Today, Cisco announced it completed the acquisition of Splunk. This acquisition will strengthen Cisco’s foundation in delivering unparalleled visibility and insights across companies of all sizes’ digital footprints.
Organizations must be connected and protected in everything they do to perform well in the new digital era. They need to connect the people, places, applications, data, and devices powering their business while protecting their digital footprint from cyber threats, downtime, and other critical business risks.
Cisco will combine the full power of the network with sophisticated security and observability solutions to deliver a real-time unified view of the whole digital landscape. And this will help teams defend their infrastructure and prevent outages.
The adoption of AI is getting faster by the day. So, the effective use of the right data at a massive scale is essential to enabling the meaningful benefits of AI and helping organizations drive outcomes never before possible. To see the full benefits of AI, organizations require infrastructure to power it, data to develop it, a security platform to protect it, and an observability platform to monitor and manage it in real-time. And Cisco will be able to do all four together.
The combination of Cisco and Splunk will feature the following benefits.
1. Better Security – A comprehensive security solution for threat prevention, detection, investigation, and response for organizations, utilizing cloud, network, and endpoint traffic for exceptional visibility.
2. Better Observability – A comprehensive full-stack observability solution that delivers digital experiences across multi-cloud hybrid environments.
3. Better Networking – A secure networking solution delivered on resilient and continually optimized network infrastructure.
4. Better AI—Cisco’s networking portfolio, when combined with full-stack observability and an extensive data platform, enables customers to securely harness the power of AI throughout their organizations and applications.
5. Better Economics—Cisco and Splunk’s platform approach helps customers consolidate numerous point products, delivering stronger business outcomes and cost reductions.
In the next few months, customers can expect a number of new product innovations across its portfolio with the integration of Splunk. Many of those innovations will be showcased at Cisco Live, June 2-4, 2024, and .conf24, June 11-14, 2024.
Under the terms of the deal, Cisco acquired Splunk for $157 per share in cash. This represents about $28 billion in equity value. This deal is expected to be cash flow positive (excluding certain acquisition-related and other items) and non-GAAP gross margin accretive in Cisco’s fiscal year 2025 and non-GAAP EPS accretive in the fiscal year 2026. Plus, it will accelerate Cisco’s revenue growth and non-GAAP gross margin expansion.
KEY QUOTES:
“We are thrilled to officially welcome Splunk to Cisco. As one of the world’s largest software companies, we will revolutionize the way our customers leverage data to connect and protect every aspect of their organization as we help power and protect the AI revolution.”
– Chuck Robbins, Chair and CEO of Cisco
“Uniting Splunk and Cisco will bring tremendous value to our joint customers worldwide. The combination of Cisco and Splunk will provide truly comprehensive visibility and insights across an organization’s entire digital footprint, delivering an unprecedented level of resilience through the most extensive and powerful security and observability product portfolio on the market.”
– Gary Steele, Executive Vice President, General Manager, Splunk
“Cisco and Splunk is a transformative combination that will allow customers to do things that weren’t possible before. With the close, Cisco has created a unique set of solutions for networking, security, and operations executives in the market. When you add that to their channel and AI investments, customers should be considering the higher levels of business value that can now be unlocked.”
– Stephen Elliot, Group Vice President, I&O, Cloud Operations, and DevOps at IDC
“Accenture congratulates Cisco on the acquisition of Splunk. We have enjoyed long-term partnerships with both companies and look forward to the opportunities this collaboration presents to our clients in the future.
– Julie Sweet, Chair and CEO Accenture
