Cisco and Splunk introduce integrated full-stack observability experience

Cisco has unveiled the first of its innovative integrations with Splunk, a Cisco company, as the organizations combine their market-leading observability technologies to accelerate full-stack observability for the entire enterprise, helping customers deliver more performant and secure digital experiences. Through the full-stack observability journey, organizations can unlock unified visibility across any environment (on-premises, hybrid and multi cloud) and any stack while harnessing powerful real-time analytics for faster, more accurate detection, investigation and response.

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.