Cisco and Splunk Announce Integrated Full-Stack Observability Experience for the Enterprise
Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) and Splunk unveiled a new Unified Observability Experience at Cisco Live on June 5, 2024. This integration combines Cisco's network visibility with Splunk's log analytics and observability capabilities to provide unified visibility across on-premises, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments. Key innovations include the introduction of Splunk Log Observer Connect for Cisco AppDynamics, integration of Cisco AppDynamics with Splunk IT Service Intelligence (ITSI), and expanded hosting on Microsoft Azure. New AI-driven insights, such as Cisco AI Assistant for AppDynamics and advanced AI in Splunk ITSI, aim to enhance decision-making and IT health visibility. These integrations are designed to improve troubleshooting, reduce blind spots, and streamline workflows, with general availability slated for Q3 2024.
- Integration of Cisco's network visibility with Splunk's log analytics.
- Unified visibility across on-premises, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments.
- Introduction of Splunk Log Observer Connect for Cisco AppDynamics.
- Integration of Cisco AppDynamics with Splunk IT Service Intelligence (ITSI).
- Expanded AppDynamics SaaS hosting on Microsoft Azure.
- New AI-driven insights like Cisco AI Assistant for AppDynamics.
- Advanced AI in Splunk ITSI for improved IT health visibility.
- Single sign-on (SSO) credentials for streamlined workflows.
- Meaningful guidance and insights for informed decision-making.
- General availability of new features starting Q3 2024.
- Potential complexities in integrating new technologies.
- Time required for organizations to adapt to new systems.
- Possible initial costs associated with adopting new observability solutions.
- Risk of over-reliance on AI-driven insights.
Insights
The integration of Cisco and Splunk's observability solutions is a significant move in the enterprise technology sector. Observability solutions, which include tools for monitoring, logging and tracing, are important for maintaining the health and performance of IT systems. These solutions help IT teams detect and resolve issues more efficiently, thus ensuring better performance and security of digital applications.
The announcement of a unified observability experience is noteworthy because it addresses the challenges of managing hybrid and multi-cloud environments. This integration allows for a cohesive view and real-time insights across different environments, which is critical for modern enterprises that rely on diverse IT architectures.
Moreover, the introduction of AI-driven insights, like the new AI Assistant for AppDynamics and the advanced AI in Splunk IT Service Intelligence, underscores the push towards leveraging artificial intelligence for better decision-making and operational efficiency. AI can help in predicting potential issues before they become critical, thereby reducing downtime and improving service reliability.
This partnership could position both companies strongly in the observability market, potentially driving revenue growth through new customer acquisitions and deeper engagement with existing customers. However, integration challenges and the seamless execution of these innovations will be critical to watch.
Financially, the integration of Cisco and Splunk's observability solutions is a strategic move that could enhance both companies' market positions. Cisco's acquisition of Splunk already indicated a long-term strategy to dominate the observability and IT management market. By providing a unified observability platform, Cisco can potentially cross-sell its other products and services, enhancing its revenue streams.
This integration could also lead to higher customer retention rates as businesses often prefer comprehensive solutions from a single vendor to minimize complexity and integration issues. The expansion of their SaaS offerings to Microsoft Azure is another strategic decision that aligns with the growing trend of multi-cloud strategies, thus broadening their market appeal.
From a financial perspective, successful implementation and customer adoption of these integrated solutions could lead to significant revenue growth. However, investors should monitor the execution risk associated with such large-scale integrations and the potential impact on margins if the integration process incurs higher-than-expected costs.
The collaboration between Cisco and Splunk is pivotal for the observability market, where real-time monitoring and analytics are increasingly vital for enterprises. Observability tools are important for managing complex IT environments that include on-premises, hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructures.
One of the key highlights is the support for diverse environments, which is essential given the varied IT landscapes of modern enterprises. The ability to provide unified visibility across these environments can significantly reduce operational complexities and improve IT service management's efficiency.
The introduction of new features like single sign-on and AI-driven insights further differentiates their offering in a competitive market. However, the success of these initiatives will depend on how well they address the real-world challenges faced by IT teams and how they compare to similar solutions offered by competitors.
Overall, the move could strengthen their market position, attract new customers and enhance the value proposition for existing clients. Market trends towards increased reliance on digital services and the need for robust monitoring solutions support the potential positive impact of this collaboration.
Cisco and Splunk Enable Unparalleled Visibility and Real-Time Insights to Standardize Observability in One Solution
News Summary:
- The new Unified Observability Experience offers customers a cohesive experience across Cisco and Splunk observability solutions, while establishing the foundation for future integrations.
- Integration and new innovations empower customers with best in class support for both traditional and modern application architectures and visibility across their entire digital footprint.
- Through Cisco and Splunk observability solutions, customers can build an observability practice that meets their IT environment needs, on-premises, hybrid and multi cloud.
Building on the recent landmark acquisition, Cisco and Spunk announced new integrations including a unified observability experience for joint customers, and the introduction of Splunk Log Observer Connect for Cisco AppDynamics and Cisco AppDynamics integration with Splunk IT Service Intelligence (ITSI). Now with Cisco's unparalleled visibility into the network and any environment, coupled with Splunk's industry-defining log analytics and cloud native observability capabilities, customers can instrument their entire business and reduce blind spots.
New full-stack observability innovations were also announced, including a new AI Assistant for AppDynamics which delivers meaningful guidance and insights, and empowers users to make informed decisions faster and more accurately than ever before, as well as expanded AppDynamics Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) hosting on Microsoft Azure. In addition, new Advanced AI in Splunk IT Service Intelligence (ITSI) was unveiled, which leverages advanced AI and machine learning capabilities to provide IT teams more precise alerting and a more accurate view into IT health.
Through Cisco and Splunk's new integrations and innovations, customers gain unified visibility across their entire digital footprint, including both owned and unowned networks. The observability experience helps meet customers' unique IT environment needs by providing support for on-premises, hybrid and multi cloud environments.
"By bringing together Splunk and Cisco observability solutions, customers now have unified visibility across their entire digital footprint so they can detect, investigate and resolve problems faster to create a reliable, resilient experience for their users," said Tom Casey, SVP and GM, Products & Technology, Splunk. "Having full control over their data helps them make more targeted, effective and smarter investments in their digital systems and services, allowing them to better leverage their entire digital footprint to attract more business and grow the company."
Key announcements include:
A Foundation for a Unified Observability Journey
New unified experiences across Cisco and Splunk observability products enable better efficiency and accuracy in troubleshooting hybrid environments that span traditional and modern applications, as well as owned and unowned networks. The new single sign-on (SSO) credentials help simplify and streamline shared workflows between Cisco AppDynamics and Splunk, enabling customers to better access the right data. The introduction of context-aware deep linking enables Cisco AppDynamics customers to seamlessly transition to relevant logs in the Splunk Platform as part of their troubleshooting workflow, leading to heightened productivity and faster Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR) across solutions.
Support for any environment
Cisco and Splunk are delivering a standardized approach for customers to help ensure reliability across their digital estate, whether traditional applications or modern cloud-native environments. Combining Cisco AppDynamics for Application Performance Monitoring (APM) for three-tier and hybrid applications with the Splunk Observability Cloud for microservices environments, underpinned by Splunk Platform and event correlation capabilities from Splunk ITSI, customers unlock visibility across any environment and any stack. This integration includes:
Splunk Log Observer Connect for Cisco AppDynamics: Combines the power of Splunk Platform with Cisco AppDynamics APM to drive faster, in-context troubleshooting across on-prem and hybrid environments. This integration enables both SaaS and on-premises customers to seamlessly analyze relevant logs when troubleshooting application performance issues, for increased accuracy, efficiency and faster MTTR.
Cisco AppDynamics integration with Splunk Enterprise / Splunk Cloud and Splunk ITSI: Reduce alert noise, improve troubleshooting and gain exec-level visibility via integration across Cisco AppDynamics, Splunk Enterprise / Splunk Cloud and Splunk ITSI. Correlate application metrics and events from AppDynamics with other data about systems and services in Splunk Enterprise and Splunk Cloud. Group related alerts to eliminate alert storms and leverage business service monitoring to understand how IT issues impact business KPIs. With updates to the technical add-on (TA) and content pack with support for AppDynamics, Splunk customers will have access to application performance and business transaction metrics and alerts from Cisco AppDynamics to have more actionable alerts, additional application context and end-to-end visibility of IT health.
Cisco AppDynamics on Microsoft Azure: Expansion of cloud-hosted observability offerings now brings Cisco AppDynamics APM services to SaaS-hosted Microsoft Azure, fostering the support of multi-cloud strategies across new regions. The new offering enables organizations to streamline workflows, minimize cloud vendor lock-in and observe what's most important — while maintaining compliance with industry-specific regulatory requirements.
Meaningful AI-driven insights for more informed decisions
Cisco AI Assistant for Cisco AppDynamics: Integrated into the AppDynamics Help Center, the new AI Assistant uses generative AI technology with selectable personalities that tailor responses to diverse levels of knowledge or skill sets. Users are empowered with meaningful guidance and insights to make informed, intelligent decisions faster and more accurately than ever before.
Advanced AI in Splunk IT Service Intelligence (ITSI): Leverages advanced AI and machine learning capabilities to help teams quickly and easily configure and implement dynamic, adaptive thresholds, manage and optimize configurations, and proactively surface insights into the health of ITSI knowledge objects, such as KPIs, services and entities. The Configuration Assistant in Splunk ITSI provides a centralized console that helps IT administrators maintain accurate alerting by providing insights into outdated threshold models and optimizing those with a guided remediation, helping to reduce false positive alerts.
"Now, with Cisco and Splunk, you get the strength of Cisco AppDynamics and Splunk Observability, powered by Generative AI, offering customers a comprehensive opportunity to achieve Observability for the whole enterprise," said Stephen Elliot, Group Vice President & Analyst, IDC.
"We are proud to have Cisco as our digital partner in our comprehensive observability framework. This collaboration continues to propel our efforts to improve customer satisfaction and foster long-term loyalty," said Dan Field, Director, Platform and Network Engineering, United Airlines.
Availability
- Single Sign-on and Log Observer Connect for Cisco AppDynamics, part of the preview of the Unified Observability Experience, will be generally available in Q3CY24.
- The updated Splunk TA for AppDynamics and Splunk ITSI App for Content Packs (with support for Cisco AppDynamics) will be generally available on June 14, CY24.
- Cisco AI Assistant for Cisco AppDynamics will be generally available Q3CY24.
- Cisco AppDynamics will be SaaS hosted on Microsoft Azure in Q3CY24.
- The Configuration Assistant, which is a part of Advanced AI for Splunk ITSI, is generally available.
Additional Resources
- Join our Webinar on "Better Together: Introducing New Splunk Integrations and AI Innovations for Cisco AppDynamics"
- Executive Blog: Bringing the Cisco AppDynamics + Splunk Better Together story to Cisco Live
About Cisco
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SOURCE Cisco Systems, Inc.
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