.Conf22: Splunk Debuts Partnerverse Program Enhancements
The conference also includes Splunk's first Global Partner Summit.
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The overall message for partners at .Conf22 is twofold, said Splunk’s Bill Hustad.
“The first is our progression as we’ve moved to cloud,” he said. “What we’re finding is that there’s an expectation in the ecosystem of how cloud products work together and integration across those cloud products to solve customer issues as expected. And it happens a lot easier. So I think the theme of innovation is kind of a highlight on the side of Splunk alone does an incredible job helping a company create resiliency and security observability. But it’s not the only product you can use. You have to use other products to kind of build that together. And that’s where our partners come into play, because they actually complete the sentence and the solutions the customers are asking for with Splunk. We want them to use and choose to work with Splunk. But also on the other side, when we think about things like remedy, response or others, those are inclusive of many technologies. So I think the big thing around innovation is the fact that we want to be able to give our partners and also the customers the ability to still see Splunk as what we do really well, which is see, act and take action.”
Hustad said Partnerverse is a “huge step for us in the right direction with our partner community.” The Cloud Sandbox, for example, gives partners access to technology and software so they can move faster. In addition, the cloud developer edition will accelate app development.
“One thing that we’ve heard from partners for many, many years is how do we get them enabled in the easiest and most efficient ways?” he said “And so really offering free training for partners at certain tiers as a start is really a good direction. So the goal with all of this is that we start to create more independence in businesses, in which partners themselves can look back at their partnership with Splunk and say we know where we’re going to be next year and we know where we’re going to be the following year. And it’s all about a growth model because we can predictably now build, sell, experiment, change and be agile, which was pretty hard before.”
In the first month of launching Partnerverse, Splunk onboarded 45 new partners directly tied to an opportunity, Hustad said. The program doesn’t follow the traditional register, sell and discount model.
“We’re finding partners that are working with customers, and they’re more influencers or they’re providing an edge service which intersects with Splunk,” he said. “So that’s where we’re seeing a lot of that new opportunity because they’re like, oh, there’s something for me here now. And so they can work through the associate level up. But we saw a really good influx of … revenue-oriented partners joining the program just a month after launch.”
The features in both Splunk Cloud Platform and Enterprise 9.0 are the things to focus on when it comes to partners, Hustad said.
“In looking at both of those, they’re the same feature functionality that’s available to the customers, so it gives the partners also a new set of things they can play with,” he said. “One of the big things with the new version of Splunk Cloud is the ability to have a lot more admin controls. And there’s a lot more user interfaces to walk you through, which they’re getting through the Splunk Cloud edition. So those are the things that are available to them as they get availability to the software.”
Splunk’s Gary Steele said one of the most interesting opportunities for partners is to help on-premises customers move to cloud.
“There’s clearly a ton of complexity, so to make the move, they need help,” he said. “And while we’re doing what we can, we need the arms, legs and brains of partners to make that happen. That’s an important part of our overall growth in the next few years. And partners can play a big part in driving that.”
Steele also said Splunk needs to be involved in the sales process earlier.
“This is something we need to all collectively work on,” he said. “Our growth will come from engaging with more customers and selling more technology. So we welcome and are enthusiastic about what you can bring to the table in terms of customer engagement.”
Splunk had significant growth in numerous metrics year over year in fiscal year 2022, and it wants to maintain that momentum in the current year, Hustad said.
“What we showed was really impressive and those were a big leap from where we were the year before, and we’re expecting that continue to grow,” he said.
Garth Fort is Splunk‘s senior vice president and chief product officer. He said feedback from users has directly resulted in the development of new solutions.
He said Splunk Enterprise 9.0 is the most significant release since 2019 and it’s based on “suggestions that came in from you.” It includes many features to “keep the bad guys out.”
“The latest innovations in the Splunk Platform enable customers to address the complexities of multicloud and hybrid environments, rapidly identify signals from noise, and turn data insights into business outcomes,” Fort said.
Splunk is more than a point solution, he said.
“Keep that feedback coming and we’ll keep rolling out tools,” Fort said.
Faya Peng is Splunk’s senior director of product management and end user experience. She demonstrated numerous new tools unveiled at .Conf22.
Those include:
Data Manager for Splunk Cloud Platform delivers a data onboarding experience across Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, with Google Cloud Platform support available later this summer.
Splunk Log Observer Connect allows customers to visualize all their data in one place. It gives engineers and DevOps engineers access their metrics, traces and Splunk Cloud logs in a single interface for faster, in-context debugging.
Splunk Incident Intelligence, now in preview, helps DevOps teams investigate incidents and take action to ensure better system resilience. It provides event correlation, incident response and on-call routing, collaboration and automation within a unified workflow.
Anomaly Detection Assistant simplifies investigation and helps security analysts, IT operations and DevOps engineers find potential problems by using machine learning (ML).
Risk-based alerting in Splunk Enterprise Security, combined with playbooks from Splunk security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR), allows customers to enforce a zero trust approach.
Faya Peng is Splunk’s senior director of product management and end user experience. She demonstrated numerous new tools unveiled at .Conf22.
Those include:
Data Manager for Splunk Cloud Platform delivers a data onboarding experience across Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, with Google Cloud Platform support available later this summer.
Splunk Log Observer Connect allows customers to visualize all their data in one place. It gives engineers and DevOps engineers access their metrics, traces and Splunk Cloud logs in a single interface for faster, in-context debugging.
Splunk Incident Intelligence, now in preview, helps DevOps teams investigate incidents and take action to ensure better system resilience. It provides event correlation, incident response and on-call routing, collaboration and automation within a unified workflow.
Anomaly Detection Assistant simplifies investigation and helps security analysts, IT operations and DevOps engineers find potential problems by using machine learning (ML).
Risk-based alerting in Splunk Enterprise Security, combined with playbooks from Splunk security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR), allows customers to enforce a zero trust approach.
On Day 1 of its first in-person .Conf since the start of the pandemic, Splunk unveiled enhancements to its Partnerverse partner program it launched in March.
Splunk .Conf22 has brought 12,500 attendees and more than 1,800 partners to Las Vegas. The conference also includes Splunk’s Global Partner Summit, a dedicated program to help partners extend the value of Splunk.
Splunk Partnerverse program enhancements include access to the Splunk Cloud Sandbox, a new funded partner training benefit and a cloud developer edition. Partnerverse is intended to help partners expand their technical expertise and demonstrate core competencies.
Also during .Conf22, Splunk announced new capabilities for integrated security and observability on a shared data platform. That includes new enhancements to Splunk Cloud Platform and the general availability of Splunk Enterprise 9.0.
Splunk Cloud Platform and Splunk Enterprise 9.0 allow customers to:
Access more data sources easily
Find and operationalize insights even faster
Secure and scale deployments
Streamline administration to turn data insights into business outcomes
End-to-End Visibility
Splunk’s Gary Steele
Gary Steele, Splunk’s new president and CEO, gave the opening keynote. He joined Splunk in March after serving as Proofpoint’s CEO for nearly 20 years.
“I’ve been here roughly two months and couldn’t be more excited,” he said. “After 20 years in cybersecurity, I realized it’s a data problem, and where better to go than Splunk.”
Splunk has the world’s leading platform for observability and security, Steele said.
“You need splunk to give you end-to-end visibility,” he said. “We meet you where you are on your cloud journey. It’s a fundamentally different approach to other vendors: rapid investigation and action. Few vendors can claim leadership in both security and observability.”
Splunks wants to deliver a “world-class customer experience” to every user, Steele said.
“We have more than 2,400 partners to help you and the great community joining us here,” he said. “They can be instrumental in helping solve … critical data problems. You have access to market-leading experts to help you.”
Driving Long-Term Growth
Steele said he’s excited about the ability to drive long-term growth.
“We’re at roughly $3 billion in revenue today,” he said. “How do we drive that to $5 billion, to $10 billion?”
Bill Hustad, Splunk’s vice president of alliances and channel ecosystems, said Splunk is mission critical for so many customers, so that’s an opportunity for partners
“Our customers are working with more complexity and new threats every day,” he said. “They need your solutions and innovation.”
Over the past year, partners helped Splunk scale to new heights, and drove cloud growth, new bookings and new customers, Hustad said.
“We are absolutely committed to your success,” he said. “I know we can partner, win and innovate together.”
Scroll through our slideshow above for more about Splunk Partnerverse and more from .Con22.
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