" Upon at least ten (10) days prior written notice, Splunk may audit your use” …. ” Any such audit will be conducted during regular business hours at your facilities“ … “You will provide Splunk with access to the relevant records and facilities“ "
More or less they screw their customers.
The only clause I see worth objecting to is the bit that forbids publishing benchmarks or reviews. That part's BS, but I imagine that it's BS that they would drop rather than lose a sale.
There are Splunk customers who do not allow outbound connections to the Internet and so Splunk can't use automated means of auditing license compliance. So they reserve the right to audit you on site. So if you're the CIA and you are paying for 1 petabyte and you are using 2, they want to know and charge you appropriately.
As a matter of good corporate governance, they are actually doing you a favor and preventing you from being a thief. :-)
Fortunately, customers of Splunk don't view them as a random supplier.
I can't be the only one that finds it very disquieting that you have to give a company access to your internal network so they can perform antipiracy checks.