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Cisco Acquires Splunk

splunk.com

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Re: Cisco Acquires Splunk

#141

Post by wbl »

sanderjd wrote: post #115
davinci123 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

when you read Hacker News thread - every single one of them feels like the world is falling apart. Splunk is a dud or so everyone here thinks: https://siliconangle.com/2023/08/23/splunk-shares-surge-stro...

This is not actually dissonant! HN is mostly a place where technologists gather, not corporate heads of IT or other business people. This is especially true of the subset of users who actively participate rather than only reading. And it is not unusual in the least for an enterprise product to be wildly profitable but not admired by technologists. Indeed, it's the default; Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, etc. What is interes…

Microsoft contains multitudes, from the successor to VMS to the win32 API to some very advanced programming language stuff like F#.

Re: Cisco Acquires Splunk

#143

Post by ShrigmaMale »

sanderjd wrote: post #115
davinci123 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

when you read Hacker News thread - every single one of them feels like the world is falling apart. Splunk is a dud or so everyone here thinks: https://siliconangle.com/2023/08/23/splunk-shares-surge-stro...

This is not actually dissonant! HN is mostly a place where technologists gather, not corporate heads of IT or other business people. This is especially true of the subset of users who actively participate rather than only reading. And it is not unusual in the least for an enterprise product to be wildly profitable but not admired by technologists. Indeed, it's the default; Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, etc. What is interes…

stripe, cloudflare (ish), github

Re: Cisco Acquires Splunk

#144

Post by tyingq »

alephnerd wrote: post #96
tyingq wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the idea is that the big customers are interested because everyone is raving about it. If you price out the smaller customers, there's nobody to rave about it. Consider, for example, that Akamai's revenues are sitting in a plateau over the last 5 years, while Cloudflare is moving up.

> I believe the idea is that the big customers are interested because everyone is raving about it. If you price out the smaller customers, there's nobody to rave about it. That's not how enterprise procurement works, which is what makes the big bucks for companies like Akamai and Splunk. Cloudflare traditionally targeted mid-market and is in the process of building out an upper market/enterprise motion (I worked with…

How is what I said "FUD"? I know what it stands for. I don't see where I went with any of those three themes.

Akamai has certainly done well over their lifetime, but their revenue for the last 5 years is very flat. That's not "FUD".

Re: Cisco Acquires Splunk

#145

Post by nemo »

tyingq wrote: post #73
dangus wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are medium-sized customers valuable to Splunk? In sales we call this "Ideal Customer Profile." Why do I want a customer with less money to spend if I have a product with enough capability for the gigantic money-is-no-object customers?

I believe the idea is that the big customers are interested because everyone is raving about it. If you price out the smaller customers, there's nobody to rave about it. Consider, for example, that Akamai's revenues are sitting in a plateau over the last 5 years, while Cloudflare is moving up.

>big customers are interested because everyone is raving about it.

In this case the big customers are already using it. Splunk's value proposition for those customer is that they can handle with a massive volume without a hiccup. Small customers don't have the needs where Splunk is uniquely useful.

Re: Cisco Acquires Splunk

#146

Post by sanderjd »

reducesuffering wrote: post #135
sanderjd wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not actually dissonant! HN is mostly a place where technologists gather, not corporate heads of IT or other business people. This is especially true of the subset of users who actively participate rather than only reading. And it is not unusual in the least for an enterprise product to be wildly profitable but not admired by technologists. Indeed, it's the default; Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, etc. What is interes…

> that are both profitable and mostly admired AWS?

Actually yeah, closer than most. I think it's a somewhat grudging admiration at this point, increasingly so as they do more and more also-ran services.

But yeah, this does seem right for the "core" services; ec2, s3, maybe lambda, etc.

Re: Cisco Acquires Splunk

#147

Post by MaintenanceMode »

petetnt wrote: post #33
reacharavindh wrote: post #10

Somebody: Splunk has exorbitant prices and locked-in enterprise customers! Cisco: Oh these guys are just like us. Better buy them up. We know this business.

It's apparently cheaper to buy Splunk than to a buy Splunk license.

You may be joking but this is why we thought Cisco bought Webex back in the day too.

Re: Cisco Acquires Splunk

#148

Post by andrewflnr »

dangus wrote: post #60
liveoneggs wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they price-out medium customers so mind-share decreases

Are medium-sized customers valuable to Splunk? In sales we call this "Ideal Customer Profile." Why do I want a customer with less money to spend if I have a product with enough capability for the gigantic money-is-no-object customers?

Mindshare is valuable, was the point GP was making. If midsize customers ignore you because you're too expensive, and then implement something else before they get big enough to afford you, where do you get new customers? Forget growth, how do you replace attrition as your existing customers die?

Personally I can't say if that's actually happening with Splunk, but it's a very plausible scenario.

Re: Cisco Acquires Splunk

#149

Post by ShrigmaMale »

eigenvalue wrote: post #47

I hated Splunk so much that I spent a couple days a few months ago writing a single 1200 line python script that does absolutely everything I need in terms of automatic log collection, ingestion, and analysis from a fleet of cloud instances. It pulls in all the log lines, enriches them with useful metadata like the IP address of the instance, the machine name, the log source, the datetime, etc. and stores it all in S…

look at vector.dev and clickhouse. fast, has a language for extension, v easy to set up.

Re: Cisco Acquires Splunk

#150

Post by marcus0x62 »

sidcool wrote: post #39

Cisco and Splunk have no overlapping business models, do they? What's the strategy behind it?

To channel my inner John Chambers, this is a market adjacency. I.e., a way to expand into a market that complements something they already do. Their security product suite and data analytics tools would all naturally feed into Splunk. Cisco has, at various times, had products in the SIEM space[0], and it isn't unusual[1] for them to build or acquire a few tools in the same category before finding something that is a good product-market fit with some longevity.

0 - See MARS, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisco_Security_Monitoring%2C_A...

1 - A few examples: before WebEx, Cisco had MeetingPlace which was partially internally developed and partially built with external hardware and software products. Before Firepower Threat Defense (Snort acquisition,) there was the internally built ASA product line, which developed from the acquired PIX line. In load balancers, they had ACE (internally developed,) replacing CSS/CSM (based off of their Arrowpoint acquisition.) For NAC, they had NAC framework (internally developed, never really took off,) NAC appliance (acquired,) and now ISE (internally developed.) There are many, many, other examples here.

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