Survey: Observability tools can create more resilient, secure networks

IT leaders are investing in observability technologies that can help them gain greater visibility beyond internal networks and build more resilient environments, according to recent research from Splunk.

Splunk, which Cisco announced it would acquire for $28 billion, surveyed 1,750 observability practitioners to gauge investment and deployment of observability products as well as commitment to observability projects within their IT environments. According to the vendor’s State of Observability 2023 report, 87% of respondents now employ specialists who work exclusively on observability projects.

In the big picture, observability plans are part of a larger effort among many IT leaders who are working toward building more resilient environments that can recover quickly from incidents and remediating security threats faster.

Both Splunk and Cisco offer products that can deliver greater visibility into enterprise environements. Splunk’s software platform is known for its ability to search, monitor, and analyze data from a variety of systems spanning network and security components. Cisco expects to bring those capabilities and more to its security portfolio. Cisco also offers observability capabilities through its ThousandEyes division.

“Our combined capabilities will create an end-to-end data platform to enhance digital resiliency,” Chuck Robbins, chair and CEO of Cisco, told analysts during a call about Cisco’s Splunk acquisition, which is set to close by the third quarter of 2024.

In the Splunk survey, 79% of respondents say they fear that failure to become resilient will cause them to lose customers due to an outage, and 74% report that they worry they will be out innovated by competitors due to lost productivity. In addition, “95% of respondents say that their observability leaders are actively collaborating more with line-of-business leaders on resilience strategies, priorities, and investments than just a year ago,” the report states.