Cisco Buys Splunk for $28 Billion in Massive AI-Powered Data Bet (bloomberg.com) 44
Cisco agreed to buy Splunk in a deal valued at about $28 billion, representing its biggest acquisition yet and a massive push into software and artificial intelligence-powered data analysis. From a report: Cisco will pay $157 a share in cash, the companies said in a statement Thursday, or a 31% premium to Splunk's previous closing price on Wednesday. Cisco has been expanding its software and services business in an attempt to rely less on its hallmark networking hardware. The Silicon Valley giant has traditionally generated the bulk of its revenue from equipment that forms the backbone of computer networks, but that's been changing. Last month Cisco outlined the headway it's making in artificial intelligence and security technology.
The deal is also arguably just as much a bet on artificial intelligence as it is on the business of software and data security. Earlier this year, Splunk announced a new line of AI offerings that it said would, among other things, allow companies to detect and respond to anomalies in their data faster. The merger offers the companies' AI products "substantial scale" and more visibility into data, they said in Thursday's statement.
The deal is also arguably just as much a bet on artificial intelligence as it is on the business of software and data security. Earlier this year, Splunk announced a new line of AI offerings that it said would, among other things, allow companies to detect and respond to anomalies in their data faster. The merger offers the companies' AI products "substantial scale" and more visibility into data, they said in Thursday's statement.
Splunk, not knowing who Splunk is. (Score:1)
"The deal is also arguably just as much a bet on artificial intelligence as it is on the business of software and data security. Earlier this year, Splunk announced a new line of AI offerings that it said would, among other things, allow companies to detect and respond to anomalies in their data faster."
This is Splunk not knowing who they are or why they exist, since that statement was their sales pitch before "AI" was a viral buzzword abused to hype products to suckers.
Not saying Splunk doesn't have value. Just saying I can't believe that's all it took to invest billions in an "AI-powered" data set that's hardly proving those words true.
Re:Splunk, not knowing who Splunk is. (Score:5, Insightful)
Funnily enough I used Splunk at Cisco ages ago. I didn't see that much value in it at the time. All our systems were identical so we were able to really tune down our log entries to the essentials.
I think it's better to be proactive in your approach rather than letting logs pile up and sifting through them with AI.
Re:Splunk, not knowing who Splunk is. (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember the tech hype of the late 1990s where people invested in companies JUST BECAUSE THEY HAD A WEBSITE ?
Need I say more ?
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Remember the tech hype of the late 1990s where people invested in companies JUST BECAUSE THEY HAD A WEBSITE ?
Need I say more ?
One of the most laughable was when K-Tel announced they'd be selling their "as seen on TV" records online. The stock jumped some ridiculous amount for a few days.
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Remember the tech hype of the late 1990s where people invested in companies JUST BECAUSE THEY HAD A WEBSITE ?
Need I say more ?
"Investors" called that era the dot com at first. Two decades later we accurately refer to it as the dot bomb for a reason.
No, you shouldn't need to say more, but apparently you always do to a species hell bent on repeating the worst of their mistakes.
Greed is a helluva drug.
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I remember Splunk as the first company ever to place a Flash advertisement on Slashdot.
Cisco, not knowing who Cisco is :) (Score:3, Insightful)
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The Dow Jones is really excited by this deal, Cisco is down by over 4% from yesterday.
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The Dow Jones is really excited by this deal, Cisco is down by over 4% from yesterday.
Palo Alto Networks is down by 6% today
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It is common for the buyer to go down and the seller to go up after an announcement.
It may be a dumb buy at that price but the market drop is not an indicator.
Bad move for Cisco (Score:5, Informative)
Splunk is grossly overrated and excessively expensive for what it offers. I really don't see the appeal. I agree it looks great when demoed, but I've seen several corporations who moved to it complain about how expensive it is and how performing some queries can cost $30+ to perform. So now they try NOT to use it because it costs too much. Its like getting a Ferrari to go grocery shopping and then complaining about the bad milage it gets. Its dumb on multiple levels.
Its also is nearly impossible to get the actual results of a search beyond the first few hits. So its basically like having Google say there are 300k+ results for your search but only lets you see them 10 at a time. If you actually want to see all 300k, good luck.
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"Splunk is grossly overrated and excessively expensive for what it offers"
For a long time I've heard it referred to as Splunk HSE, for Holy Shit Expensive
Re:Bad move for Cisco (Score:5, Insightful)
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Splunk is no Ferarri, it is more a of a NHRA Jr. Drag Racer. It is pretty quick in a short straight line, but not a great general purpose commuter vehicle and it is also not what the pros drive.
Nice analogy - and pretty accurate also, based on my past experiences with Splunk.
The appeal is standardization (Score:2)
Techy Folks always forget about training costs when they look at software expenses. Like that city that tried switching to Linux and gave up not because it didn't work but because they suddenly had to bump their training budget through the roof.
For the
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Indeed. Training is everything.
At the local DMV, the woman tells me they have a new system so she's going to be slow (no kidding). She asks for some info, types it in and sits there staring at the screen for a good 10+ seconds until I politely ask if she needs to hit enter to get to the next section.
Thank god she took it well instead of flagging my car as stolen or something.
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But think of the customers they're buying in the deal. Ready to spend and not too careful with their budget.
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Splunk is grossly overrated and excessively expensive for what it offers. I really don't see the appeal.
So you're saying that Cisco has fallen prey to the splunk cost fallacy.
Splunk is not what it wanted to be (Score:5, Informative)
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Large corporations with big data centers were generating tons of logs from firewalls, routers, and IDS/IPS systems that Splunk could grind through looking for possible trouble. That is their revenue stream and is what Cisco is buying. It is also a limited, already mined market which is why Splunk is selling.
And, if I might be so bold...it's where Cisco *could* make a synergy happen here. If they bake the useful Splunk components into their Meraki gear, it makes it way more palatable. My company's avoided going down the Meraki road because the recurring costs aren't worth it vs. other vendors for most of our clients, but if it was able to bake a streamlined version of the logging components into the management portal and make it possible to be checkbox compliant with SIEM requirements automatically, that would
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Ban them now FFS
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Cisco/Splunk stock holder.
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Never heard of splunk, thanks for the info and sorry for the idiot troll.
AI - (Score:1)
the new crypto.
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Um... (Score:1)
All board the hype train! (Score:2)
We've got more than enough AI for you to spend all your money on!
And folks, if the says AI, you know it must be worth every penny!
The next big fraud (Score:2)
Interesting to learn that our technology overlords can't recognize that what is currently being touted as "AI" is simply the next big fraud/grift/pyramid scheme, following right on the heels of "crypto". Good for the early investors in the company that got bought out I guess.
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Do you consider NFT a subset of crypto or its own scam?
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It is its own scam, the ugly child of the '"intellectual" "property"' scam and the crypto scam.
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That's a really interesting question; I can't think of answer that doesn't include its own counterargument. Personally I would say NFT was a separate scam that used some technology from the cryptocurrency fraud world, just as the growth of the telephone network allowed the creation of scams that used the telephone but were not based on it.
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Cool, thanks. I was at an NFT place for a while. The thing I thought was interesting was the huge number of NFT transactions that were done in eth. Not cash, not bitcoin. The NFT crowd seemed to prefer eth over everything else for whatever reasons. Without eth or similar I wonder if NFTs would ever have been a thing or at least much smaller.
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The NFT crowd seemed to prefer eth over everything else for whatever reasons.
Because eth allows you to make automated contracts. Making an NFT on Bitcoin is a lot harder.
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Makes sense. Thanks. I wasn't on that side of the company and frankly didn't really care to know. It was all pretty obviously a house of cards so I only learned the parts I absolutely needed to. And yes that company is long ago dead, no surprise.
The psychological part was fascinating, though. The others I worked with all really truly believed in this stuff. Cult isn't quite the right word but close enough.
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That's the end of splunk then (Score:2)
Splunk license cost (Score:2)
And we finally know the cost of that splunk license ðY
Someone's getting fired (Score:2)
Yikes, RIP Cisco, not that anyone will miss you...
Fastest way to ruin a piece of software... (Score:2)
...is for Cisco to buy it. It's where good products go to die.