Splunk helped identify users' mobile platforms as well. An increasing amount of traffic to the NPR site comes from mobile clients, such as iPhones, iPads and Android smartphones. In one case, a manager wanted to know which version of the iPhone operating system was most often used, as the results would direct the company's design work for its iPhone app.

"I could not have answered that without Splunk," Russell said.

Splunk also solved a seemingly unsolvable problem for the organization: determining how to pay royalties for streamed songs. NPR offers a streaming service for songs, called SoundExchange. It must pay out royalties for each song played, based on the number of listeners that stream had at the moment. "It can get complicated to reconcile the two," Russell said.

Using Splunk, Russell was able to merge two files -- a list of when each song was played, and the number of listeners that stream had when the song was played. "Splunk put them together," Russell said.

The IDG News Service