First Cisco-Splunk Observability Platform Integrations Go Live

CISCO LIVE — Cisco and Splunk have rolled out the first of their technology integrations following Cisco's $28 million acquisition of the observability provider.

The update, dubbed the Unified Observability Experience, gives joint customers integrations between Splunk Log Observer Connect and Cisco AppDynamics, which will go live to the public in the third quarter of the calendar year. AppDynamics will also will integrate with the Splunk IT Service Intelligence monitoring and analytics solution.

Moreover, single sign-on credentials for the two platforms will help businesses share workflows more effectively.

At the same time, Cisco is launching an AI assistant for AppDynamics that will go generally available in the third quarter. And Splunk IT Service Intelligence added "advanced AI" and machine learning to make configuration faster and easier.

Cisco announced its acquisition in September and officially closed the deal in March.

Cisco's Gary Steele

Putting the 'Full' in Full-Stack Observability

Cisco executives shared the news at their Cisco Live event in Las Vegas, hailing the opportunity to give customers unified visibility for their entire digital footprint.

Gary Steele, Splunk CEO turned Cisco president of go-to-market, said the acquisition, and now integration, aids Splunk on its quest for "digital resilience."

Related:Cisco Going 'Even Bigger, Even Faster' in AI-Related Acquisitions, Investments

"What Splunk was missing is all of that depth and detail all the way down through the network to really understand what's happening across a broad customer environment," Steele told press and analysts Tuesday afternoon. "And what I'm particularly excited about is our ability to bring and enrich our environment with all of that network data [and] ThousandEyes data to give customers a fundamentally different perspective on what's really up and running and why. And I think no one better than Cisco can deliver all that together."

Cisco also announced an offering to run AppDynamics APM on Microsoft Azure.

Cisco, Splunk Eye Customers, Partners

Tuesday's announcements tease how joint customers of Cisco and Splunk are going to benefit from the two vendors coming together. But Cisco execs add that they see opportunity with customers that were previously only working with one of them.

"What I can tell you is that that is an immense greenfield to explore with Splunk," said Marcelo Giampietro, Cisco's global head of virtual sales and engineering.

Giampietro, who oversees Cisco's midmarket segment, said "almost every single conversation" with customers at the Cisco Live event has involved Splunk.

Related:Cisco's Rodney Clark Dishes on Splunk, Partners, Channel Evolution

"They want to learn about Splunk, because Splunk is a data company and what Cisco will do incorporating AI to the Splunk data [to generate] business insights for the customer — the sky's the limit," Giampietro told Channel Futures.

On the channel side, Steele noted that although Splunk and Cisco see overlap in their partners, a big opportunity exists to bring Splunk "more broadly" into the legacy Cisco partner base.

"I think that's where we'll ultimately capture a lot of the sales synergies by: bringing Splunk to these loyal large Cisco partners and helping them drive a significant amount of business," Steele said.

For distributor ScanSource, the addition of Splunk accelerates the journey reseller partners are making into cybersecurity.

ScanSource's Kristin Hill

"Security has been top of mind. It's not new to this year; it's just amplified with Cisco because of the acquisition of Splunk. People are having challenges with tool sprawl. People are having challenges managing their environment and consolidating down vendors," said Kristin Hill, who leads ScanSource's Cisco practice.

In particular, Hill said ScanSource's networking-focused partners see opportunities to expand their footprint through an expanded Cisco cybersecurity portfolio.

"Cisco definitely has a broad stack within that security space. While Cisco's large and complex, it's easier to align with Cisco than 100 suppliers across an end to end stack. So I think there's a lot of excitement from the Cisco channel around their innovation and what they're going to continue to do to secure the network, and all the data and traffic that goes across it," Hill told Channel Futures.

At the same time, Cisco is seeking to make the transition easy for legacy Splunk partners, said Rodney Clark, senior vice president of partnerships and small and medium business.

"Our goal is to ensure that every Splunk partner that's a part of the Splunk partner program today is enabled to engage and do business the very same way that they do today between now and the time where we fully integrate Splunk into our back-end systems and things like pricing lists," Clark told Channel Futures in April.

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