Splunk

Splunk is the developer of a software product of the same name designed for intelligent processing of machine data. Operational management software is used to monitor, report, and analyze real-time machine data, as well as terabytes of historical data stored on the organization's computers or in the cloud.

Nearly half of the largest Fortune 100 companies in the United States and more than 5,200 enterprises, service providers, and government organizations in 90 + countries use Splunk to improve service levels, reduce IT operating costs, reduce security risks, and bring operations visualization to new levels.

History

2023

Employee layoffs due to US crisis

Splunk announced a restructuring on November 1, 2023, which would see 7% of employees lose their jobs. The company's decision was caused by a deterioration in the macroeconomic situation, primarily in the United States.

As of January 31, 2023, Splunk had 8,000 employees. Of these, about 560 people can be fired.

Splunk to cut 7% of employees

This is the second wave of cuts for 2023 at Splunk. Earlier in April, the company announced a 4% reduction in the workforce.

In general, the market has rolled back, and we expect further instability and unpredictability of the situation in the near future, Gary Steele, CEO of the company, commented on the news in a letter to his employees by corporate mail.

Steele also added that the employee cuts are unrelated to the Cisco Systems deal. Recall that Cisco Systems has agreed to acquire Splunk for $28 billion.

The changes we announced are not the result of our agreement with Cisco. This is a continuation of the important initiatives we have taken at Splunk over the past year in order to reassemble our resources and work structure in order to successfully fulfill the requests of our customers.

Most of the employees with a chance of being laid off are in, USA based on a notice sent by the company in. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission The dismissed employees will receive compensation, but its size has not been determined.

Restructuring costs are expected to be $42 million. The company refuses to comment and clarify which departments will be subject to cuts, and when specifically they will occur.^[1]

Cisco bought Splunk

Network equipment manufacturer Cisco acquired Splunk for $28 billion. Cisco announced this on September 21, 2023.

It's the largest deal in Cisco's history and one of the biggest deals since early 2023. Cisco will pay $157 for each Splunk Cisco. The deal is expected to close by the third quarter of 2024. If the deal falls through, Cisco will have to pay Splunk shareholders almost $1.5 billion.

Splunk was established in 2003. She is engaged in systems for collecting and analyzing large amounts of data. This allows you to track security violations, malfunctions, etc. The company operates on a subscription model for its customers. Splunk's customers include many large companies such as Coca-Cola, Intel, Porsche. The Wall Street Journal in February 2023 reported Cisco's intention to acquire Splunk for $20 billion, but then the parties did not agree.

Cisco Systems Acquires Splunk

The acquisition of Splunk will allow Cisco to reduce reliance on its core network equipment business. In recent years, Cisco's business has suffered due to supply chain problems, as well as lower demand for equipment after the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.

Cisco bought a good and synergistically combined business at a good price. It's a win for both sides. This gives Cisco an advantage in the development of security systems based on artificial intelligence, "said Thomas Hayes, head of the Great Hill Capital hedge fund.

Cisco is active in the cybersecurity market. In 2023 alone, the company has already acquired four firms whose activities are somehow related to cybersecurity. Experts note that since Cisco has assets in this area, a deal with Splunk could attract the attention of regulators.^[2]

2019

Splunk bought a software developer to control the operation of IT systems for $1.05 billion

On August 21, 2019, Splunk announced the acquisition of SignalFX for $1.05 billion. Most (60%) of this amount will be paid by the buyer from his own funds, and the rest by his shares. The deal is scheduled to close in the second half of 2020. Read more here.

Leaving Russia

February 19, 2019 it became known about the departure of Splunk from Russia. The company decided to stop selling its products and services to Russian companies.

Splunk is constantly working to evaluate its investments and resource focus around the world. As part of this work, we decided that Splunk would no longer sell its software and services to Russian companies. Our decisions are made in order to ensure the maximum return on investment and ensure success for our clients, the press service of Splunk told Interfax.

According to the Kommersant newspaper, citing a source in the IT market, Splunk warned its partners to stop selling software and services in the Russian Federation both directly and through intermediaries. The decision came into force on February 15, 2019. According to the interlocutor of the publication, who knows the content of Splunk's letter to partners, the restrictions will also affect the subsidiaries of Russian companies operating abroad if their parent structure is located in Russia.

Software developer Splunk leaves Russia

Splunk itself does not associate the decision to leave Russia with the sanctions regime USA against the country. The list of states in which Splunk does not work due to the US embargo indicates Cuba,, Iran North Korea, Syria as well as the Crimean region.

Interfax, citing a source in the IT market, reports that the company had no business reasons to curtail its activities in Russia. According to the interlocutor, Russian companies will soon be able to address their questions directly to the company itself at the traditional Global Partner Summit conference, which Splunk planned to hold at the end of February 2019.

According to VolgaBlob (one of Splunk's largest partners), the vendor has about 200 corporate clients in Russia by February 2019.^[3]

2018: Acquisition of information security startup Phantom Cyber

On February 27, 2018, Splunk, a developer of replicated systems for analyzing machine data (Big Data) and operating activities in the field of information technology for organizations, announced the acquisition of Phantom Cyber ​ ​ Corporation, a data protection firm. The transaction amount will be approximately $350 million. Splunk expects to close the deal in the first half of 2018^[4] here.

2017: Over 1,000 corporate Splunk customers worldwide

The founders of Splunk realized the relevance of the task of operational monitoring and analysis of IT data and released a unique search engine in 2004. It indexes sources such as logs, dumps, message queues, configuration files and records of their changes - in short, everything that allows you to get a comprehensive picture of the functioning of a server, computer system or network of any scale at any time. The search engine interface and applications to it contain convenient tools for quickly analyzing the collected information, as well as tools for operational monitoring of events. Splunk significantly reduces the time spent by a system administrator or security engineer, while increasing its efficiency.

Thus, the implementation of Splunk software in data centers and in any centers with a powerful IT infrastructure reduces both the immediate costs of system administration and other components of total cost of ownership. Since 2004, many have appreciated the benefits of using Splunk software, which to this day is perhaps the best solution in the world of this class. It has already gained the trust of more than 1000 corporate customers around the world, including NASA, Lockheed Martin, Berkeley University, Visa, Bridgestone, Verisign, BEA, Cisco, Sybase, Motorola, Vodafone, FedEx, UPS. In 2008, Splunk won Deloitte's "Fastest Rising Silicon Valley Stars."

Today's IT infrastructure generates a huge amount of data. Applications, Web servers, network and mobile devices are all sources of information that must be constantly processed to extract additional business value.

By monitoring and analyzing information from database transactions to network activity and Call Detail Records, Splunk turns machine data into valuable information. For example, finding problems and investigating incidents related to information security using the Splunk software product takes minutes, not hours or even days, as it was before, and end-to-end monitoring of the information infrastructure using Splunk avoids degradation of performance and downtime of services.

Splunk is a subsystem for processing machine data for collecting, indexing and using data created by IT infrastructure and physical, virtual and cloud systems. With this solution, you can detect and fix problems, investigate security violations in record time. Splunk allows you to monitor your entire infrastructure to prevent service degradation or downtime, meet regulatory requirements at a lower cost, and correlate and analyze complex events that span multi-element systems.

Splunk can also be used as a means of visualization and analytical data processing. Troubleshooting and investigating security incidents with Splunk takes only a few minutes, not a few hours or days, to dramatically improve customer service, avoid downtime due to IT failures, meet regulatory requirements, and take business to the next level.

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