and stimulating for many engineers. This is coupled with ELK’s increased interoperability, which is now a practically indispensable feature, since most businesses don’t want to be limited by proprietary data formats.

ELK Stack tools which simply higher-tier those impressive elements will elevate data analysis just that little bit further; depending on what you want to do with it, of course.

Logstash

Elite tool Logstash is well-known for its intake, processing and output capabilities. It’s mainly intended for organizing and searching for log files, but works effectively for cleaning and streaming big data from all sorts of sources into a comprehensive database, including metrics, web applications, data stores, and various AWS services. Logstash also carries impressive input plugins such as cloudwatch and graphite, allowing you to sculpt your intelligence to be as easy to work with as possible. And, as data travels from source to store, those filters identify named fields to accelerate your analysis; deciphering geo coordinates from IP addresses, and anonymizing PII data. It even derives structure from seemingly unstructured data.

Kibana 5

Analysis program Kibana 5.0 boasts a wealth of new refurbishments for pioneering intelligence surveying. Apart from amplified functionalities such as increased rendering, less CPU usage, and elevated data and index handling, Kibana 5.0 has enriched visualisations with interactive platforms, leveraging the aggregation capabilities of Elasticsearch. Space and time auditing are a crucial part of Kibana’s make up: the map service empowers you to foresee geospatial data with custom location data on a schematic of your selection, whilst the time series allows you to perform advanced generation analysis by describing queries and transformations.

Skedler

ELK Stack reporting tool, Skedler, combines all the automated processes you’d never dream you could have within one unit. Fundamentally, it ups your speed-to-market auditing with cutting-edge scheduling, which Kibana alone does not offer; serving as a single system for both interactive analysis and reporting. Skedler methodically picks up your existing dashboards in the server for cataloging, whilst also enabling you to create filters, refine specific recipients, and filter file folders to use whilst scheduling. Additionally, Skedler automatically applies prerequisite filters with generate reports, preserving them as defined; and encompasses high-resolution PDF and PNG options to incorporate in reporting, which sequentially eliminates the need for redundant reporting systems.

There you have it, the top ELK stack tools no business intelligence analyst should ever be without!

Ready to start streamlining your analysis and start reporting with more stability? Right now, we’re offering a free trial.

Are You Wasting Time Manually Sending Kibana Reports?

Automated processes are, invariably, becoming more and more integral to our everyday lives, both in and out of the office. They’ve replaced much of the manual workforce and have improved systematic procedures, which otherwise would be at the mercy of various human error elements as well as higher risks of data breaches. This, as well as recognizing manual reporting as time-consuming labour, are some key issues we don’t need to worry about any more by virtue of processing automation; Kibana being one of those favorable products.

Focus on What Matters

As a result of businesses adopting bots as part of our everyday processes, we’re left with the far more creative aspects of information science (which automation hasn’t quite caught up with yet). Naturally, Elasticsearch’s aesthetically enhanced data delivery is one of its chief selling points: users are able to explore unchartered data with clear-cut digital graphics at their very disposal. This significant upgrade in data technology has allowed us to possess more varied and complex insights; it’s more exciting now than it has ever been before.

In contrast, however, tedious tasks such as email deliveries of reports to customers, compliance managers and other stakeholders remain arduous and time-consuming; deterring attention from more stimulating in-depth data analysis. What we know to be necessary is for analysts to have the time available to devote themselves to exploring Tableau’s analytics, instead of undergoing mundane processes such as manual spreadsheet creation, generating, email exporting, and distributing.

Automate Kibana Reports

Perhaps it’s possible that you’ve already started utilizing Kibana without realizing the perks of automated scheduling. Luckily, Skedler can completely undertake those prosaic tasks, at an affordable price. As an automated scheme which meets full compliance and operations requirements, Skedler allows your peers, customers and other stakeholders to be kept informed in a virtually effortless and secure way. Comprehensive exporting preferences such as PDF, XLS and PNG are also serviceable; allowing you the luxury of consigning instant or scheduled report generation in the format you desire.

Additionally, Skedler’s reporting motions are facilitated through its prestigious dashboard system, which automatically discovers your existing Kibana dashboards and saved searches to make them available for reporting – again, saving you time creating, scheduling and sending Kibana reports. All your filtered reporting and data chartering is available on a single, versatile platform; meaning you won’t spend extensive amounts of time searching through your outgoing email reports for a specific item.

Skedler simply allows you to examine all of your criteria through one umbrella server with clear functionalities to separate the stunning data visualization deliveries, and the slightly less exciting archive of manual spreadsheet generation and handling for other departments, which it can totally manage by itself.

Ready to start saving time by creating, scheduling and distributing Kibana reports automatically? Try Skedler for free.