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Cisco Unveils Agentic AI-Powered Splunk Observability

In a groundbreaking announcement at SPLUNK .CONF25, Cisco has redefined the landscape of observability with the introduction of its agentic AI-powered Splunk Observability. This new approach marks a significant advancement in how businesses can leverage AI to enhance their digital operations and ensure reliability across their entire digital ecosystems.

A New Era of Observability

The Splunk Observability enhancements focus on unifying insights across diverse environments, offering actionable business context and deploying advanced AI-powered agents throughout the entire incident response lifecycle. This comprehensive toolkit allows businesses to monitor performance and quality simultaneously. Patrick Lin, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Splunk Observability, emphasized the importance of helping organizations apply AI effectively while maintaining visibility and control. Lin stated, "With the latest innovations in Splunk Observability, we are empowering enterprises to proactively monitor their critical applications and digital services with ease, resolve issues before they escalate, and ensure the value derived from observability aligns with business costs."

Embracing the Agentic AI Paradigm

One of the standout features of Cisco’s innovations is the introduction of agentic AI, which reshapes how organizations approach observability practices. As AI-assisted development grows, applications will increasingly require less human intervention. This shift necessitates a new kind of telemetry that can ensure that AI models behave according to designated business purposes and costs.

Cisco’s advancements in Splunk Observability aim to provide proactive detection, investigation, and resolution—critical elements in the era of digital transformation. The company is advancing its AgenticOps vision by introducing AI agents that automate telemetry collection, configure alerts, detect anomalies, identify root causes, and suggest actionable fixes. This technology ultimately allows IT Operations and engineering teams to concentrate on innovation rather than service recovery.

Innovations in Splunk Observability Include:

1. AI Troubleshooting Agents: Available in Splunk Observability Cloud and Splunk AppDynamics, these agents can perform automatic analyses of incidents and highlight potential root causes, enabling users to resolve issues swiftly.
2. Event iQ: Part of the Splunk IT Service Intelligence, this tool aids teams in setting up automated alert correlation, thereby minimizing alert noise and providing clarity on signal groupings.
3. ITSI Episode Summarization: In tandem with the AI-driven alert correlation, this feature offers automatic overviews of grouped alerts, encapsulating trends, impacts, and root causes for accelerated troubleshooting.

Monitoring AI Ecosystems

As organizations integrate AI and large language models (LLMs), they face the challenge of ensuring optimal performance. Splunk addresses this by providing analytics tailored to monitor the health, security, and cost-effectiveness of AI application stacks, including monitoring LLMs and the underlying AI infrastructure. Key features include:

• - AI Agent Monitoring: This feature assesses the performance, security, and economic alignment of LLMs and AI agents, ensuring they operate efficiently and in line with directed business outcomes.
• - AI Infrastructure Monitoring: Teams can track the health and resource usage of AI infrastructures, gaining alerts on service bottlenecks and usage spikes to manage costs proactively.

A Unified Experience for Business Insights

Cisco is merging Splunk AppDynamics and Splunk Observability Cloud to deliver a seamless user experience that enhances three-tier and microservices environments. Integrations with Cisco ThousandEyes allow for an unprecedented correlation of network impacts on application performance and user experience. Innovations driving this synergy include:

• - Business Insights: Correlate application performance with the real-time health of business-critical processes.
• - Digital Experience Analytics: Offering deep insights into user behavior to facilitate improved customer experiences.
• - Application Performance Monitoring (APM): Enhancements for both cloud-native and hybrid applications are now accessible, building on existing expertise.
• - Session Replay: This feature aids teams in refining online user experiences by analyzing both browser and mobile sessions.

As Torsten Volk, Principal Analyst at the Enterprise Strategy Group, pointed out, “The new agentic AI innovations within Splunk Observability provide organizations with the visibility and actionable insights necessary to manage their digital operations and the health of their AI systems effectively. This is essential for businesses looking to scale their AI capabilities reliably.”

Conclusion

With the slew of newly available features, including AI Monitoring, AI Troubleshooting Agents, and Business Insights, Cisco’s Splunk Observability empowers organizations to maintain optimal digital operations while seamlessly integrating advanced AI functionalities. As these innovations become more widely available around the globe, they hold the promise of a more resilient and efficient digital workplace. For further details, visit Cisco's newsroom where continuous updates and innovations will be shared.