Splunk .conf 24: Where now for Cisco's latest acquisition

When Cisco announced it would be buying Splunk, doubts were raised over the company's future within its new home.

Splunk .conf24, the company's annual conference, was a proving ground to see if these fears were well founded. According to ITPro's intrepid features editor, however, Splunk's brand is as strong as it ever was, with both Cisco's CEO and Splunk's GM offering reassurances that neither company's customers or partners will suffer in the wake of the acquisition.

In this episode of the ITPro Podcast, Jane talks to Rory about his experiences attending the conference, where Splunk sits in Cisco's strategy, and if we're likely to see a .conf25.

Highlights

“Something that Splunk has really leant on throughout .conf is that AI is a data issue, and data is something that Splunk knows very well. So the AI assistants that Splunk has introduced at .conf essentially make Splunk's existing platform more accessible for workers. You can now use natural language prompts to kick off an analysis of, say, a Kubernetes cluster that is malfunctioning.”

“I think Cisco sees the enthusiasm for Splunk that partners and customers really have. There is a community atmosphere and Splunk certainly leans on that messaging around its dedicated community, how much it relies on them for feedback.”

“Observability and security, while nominally different areas, obviously have a lot of crossovers and if you're looking for proper resilience, which is the kind of the keyword there, you cannot have one without the other. Splunk published a report at this year's conference, in which it found that the top 2000 global companies lose $400 billion dollars due to downtime per year.”

Footnotes

• Splunk knows what it’s worth – .conf24 showed Cisco does too
• Splunk expands its AI Assistant in observability, security push
• Downtime costs enterprises $400 billion per year – and Splunk says AI and security are key to preventing this
• "Our job is not to screw up”: Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins vows to make Splunk ‘better’ following acquisition
• Splunk .conf24 is the firm’s best chance to spell out its continued worth at Cisco
• Exclusive: Splunk will play a key role in Cisco's AI plans, claims former CEO
• Splunk .conf24 live: All the news and announcements from the Las Vegas conference

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