A More Resilient Digital Future for Our APAC Customers and Partners With Splunk + Cisco

Following the success of our .conf24 event in Las Vegas, we are filled with renewed energy and optimism towards our unwavering purpose: to build a safer and more resilient digital world. It's inspiring to see how our community has grown significantly since 2003, a fact that .conf24 perfectly illustrates.

With over 5,500 attendees and 1,000 partners under one roof, the event was buzzing with energy. From the joy of forging new connections and rekindling old ones, to the wealth of learning taking place, it was clear that the future is filled with potential.

This year’s .conf24 was particularly significant as it was our first event since Splunk was acquired by Cisco, which presented attendees with a unique opportunity to witness firsthand the initial manifestations of this merger. In the relatively short time since the acquisition, we have successfully integrated our key products — including Cisco Talos and Splunk Observability, for example — offering more comprehensive end-to-end visibility and insight into an organisation’s entire digital footprint, thereby delivering unprecedented levels of resilience.

And this is just a glimpse into the future capabilities of our combined company and the potential of our channel programs.

The Real Threat: Rising Security Events and The Cost of Downtime

According to our 2024 State of Security Report, 35% of respondents in Japan say their security stacks have become too convoluted, while 29% say that they are unable to effectively analyse all security-relevant data. Similarly, Australian respondents report experiencing higher nation-state attacks (56%) compared to their peers (39%), which could be attributed to visibility-related issues. As organisations face increasingly sophisticated security challenges, particularly in this era of AI, there is no better time than now for APAC leaders to prioritise their investment in the right observability tools and future-proof their business.

The report also found that only 23% of Singaporean respondents strongly agree that digital resilience could improve customer retention, with only 25% strongly agreeing that digital resilience could prevent significant disruptions to operations, compared to 35% globally. This echoes our latest Hidden Global Cost of Downtime Report, which underscores the often overlooked impact of unplanned downtime on businesses. For organisations in APAC, the cost of downtime reaches a staggering US$187M. Furthermore, this region, along with Europe, endures the longest recovery times compared to other continents. 

The findings from these reports serve as a stark reminder of the real threat — with 400 billion security events occurring daily. As Gary succinctly put it: "Do not rest on your laurels."

It's important to highlight that the report also shows resilient leaders bouncing back from application and infrastructure downtime 28% faster and recovering 23% quicker from cybersecurity incidents. These leaders have cultivated a culture of resilience within their organisations by prioritising data management and integrating advanced tools and technologies, including AI, to develop more sophisticated security and monitoring strategies.

Data is power — security, observability, and AI are all about data — and the key to success is the ability to access the right data at the right time and use it to drive results. Therefore, a unified threat detection, investigation, and response solution is crucial to power the SOC (Security Operations Center) of the future, and bolster digital resilience.

Splunk+Cisco: What Does it Mean for Asia Pacific?

Together with Cisco, we are driving synergies and revolutionising our unified capabilities to address our customer’s most pressing needs today. At this year’s .conf, Splunk introduced a suite of AI tools and assistants across our product range, including the new AI Assistants for SPL and Splunk Enterprise Security 8.0 — designed to expedite routine tasks, extract fresh insights from data, and enhance digital resilience. 

These enhancements ensure that customers like KDDI, Strongroom AI and Kumu are empowered to maintain full-stack visibility into their system — and preserve their brand reputation by accelerating incident recovery and maximising service uptime. 

At the Global Partner Summit, we also announced the winners of the 2024 Splunk Partner Awards at .conf, and we celebrated our Asia Pacific partners — JDS Australia, EY, Macnica, Hyperion3, and CyberCX — for their deep expertise and commitment towards Splunk. Our partners in APAC play a crucial role in helping our customers in the region build resilience across their entire digital footprint.

With approximately 75% of Splunk’s partners are already Cisco partners, we are eager to continue our Splunk+Cisco integration journey with our combined partners and unlock more opportunities together and address the needs of our growing customer base. 

Shared Vision: A Secure and Resilient Digital Future

.conf24 has demonstrated the tremendous momentum we have built with Cisco as well as provided us with the opportunity to be with our dedicated APAC partners and customers. It allowed us to listen to their challenges and feedback, learn from one another, strengthen our relationships, and fuel our shared commitment to building a future-proof future.

With so much goodness to share, we are equally excited to bring the Splunk energy, shared vision and product enhancements, and key learnings from customers and partners closer to as many APAC cities as possible. Keep a lookout for our APAC .conf Go series as we hit eight cities across the region to deliver the best of .conf, layered with local business use cases, sector stories and customer speakers, to you. 

From Melbourne to Tokyo, Singapore to Seoul, we are excited to share with you how we deliver the Splunk you love, only better.