Splunk enters hardware market using trusted partners

Splunk has entered the hardware market opting to work with a select number of authorised partners to get its technology delivered with high levels of support to customers.

The cyber security and observability player has announced the launch of its Splunk Edge Hub, which will enable users to stream more information to the vendor’s platform.

The introduction of the hardware will allow more monitoring, investigation of a customer’s network and response as users look for greater levels of protection.

Availability is limited to the US at this stage, but there are plans to roll out the offering to EMEA and APAC in the future.

“The only way to truly improve resilience is to be able to see everything going on within your organisation,” said Tom Casey, senior vice-president and general manager of products and technology at Splunk.

“Edge Hub is breaking down barriers and providing access to data that has historically been difficult to extract and integrate, to empower our customers with a level of visibility they have never had before. Our partners can use Splunk Edge Hub to build even more solutions across a multitude of industries that are tailor-made to their needs,” he added.

Splunk is starting to appoint Edge Hub Partners, with around eight listed online, with its portal, pointing out it is looking for “industry-rich domain experts, Splunk ninjas, [and] trusted brands” that will be trained, certified and authorised to make sure customers get the highest levels of expertise and support.

Splunk provided responses from those that will be selling the hardware and those that plan to use it, with partners expressing the view that it would provide them with more to offer users.

“At GrayMatter, we know getting business insight from your data is a challenge,” said Kemell Kassim, vice-president of cyber at GreyMatter. “Partnering with Splunk allows us to facilitate data collection for customers and integrate in an easily consumable way.”

Edge computing has become one of the buzzwords across the industry and has been embraced by many customers, but it has created some challenges in monitoring information that is coming in ever larger quantities.

Splunk is hoping that, when combined with its software, it will arm partners with the ability to monitor environmental conditions to avoid problems caused by high temperatures; allow some predictive analytics to identify which areas of a business will need support ahead of problems emerging; help link IT and OT more closely through a single platform; and give the opportunity for custom solutions to emerge for key verticals, particularly those where it has been difficult to extract data.

Jason Oney, president of Strategic Maintenance Solutions, said that the ability to monitor the complete customer environment, IT and OT, was an attractive one: “The Edge Hub enables us to provide our customers with an end-to-end solution for accessing industrial sensor, maintenance, and operations data at scale.

“With minimal configuration needed, data can now be seamlessly streamed into the Splunk platform, allowing our customers to quickly start down the industrial transformation journey.”