President, Chief Executive Officer & Director, Splunk
Digital Resilience in the Age of AI: Insights from Cisco and Splunk - at Cisco Partner Summit
How are Cisco + Splunk tackling digital resilience and AI together? Hosts Patrick Moorhead and Daniel Newman are joined by Cisco's Gary Steele, President, Go-to-Market & GM to discuss Cisco’s recent acquisition of Splunk and how they are partnering to solve their customer challenges around digital resilience in the AI era and the key announcements made at #CiscoPS24. Catch the specifics from Six Five Media on The Road below ⤵️
The integration of Cisco and Splunk to bolster digital resilience for customers navigating the AI landscape
Insights into Gary's new role as Go-to-Market for Cisco and...
About Gary Steele
Gary Steele, President, CEO, and Director of Splunk, has been focused on the company's integration with Cisco following its acquisition, emphasizing the combined entity's role in digital resilience. At the Cisco Partner Summit in November 2024, Steele stated that organizations must keep systems running to serve customers, noting that "the cost of downtime's insane." He also said there will be "more investment in security" as digital footprints grow, calling security a "massive opportunity" that "creates billions of dollars of economic opportunity." In a January 2025 interview, Steele attributed the swift regulatory approval of the Cisco-Splunk deal to a lack of product overlap and the companies' ability to "do a lot for customers from a cyber perspective." Steele has also addressed the cybersecurity landscape and the impact of AI. In December 2024, he said that "the cyber threat actors continue to up their game" and that "AI is a great advancement for everyone, but it's also an advancement for threat actors," predicting that the situation will "get worse, not better" in 2024. He noted that cyber budgets will likely increase due to new SEC rules requiring public companies to report material breaches within four days. At Splunk's .conf24 in June 2024, Steele described AI as "probably the most transformative technology that we will see in our lifetimes" and stated that the company's mission is "delivering digital resilience across your entire digital footprint."
Transcript (24 segments)
P
Pat0:09
The 65 is on the road here in Los Angeles. We are here with Cisco. We are talking AI, we're talking network, we're talking data, we're talking security, and we even heard about compute today. Daniel?
D
Daniel0:23
Yeah, it's been a great event, Pat. We got to spend a lot of time with the executives, some of them here on the show. Make sure you check those all out. And then of course, in the sessions, Pat, I mean you didn't even mention we also got to hear from a Super Bowl Hall of Fame to be quarterback, pretty good announcer too, although I like seeing him throw passes. But no, I mean look, it's been a really high energy event. We know that 50 billion dollars of revenue go through the partner channels. We also know Cisco has been really aggressive in its posture, talked about compute, mentioned security, and by the way, they made a massive acquisition last year. That's right, it happened to be Splunk, and we covered that too. One of the biggest conversations around AI is all about digital resilience, which is I would say a bigger thing above just saying security. It's super important, and it's great to have back on the 65, Gary. Welcome back. I know we've done some remotes with you, and I think Daniel at Davos did a couple videos, but it's great to see you.
G
Gary Steele1:21
Yeah, it was really nice to your team to let us do that. It was both of us were... yeah, it was a great conversation. Both of us couldn't have gotten inside fast enough, but nobody understands. And we had a nice sidebar, and all you out there that are chasing a dream to go to Davos, you know, it's really all about the shoes. I mean, that's really what it is all about. But there is actually a lot going on, and AI was the center of attention there. But it was also a big moment. You and I talked, I mean, this was in the transition period heading into the close after the announcement. Now you've got two jobs, I mean, I don't know how else to explain it. You've got go-to-market for Cisco, you still got the GM role at Splunk.
I'm really focused on integration. That's what I focused on from a Splunk perspective, and then obviously my go-to-market role at Cisco, really thinking about how do we drive value for customers and ensure that we're continuing to drive growth in the business.
P
Pat2:08
Yeah, so what's the kind of overall, you know, integration is a big thing. I mean, I'm not going to let you just get off on that one. You're going to tell me a little bit more. But like as you're kind of going through this process, I mean, you go from a company with what, about 8,500 to about 85,000 or more if you count all contractors. I mean, how's it kind of changing your view? What's kind of top of mind for you right now overall as you're going through this integration process?
G
Gary Steele2:30
Yeah, I think one, it's been super fun and super exciting. I think integration at this scale, it's really about making sure that we're doing the right thing for our customers, doing the right thing for our partners, and making it as smooth as possible for everyone. So we're being very thoughtful, very methodical about the integration, but we're also moving really fast. So a few things: one is it was really important coming right out that we showed our customers that we're going to continue to drive innovation. Nothing more important than delivering value to our customers every single day. And so we've announced a lot of really good points of integration that we think are deriving tremendous value for our customers. And then sitting here at the partner summit, you know, as we look at the Splunk partners, we want to ensure that all the investments they made as they come over into the Cisco partner program, that they have a good experience. So we're being very thoughtful and methodical about this whole process to ensure that we're bringing everyone along, getting the best of Splunk, but then leveraging the power of Cisco.
D
Daniel3:30
Yeah, so here at partner summit, you put your best foot forward, you tie all the product announcements together, and you deliver it to the partners. You have great conversations, but what does it mean to customers, right? You made some product announcements, you reaffirmed products, you also rolled out, you know, new partner programs, but what does it mean to customers?
G
Gary Steele3:56
Yeah, I think at the end of the day, you know, if you look at what got announced here at partner summit, it really represents a significant amount of innovation that we think will be beneficial to them as we help them get ready for the AI era, build that AI infrastructure, secure that environment broadly with the security portfolio, leveraging Splunk across that, driving digital resilience, and all of the value that can be delivered through that. So there's a lot of really good innovation. At the end of the day, I think customers will benefit from that.
P
Pat4:29
Yeah, it's, I mean, and every partner wants to know, hey, not only how do I monetize it now, but also getting ready for the AI age and the rules of being a good partner to customers, it's changing. And at least what I was picking up is partners were excited that you were putting that forward, giving them the guidebook of how to look at even, you know, five, maybe six years out.
G
Gary Steele4:57
Yeah, I think there's a number of things for partners. One is we announced the Partner 360 program that really accommodates them in our broad portfolio. That's super exciting. And then feeling the innovation that they need to be able to drive growth in their business. I think that combination is a really good thing for both our partners and ultimately for our customers.
D
Daniel5:21
So Gary, you know, the AI security trend, you know, we were talking to G2, we talked a little bit about the compute, the LLMs, you know, and his philosophy on kind of what's important. He mentioned network and then security, of course. Splunk adds security and even the observability kind of vision of the company. But the enterprise customers still have a lot of challenges, right? I mean, this is still really complicated. I'm kind of curious through your lens as you've gone from Splunk to now Splunk and Cisco remits and talking to customers, what are the challenges they're facing and kind of how does this combined portfolio in your mind address some of these challenges?
G
Gary Steele5:57
I think there's a number of things. I think one is as we look at the innovation, delivering complete AI infrastructure for customers, making it easy for them to be able to deploy AI, I think is something that's absolutely critical. And I think it'll have great impact in the market. Underpinning all that, you've got to have digital resilience. You have to keep these systems up and running. You need to keep them protected from cyber attacks, but at the same time, they need to deliver the value ultimately for what it was intended. And so these systems have to stay up and running, and that's what Splunk has been focused on. We think about it broadly in the context of digital resilience, bringing together all the valuable assets that exist within Cisco and delivering it as part of our overall solution within Splunk. I think it has been really well received.
P
Pat6:47
For the audience, can you talk a little bit about how digital resilience is different from, let's say, security? How has this evolved?
G
Gary Steele6:53
I think it's actually been, we sort of watched this evolution from where we've been in the past to where we are today. If you go back in time, people talked about business continuity, disaster recovery, and they thought about it in a really siloed way. And what has really happened is as organizations have built out broad digital footprints to serve the needs of their customers, it has to stay up and running, or customers can't be served. And so when an event happens in the middle of the night, is it a cyber event? Is it an application falling over? Is it a bad upgrade? Is it a bad patch? What actually happened? And we probably all witnessed these large breaches in the middle of the night where you have every group responsible that could potentially have an issue trying to figure out what the heck happened. And the reality is you can't afford downtime. Cost of downtime is insane. And so you have to think holistically about what does it take to keep systems up and running. It's cyber, but it's also understanding exactly what's going on across your broad digital environment. And you've got to be able to do that so that you can keep these systems up and running. The reality is because of the visibility this creates, it's become a boardroom topic, and it's more important than it's ever been. And we saw it, you know, in the event that occurred around CrowdStrike. Like people were like, what the heck happened? And what do I need to do differently to avoid some form of outage? Digital resilience really matters.
P
Pat8:28
Yeah, and gosh, I look at AI and I always like to say, you know, hey, explain observability. People ask me, and it's, you know, we've fractalized everything, right? It used to be that all the data would sit on-prem, and then, you know, we've fractalized the infrastructure, the way we even do applications, where, you know, there might be four or five APIs as opposed to it sitting on. And with AI, right, we're talking about, and you mentioned this earlier conversation with G2, now we're going to have multiple models and we're going to have different types of constructs that we work with the data. Just so many different points of failure, and digital resiliency is paramount whether people know that or not.
G
Gary Steele9:12
They will know. And I think there's broader and broader appreciation for what this looks like. And people want to know, again, in these complex apps that incorporate AI, you have to be able to see across this entire environment to understand what the heck's going on. And you need to be able to figure out and be more predictive. If there are issues, what do I do to avoid this? And so you don't have major significant outages.
P
Pat9:41
Yeah, and it's seen through the application, it's seen through the AI environments, it's seen through to the network and the infrastructure, and your network and non-owned networks. What the heck is happening? And having that visibility is what it's all about.
D
Daniel9:53
Yeah, it's really interesting. I think we're going to start to see ourselves go from the kind of app economy, the app economy, to the API economy, because, you know, we're going to start to see all this generative sort of real-time abstractions, and it's going to be all about can you point to the data to basically abstract whatever it is you want. You know, we know enterprise software is going to change, but as G2 said, this infrastructure is only going to keep growing, which puts the Cisco-Splunk positioning into a really good place. You know, I kind of maybe just gave you a glimmer of what I think the future looks like, Gary, but you're the guest. I'm more interested in what you have to say. Everyone hears from me. You know, like with Cisco-Splunk, what are you excited about? What has kind of got you fired up here in this new role and as you look ahead?
G
Gary Steele10:36
Yeah, no, I think there's a number of things that I'm super excited about. One is I fundamentally believe that organizations are going to upgrade their infrastructure to support this AI journey that everybody is on. And they will leverage their data centers, they will buy infrastructure and upgrade it to support that. They will continue to leverage the cloud wherever they can. So I think that's one whole area that I think is really, really important. And then I believe that as this all happens, there's going to be more investment in security because people have to continue to raise their security posture. The threat actors continue to win, like we've been living in this world. But as the digital footprint gets larger, attack surface is larger, and there's probably nothing more important than ensuring that you're investing appropriately for security. And I hear here at the partner community, like you, everyone's trying to help their customers at the end of the day drive better posture.
P
Pat11:33
Yeah, security will be a massive opportunity. It's going to continue to be a challenge with every innovation. It just creates more, you know, it creates a bigger surface for them.
G
Gary Steele11:44
That's right. But you know what the challenge is? Fun. It creates billions of dollars of economic opportunity, and it'll make your role really interesting over the next few years, and ours as well.
P
Pat11:52
Gary Steele, thank you so much for joining us here on the 65.
G
Gary Steele11:54
Thank you so much. It's great to be here. Thanks.
D
Daniel11:56
And thank you everybody for tuning in. I hope you check out all the episodes that we did here in LA with Cisco, and of course be part of our community. Subscribe to all of the episodes of the 65. But for this episode, for Patrick and myself, it's time to sign out and say goodbye. See you later.