Partners Are the Strategy: Momentum and Opportunity After Cisco Live 2025

At Cisco Live 2025, our global community came together to connect, innovate, and accelerate our shared momentum. The event was packed with major announcements—from AI-native infrastructure to cutting-edge security advancements—but what stood out most was this: everything we’re building at Splunk and Cisco is designed to amplify the value of our partners.

Whether you joined us in person or virtually, you saw it firsthand: partners aren’t just part of our strategy—you are the strategy. And the innovation we unveiled has one clear goal: to help you lead, grow, and win in today’s fast-moving market.

AI-Native Infrastructure: Built for Scale, Built for Partners

AI took center stage at Cisco Live—and for good reason. We’re in the midst of a once-in-a-generation shift, as businesses race to integrate AI into every layer of their operations. Cisco’s new AI-native platform—spanning networking to security—is purpose-built for this moment.

But here’s what matters most to our partner community: AI is a services-led opportunity. You now have access to an integrated, partner-ready stack designed to help you design, deploy, and optimize AI-powered solutions across any industry or architecture. With innovations like the Cisco Nexus HyperFabric AI clusters and AI-enriched observability tools, you can help customers build modern, secure infrastructure for AI—while unlocking new revenue streams in services, software, and lifecycle engagements.

Even more importantly, Splunk partners gain access to end-to-end resilience powered by AI—while keeping humans in the loop. This means your customers get systems that are not only intelligent and adaptive but also transparent, accountable, and built with human oversight at their core. In a world where trust and uptime are essential, this balance becomes your strategic edge.

We also saw Splunk featured prominently in groundbreaking partner solutions designed for AI, business observability, and collaboration. For example:

• HCL’s iControl powered by Splunk delivers deep, real-time visibility into business operations through an integrated observability solution—critical for AI-driven decision making.
• Accenture’s Continuum Control Plane powered by Splunk helps organizations boost productivity, optimize costs, and enable agility through agentic technology—pushing AI innovation well beyond domain-specific views.
• A highlight on the show floor: an AI-powered anomaly inspection system and a guitar-tuning cobot, all integrated with Cyber Vision, Splunk Edge Hub, and the new IE3500 and IE3100H industrial switches, delivering visibility, security, and real-time analytics at the edge.

Security: Partners Lead the Charge

New integrations showcased at Cisco Live deepen these capabilities, including:

• Red Hat’s Event-Driven Ansible Add-On for Splunk, which lets customers automatically trigger Ansible playbooks in response to security events or operational issues—turning insight into action with zero delay.
• Kollective Technology’s new integration with Splunk, which delivers collaboration observability for Microsoft Teams—giving IT and network operations teams end-to-end visibility into digital collaboration experiences.

For partners, this is more than a new set of tools—it’s a platform for differentiation. Whether you're a managed services provider, security integrator, or value-add reseller, Cisco’s security and observability strategy is built to support how you deliver value: scalable, integrated, and outcome-driven.

What Comes Next: Innovate, Secure, and Scale

As we move into FY26, we see three key priorities for our partner community:

• Embrace AI and Automation: Build outcome-driven practices with Cisco’s AI-native infrastructure and the Splunk platform.
• Lead with Security: Protect customers across hybrid, multicloud, and edge environments with our unified security architecture.
• Expand with Observability: Monetize lifecycle and services with tools and programs that help deepen customer relationships well beyond the initial sale.

A New Chapter: Evolving with Confidence

The opportunity ahead is clear: Splunk partners have every reason to feel confident and optimistic. As we integrate the Splunk Partnerverse into the Cisco 360 Partner Program, we’re doing so with deep respect for the investments you’ve already made.

The core principles of the Splunk Partnerverse Program — value over volume, deep expertise, and outcome-driven selling — align seamlessly with the Cisco 360 Partner Value Index. You’re not starting over. You’re building on a strong foundation, designed to elevate your role in the Cisco ecosystem.

This isn’t a reinvention. It’s a natural evolution. You won’t need to reframe your business to succeed — you’ll gain new ways to grow, scale, and lead in a broader, AI-powered market. Your investment is recognized, your value is clear — and we’re just getting started.

Thank you to every partner who made Cisco Live 2025 a success. You continue to inspire us, challenge us, and push us to move faster. We’re proud to be on this journey with you.

Cisco Live may be over, but the insights live on—explore the on-demand library to watch sessions from the event.