Splunk: software or a steampunk juggernaut?

Splunk is an awesome piece of software. Really it is more of a platform than software. It is highly scalable, has great SDK's, REST api's, documentation etc... However it is a bit of a steampunk application. Meaning you need someone stoking the coal, oiling the gears, turning the knobs and chasing the flying monkeys away.  Once you have that it is a juggernaut of data collecting, searching, dashboarding and analysis.