Splunk AI Launches, Provides Big Partner Opportunities
Splunk also unveiled its first product exclusively for partners.
![Splunk CTO Min Wang talks Splunk AI at .Conf23. Splunk CTO Min Wang talks Splunk AI at .Conf23.](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt10e444bce2d36aa8/bltdb98138d610f0a97/6523ee6a1783892d22cad8fd/Wang-Min_Splunk-Conf23.jpg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
Gretchen O’Hara (pictured), Splunk’s vice president of worldwide channels and alliances, said the biggest opportunity from the partner perspective is Splunk AI opens up a “huge” services revenue stream.
“So one of the things that we were really proud of is not only using AI in the way that we’re building our models for within our products themselves, but we’re going to be open and extensible to other AI models that our partners can build and develop,” she said. “There are services opportunity revenues, continued developing an IP opportunity for our partners, and many of our partners are very excited about bringing in a combination of their IP and what Splunk is going to bring together on Splunk AI. That opens up very interesting use cases, introduction into different areas of the business, new industries, etc. So lots of opportunity for partners.”
Every customer is talking about digital resilience, O’Hara said.
“It is a boardroom conversation,” she said. “And so Splunk AI opens up our partners for an opportunity to expand into the buying centers, expand into the conversations that they want to have with those customers, and bring the best capabilities that Splunk has and the leadership that we have on AI to expand that conversation into real opportunity and new deals for our partners.”
O’Hara said Splunk AI is a competitive advantage for partners.
“Every customer is asking what we’re doing with AI,” she said. “It’s definitely top of mind. And partners are no exception. Our partners are asking what is Splunk’s position on AI and how [they] can actually leverage that in [their] existing customer relationships today. So again, it provides both the framework, the capabilities for them to expand upon those opportunities and really bring everything, from the analytics, the additional query and assistance work that we brought into the offerings and just builds a more robust platform for our partners to help improve customers’ digital resiliency.”
Splunk also unveiled new product innovations to its unified security and observability platform. The advancements span Splunk’s portfolio, and provide SecOps, ITOps and engineering teams with unified experiences and workflows so they can detect threats, investigate and respond quickly, accurately and at scale.
Product advancements include Splunk Attack Analyzer, Open Telemetry Collector, Unified Identity and more. Splunk Attack Analyzer allows security teams to automate the analysis of malware and credential phishing attacks to uncover complex attack techniques used to evade detection.
With Open Telemetry Collector, Splunk Platform customers can more easily adopt Splunk Observability Cloud and deploy the Collector alongside their existing forwarders to capture metrics and traces.
With Unified Identity, ITOps practitioners and engineers can now access Splunk Cloud Platform and Splunk Observability Cloud data with one user identity. As a result, customers get an improved login experience and access log data from Splunk Cloud Platform data for faster troubleshooting.
These innovations build on Splunk’s unified security and observability platform, and paired with Splunk AI offerings, provide organizations with visibility across their hybrid environments to optimize costs, accelerate detection, investigation and response, and drive digital transformation.
“We’re not the old Splunk,” O’Hara said. “We are bringing a vast amount of innovation. So whether that’s enhanced capabilities that we already are bringing into our existing product, the announcements of some of the enhancements that we’ve made in security information and event management (SIEM) and security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR), and from the rapid set of innovation, I think partners have been waiting to understand sort of where and how they continue to expand those use cases, and be prescriptive with customers on where and how that they should use Splunk.
And so the combination of the additional innovation that we brought and the prescriptive use case journeys for our partners gives them the guidance of where and how to go bring Splunk into not just existing customers, but also brand new customers that haven’t had the opportunity to use Splunk before.”
In addition, Splunk Edge Hub made its debut during .Conf23. It simplifies the ingestion and analysis of data generated by sensors, IoT devices and industrial equipment. It allows advanced monitoring, investigation and response to help organizations drive digital resilience across their systems.
“Why it’s unique for partners is because every time we have announced a product, we can sell direct or through partner,” O’Hara said. “We made the decision that our partners know best when it comes to IoT and the edge, and they have the most innovative use cases that they can bring to the table. So we want to unlock essentially the opportunity for qualified partners that have to be certified in this space to not have any friction as they think about what those opportunities and use cases are, and just run with the growth that we see in this particular market.
“With the analytics that Edge Hub brings in, it becomes just an unlimited opportunity for partners to think about how they leverage this device to expand upon those solution areas. So when I talked a lot about services revenue and opportunity for partners, I think it will continue to grow because this is 100% partner-led. Our sellers will sell it, but we will sell that together as a joint sells motion with our partners, and it will be all on the opportunity for growth with partners.”
Toni Pavlovich, Splunk’s chief customer officer, said Edge Hub is going to be a “game changer” for partners.
“It’s going to be partner-led and we want to make sure that our partners have that opportunity to talk about the value that they can get from it and going into those edge cases that we typically haven’t seen,” she said. “So we’re going to manufacturing and other places in IT and OT where they’re going to be able to gather data they never were before. It changes the game for them and the partner is there again to lead them along the way. And then we will be the backdrop to that partner and make sure that whatever training they need, whatever support they need, that we’re there for them.”
Gary Steele (pictured), Splunk’s president and CEO, said his company will continue supporting both cloud and on-premises, and will continue giving the customer the choice as to when they feel comfortable moving to cloud.
“So for example, last quarter 58% of new business was cloud,” he said. “And it’s been in that range between the high 50s and the low 60s for the last several quarters. I think one of the things that is really important is we’re letting customers make that choice and decide their timing of when they want to go to the cloud. We think there are tremendous advantages of being in the cloud where customers can spend more time getting outcomes from Splunk versus managing Splunk. But customers will make that decision. And all of the guidance that we provided to Wall Street has been that we expect our cloud mix to be in that high 50s to low 60s range.”
There’s ‘tremendous’ opportunity for partners to do more with Splunk, O’Hara said. However, there’s an onusy on Splunk to do more around being consistent and predictable in the way that it engages with partners.
“So partners know when releases are coming, they have insight into the road map,” she said. “They are an extension of our sales organization, and if we don’t do that, then we can’t expect them to take advantage of everything we have because, quite frankly, they just don’t know everything.
“So we’re radically changing that in a couple of ways. One is early access to road maps, making them an extension of all of the training and readiness that’s available so they can take advantage of those new use cases. And then also at the same time, we’re making sure that we are here to help them when they need that help. Those were all things that came out of our partner advisory council. It’s like, ‘We could do more if you could show us what we need to do.'”
To address that, Splunk has launched Partner Days, which brings top partners into a speed-dating environment with the company’s field sales, with the clear goal of building joint pipeline and opportunities together, O’Hara said.
“We also can continue to share with them where and how they can find more value through the different prescriptive use cases that we’re building and the cloud maturity journey that we’re providing with our customers,” she said. “There’s always more and our partners are excited to learn more, and we need to now deliver and that’s what we’re doing.”
Also during .Conf23, the 2023 Splunk Global Partner Awards highlighted partners of the Splunk community for their ability to create positive social impact, deliver breakthrough solutions and showcase customer success.
“Congratulations to the winners of the 2023 Splunk Global Partner Awards,” said Christian Smith, Splunk’s chief revenue officer. “We are so excited to be celebrating your impact on helping customers innovate, enhance security and improve resilience.”
2023 Global Winners includes:
Partner of the Year – AWS
Social Impact Partner of the Year – Bitsio
Technology Innovation Partner of the Year – Accenture
2023 Americas Winners includes:
Partner of the Year – Optiv
Rising Star Partner of the Year – Technologent
Trailblazer Partner of the Year – Guidepoint Security
Marketing Partner of the Year – Deepwatch
Professional Services Partner of the Year – SP6
APAC Winners include:
Partner of the Year – CyberCX
Rising Star Partner of the Year – NEC
Trailblazer Partner of the Year – Avocado Consulting
Distributor Partner of the Year – Westcon
Professional Services Partner of the Year – km2y
EMEA Winners include:
Partner of the Year – Computacenter UK
Rising Star Partner of the Year – Sferanet
Trailblazer Partner of the Year – Orange Cyberdefence Sweden AB
Marketing Partner of the Year – EMET
Distributor Partner of the Year – Arrow Germany
Professional Services Partner of the Year – Bright Consulting
Public Sector Winners include:
Partner of the Year – Blackwood
Rising Star Partner of the Year – RavenTek
Trailblazer Partner of the Year – TekStream
Marketing Partner of the Year – GDIT
Distributor Partner of the Year – Carahsoft
Professional Services Partner of the Year – Qmulos
Also during .Conf23, the 2023 Splunk Global Partner Awards highlighted partners of the Splunk community for their ability to create positive social impact, deliver breakthrough solutions and showcase customer success.
“Congratulations to the winners of the 2023 Splunk Global Partner Awards,” said Christian Smith, Splunk’s chief revenue officer. “We are so excited to be celebrating your impact on helping customers innovate, enhance security and improve resilience.”
2023 Global Winners includes:
Partner of the Year – AWS
Social Impact Partner of the Year – Bitsio
Technology Innovation Partner of the Year – Accenture
2023 Americas Winners includes:
Partner of the Year – Optiv
Rising Star Partner of the Year – Technologent
Trailblazer Partner of the Year – Guidepoint Security
Marketing Partner of the Year – Deepwatch
Professional Services Partner of the Year – SP6
APAC Winners include:
Partner of the Year – CyberCX
Rising Star Partner of the Year – NEC
Trailblazer Partner of the Year – Avocado Consulting
Distributor Partner of the Year – Westcon
Professional Services Partner of the Year – km2y
EMEA Winners include:
Partner of the Year – Computacenter UK
Rising Star Partner of the Year – Sferanet
Trailblazer Partner of the Year – Orange Cyberdefence Sweden AB
Marketing Partner of the Year – EMET
Distributor Partner of the Year – Arrow Germany
Professional Services Partner of the Year – Bright Consulting
Public Sector Winners include:
Partner of the Year – Blackwood
Rising Star Partner of the Year – RavenTek
Trailblazer Partner of the Year – TekStream
Marketing Partner of the Year – GDIT
Distributor Partner of the Year – Carahsoft
Professional Services Partner of the Year – Qmulos
SPLUNK .CONF23 — On day two of Splunk .Conf23, Splunk launched a collection of new artificial intelligence (AI)-powered offerings to enhance its security and observability platform. Splunk AI will provide numerous new services opportunities for partners, the company said.
Splunk AI combines automation with human-in-the-loop experiences, so organizations can drive faster detection, investigation and response while controlling how AI applies to their data. Splunk continues to improve the customer experience by delivering domain-specific insights through its AI capabilities for security and observability.
Splunk AI strengthens human decision-making and threat response through assistive experiences, the company said. The offerings allow SecOps, ITOps and engineering teams to automatically mine data, detect anomalies and prioritize critical decisions through intelligent assessment of risk, helping to minimize repetitive processes and human error.
Splunk AI optimizes domain-specific large language models (LLMs) and machine learning (ML) algorithms built on security and observability data, so SecOps, ITOps and engineering teams are freed up for more strategic work. That helps to accelerate productivity and lower costs.
Splunk AI Open, Extensible
Looking forward, Splunk says it’s committed to remaining open and extensible as it integrates AI into its platform, so organizations can extend Splunk AI models, or use home-grown and third-party tools.
Min Wang (pictured above), Splunk’s new chief technology officer, said AI is “rapidly transforming our industry.”
“In the past, each time you adopted new technology and transformed your business, Splunk helped you do it safely and securely,” she said. “We’re committed to doing the same in the era of AI. Our approach for AI is driven by three principals. We have the best domain-specific insights … that are fine-tuned for security and observability. Second, we’re insuring humans are in the loop. It’s essential to use AI to assist humans in decision making. Finally, remaining open and extensible. As always we want to empower you to solve problems.”
Splunk’s purpose is to build a safer, more resilient digital world, and this includes the transparent usage of AI, Wang said.
“Looking forward, we believe AI and machine learning (ML) will bring enormous value to security and observability by empowering organizations to automatically detect anomalies and focus their attention where it’s needed most,” she said. “Our Splunk Al innovations provide domain-specific security and observability insights to accelerate detection, investigation and response while ensuring customers remain in control of how AI uses their data.”
Scroll through our slideshow above for all of the highlights from day two of Splunk .Conf23.
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