Cisco doubled down on observability at Cisco Live this week, dedicating a large portion of today's keynote to the topic. Cisco provided an advance briefing led by Tom Casey, SVP of product for Cisco’s Splunk, and Ronak Desai, co-founder and CEO of ThousandEyes and SVP/GM of Network Assurance for Cisco, both of which are core components of Cisco's overall observability.

It’s a crazy, mixed-up world Setting up the discussion of observability, Casey underscored the complexity we’re all dealing with. “We’re in a crazy, mixed-up heterogeneous world,” he said. “It’s a large-scale, increasingly complex environment in which we operate. Moreover, that complexity is not changing.”

He said that Cisco’s customers increasingly use multicloud environments and traditional applications, cloud-native apps, and services. Making all of that interoperate is a challenge, but it’s critical to get it right. And this complexity in the tech stacks has caused blind spots — something Casey says Cisco looked to Splunk to solve.

“One of the things Cisco liked in taking a look at Splunk was our main differentiators in approaching the market,” he said. “Those really included being a leader not only in security but in observability, with our longtime investments in open telemetry and our engagement in driving greater tools consolidation around the observability space.”

Deprecating Cisco Observability Cloud in favor of Splunk He added that the Splunk/Cisco teams are working as one now — a short eight weeks after the acquisition closed. Notably, the company is deprecating the Cisco Observability Platform in favor of Splunk.

“Underneath the full stack observability umbrella, we will replace that with the Splunk observability cloud,” he said. “So we will use AppDynamics plus the Splunk Observability Cloud and then, of course, the Splunk Platform with IT service intelligence as the way to deliver on the promise of full-stack observability.”

That full-stack observability will include AIOps, application performance monitoring, infrastructure monitoring, log analytics, incident response, cost and application resources optimization, AI/ML/LLM observability, network monitoring, business risk observability, and digital experience monitoring.

This is a bold move, as was moving AppDynamics under Splunk and appointing Splunk’s CEO Gary Steele to be Cisco’s President of go-to-market globally. In most acquisitions, the acquired company does not play this prominent a role in the operations of the purchaser. However, these aren’t normal times and Cisco leadership understands the importance of Splunk to the future of Cisco and is executing on the tough calls.

The commercial implications of shifting to Splunk It makes sense to deprecate the Cisco Observability Platform and favor Splunk. Cisco bought the company and should exploit its strengths. But during the briefing, I was curious about the commercial implications. It’s one thing if you’re an existing Splunk customer. I asked Casey what would happen to non-Splunk customers. How will Cisco migrate that customer to Splunk without making it feel like a forced purchase?

Casey answered in a way that was simple to understand. “We’re not going to force people to buy Splunk,” he said. “We’ll take care of the customer and get them on the right long-term path. Because Cisco has made many acquisitions, we can do license swaps for other products. So from a commercial term, the structure is in place for us to do that.”

Mohit Lad added that they are working closely with customers on this issue. “We are working with every customer who had contracts, helping them migrate,” Lad said. “We’ll help them with professional services so that it’s easier for them to get going.”

He added that customers don’t need all the Splunk products to use Observability Cloud and AppDynamics. “The way we’ve structured it, you get to consume the capability you need,” he added. “You don’t need to buy the whole thing. And then you can incrementally add as we go.”

Splunk is making a big difference for Cisco The Splunk acquisition is already making a big difference quickly for Cisco. As a $28 billion acquisition, it’s not surprising Cisco has a sense of urgency. But sometimes, after an acquisition, there’s a hesitancy to rock the boat too much.

Cisco’s urgency matches the pace of the tech world. It’s moving faster than ever, which might mean some customers who don’t want to migrate to Splunk will be forced to do so. There are worse things — and as it makes this observability announcement, Cisco seems to be preparing its legacy customers well.

Some customers may feel they are being pulled into the future at a pace they aren’t ready for. It’s important to understand that this is much better than being left behind.