Vincent Bumgarner has been designing software for over 20 years, working with many languages on nearly as many platforms. He started using Splunk in 2007 and has enjoyed watching the product evolve over the years.

While working for Splunk, he has helped many companies train dozens of users to drive, extend, and administer this extremely flexible product. At least one person in every company he has worked with has asked for a book, and he hopes that this book will help fill their shelves.

James D. Miller is an IBM-certified, accomplished senior engagement leader and application / system architect / developer / integrator with over 35 years of extensive application and system design and development experience. He has held positions such as National FPM practice leader, certified solutions expert, technical leader, technical instructor, and best practice evangelist. His experience includes business intelligence, predictive analytics, web architecture and design, business process analysis, GUI design and testing, data and database modeling and systems analysis, design, and development of applications, systems and models based on cloud, client/server, web and mainframe.

His responsibilities have included all aspects of solution design and development, including business process analysis and reengineering, requirement documentation, estimating and planning/management of projects, architectural evaluation and optimization, test preparation, and the management of resources. Other experience includes the development of ETL infrastructures—such as data transfer automation between mainframe (DB2, Lawson, Great Plains, and so on) systems and the client/server model-based SQL server—web-based applications, and the integration of enterprise applications and data sources.

In addition, he has acted as an Internet application development manager and was responsible for the design, development, QA, and delivery of multiple websites, including online trading applications, warehouse process control and scheduling systems, and administrative and control applications. Mr. Miller was also responsible for the design, development, and administration of a web-based financial reporting system for a $450-million organization, reporting directly to the CFO and his executive team.

In various other leadership roles, such as project and team leader, lead developer, and applications development director, Mr. Miller has managed and directed multiple resources using a variety of technologies and platforms.

James has authored IBM Cognos TM1 Developer's Certification Guide and Mastering Splunk, both by Packt Publishing and a number of whitepapers on best practices, such as Establishing a Center of Excellence. He continues to post blogs on a number of relevant topics based on personal experiences and industry best practices.

James also holds the following current technical certifications:

His technology specialties include IBM Cognos BI and TM1, SPSS, Splunk, dynaSight/ArcPlan, ASP, DHTML, XML, IIS, MS Visual Basic and VBA, Visual Studio, PERL, WebSuite, MS SQL Server, Oracle, SQL Server on Sybase, miscellaneous OLAP tools, and so on.