.conf23: Splunk Rolls Out Observability, Security, AI-Powered Products

Splunk adds an AI assistant to its platform as well as new observability and security capabilities for IT and OT operations.

Sean Michael Kerner, Contributor

July 18, 2023

4 Min Read
magnifying glass hovering over Spunk website
Alamy

Splunk is growing its product platform with new IT operations observability, security, and artificial intelligence innovations, which it announced at its .conf23 event today in Las Vegas.

The announcements include Splunk Edge Hub, an embedded device that streams industrial and internet of things (IoT) sensor data into Splunk; new AI-powered features under the Splunk AI branding; and innovations for Splunk's security and observability products.

The goal of the new products is to provide customers with a unified set of tools that help teams detect, investigate, and respond to incidents across hybrid IT environments.

Casey pulled quote

Casey-Splunk

The new platform features include:

  • Splunk Edge Hub: This solution is designed to help organizations monitor environmental conditions, perform predictive analytics to identify anomalies in manufacturing processes, and achieve more visibility across IT and operational technology (OT) environments.

  • Splunk AI assistant: The new Splunk AI assistant is designed to help users get better access and usage of the Splunk platform overall.

  • Splunk AIOpsupdates: Splunk is upgrading AIOps across its platform with a series of updates, including the IT Service Intelligence 4.17 release that integrates machine learning assisted thresholding to enhance the precision of alerting.

  • Machine Learning Toolkits: Splunk Machine Learning Toolkit (MLTK) 5.4 and Splunk App for Data Science and Deep Learning (DSDL) 5.1 provide a foundational set of machine learning capabilities to enable enterprises to build customized workflows.

  • Security: The Splunk App for Anomaly Detection offers SecOps, ITOps, and engineering teams a seamless, end-to-end operational workflow, streamlining and automating the process of anomaly detection in their environment.

Related:Splunk State of Observability 2023 Research Reveals Fewer Outages

"To be very clear, Splunk is focused on delivering solutions across both security and observability," said Tom Casey, senior vice president of products and technology at Splunk, during a media briefing.

"That helps security operations, IT operations, and engineering teams accelerate the detection, investigation, and response to incidents no matter what type of incidents they are, how they originate, and how they resolve."

Splunk Edge Hub Extends Observability to Operational Technology

Splunk Edge Hub is a new hardware and software solution that brings the power of Splunk to an expanded set of use cases in manufacturing, industrial energy management, and other IoT environments, according to Casey.

Splunk Edge Hub is an embedded device that streams data from onboard and external sensors directly into Splunk.

Related:Observability vs. Monitoring: Who Needs Which When?

"It breaks down barriers and silos that historically made it difficult to extract and integrate data from your operating environment," Casey said.

The device can monitor things like temperature, vibration, and humidity to identify issues before they impact production lines or operating environments. The goal is to help organizations save both time and money while keeping operations running safely and smoothly.

Splunk Boosts IT Observability and Security

Splunk is also introducing new product innovations for its security and observability platform.

Notable new features include Splunk Attack Analyzer to streamline malware analysis, an open telemetry collector, and unified identity for Splunk Cloud and Observability Cloud. Platform enhancements focus on managing data at the edge and gaining aggregated insights.

"These product advancements provide security operations, ITOps, and engineering teams with a unified set of dashboards, workflows, and experiences," Casey said.

AI Comes to Splunk

Finally, Splunk will introduce Splunk AI, a collection of AI-powered offerings that enhance the security and observability platform.

"Splunk AI includes an AI assistant, anomaly detection updates, and machine learning models baked into products," Casey said. "Our AI solutions leverage machine learning, natural language processing, and large language models."

Casey said Splunk AI focuses on recommendations to help teams focus on important tasks while keeping the human in the loop.

"Our AI solutions leverage machine learning right now natural language processing large language models," said Casey. "This is critical to our expertise, the expertise of our customers in security and observability. So that we can help the teams that are responsible for security IT operations and engineering really focus on the most important tasks, boost their productivity, and reduce costs."

About the Author(s)

Sean Michael Kerner

Contributor

Sean Michael Kerner is an IT consultant, technology enthusiast and tinkerer. He consults to industry and media organizations on technology issues.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanmkerner/

Sign up for the ITPro Today newsletter
Stay on top of the IT universe with commentary, news analysis, how-to's, and tips delivered to your inbox daily.

You May Also Like