Splunk Partners Seeing More Opportunities, Channel Resources Amid Ongoing Cisco Integration
Cisco and Splunk continue to integrate their product portfolios and their channel operations following Cisco’s $28 billion acquisition of Splunk last year. Based on interviews with Splunk executives and partners at this week’s Splunk .conf25 event, here’s a deeper dive into where those efforts stand and what partners have to say about the progress so far.
In the wake of Cisco Systems’ blockbuster acquisition of Splunk last year, Splunk channel partners are still working through the details of how the integration of the two companies—and especially their channel operations and programs—is shaking out even as they extol the potential opportunities and additional partner resources they see coming their way.
Splunk, meanwhile, continues to operate its Splunk Partnerverse Program even as Splunk and Cisco integrate their channel operations 18 months after the acquisition was completed in March 2024, according to executives at the Splunk .conf25 customer and partner event in Boston this week.
The Upshot: While the Splunk business unit retains a channel organization, it is being more tightly integrated into Cisco’s channel organization.
Splunk will no longer have its own channel chief: Tim Coogan, Cisco senior vice president, global partner sales, is now channel chief for all Cisco partner operations, including Splunk. Gretchen O’Hara, vice president of worldwide partners and alliances at Splunk for the last three years, will be leaving the company, Splunk executives said this week.
And the Splunk Partnerverse partner program will be merged into the new Cisco 360 Partner Program sometime after that program’s scheduled launch on Feb. 1, 2026. But within that program Splunk will continue as its own business unit or Cisco “portfolio” with a dedicated Splunk Partner Value Index.
All this comes as Splunk and Cisco continue to integrate their technology and product portfolios to leverage the potential synergies around observability and security – especially for AI and agentic AI applications. At this week’s .conf25, for example, Splunk unveiled the Cisco Data Fabric, a platform based on Splunk Enterprise and Splunk Cloud, for handling machine data at scale and leveraging that data for AI tasks such as training custom AI models and powering agentic workflows.
Also demonstrated at .conf25 was the integration of Splunk Cloud with Cisco’s upcoming Cisco AI Canvas, an agentic AI system for IT operations that Cisco debuted at Cisco Live in June.
“We are very in sync with what our partners need,” said Kamal Hathi, senior vice president and general manager of the Splunk business unit, in an interview with CRN at .conf25, speaking about the latest innovations around the Splunk platform and the Splunk-Cisco integration roadmap.
Hathi (pictured during his .conf25 keynote) described the relationship between the combined company, its channel partners and partners’ customers as “a very closely correlated ecosystem” and “a symbiotic system” for co-development. And he stressed the role of Splunk’s products as a “versatile” platform that creates opportunities for partners to build solutions for vertical industries and custom solutions for customers, especially around observability and security.
That plan was on full display this week with the launch of the Cisco Data Fabric, which uses the Splunk platform as its foundation, as well as other new developments announced this week including new federated data search capabilities through Splunk integration with the Snowflake data cloud. “That’s another great partner play,” Hathi said.
Partner Views On The Technology Direction
Partners at Splunk .conf25 applauded the Cisco-Splunk technology blueprint.
Solution provider Blackwood, a leading Splunk partner that does about $180 million in annual Splunk-related business, has focused primarily on cybersecurity and data analytics. The company was not a Cisco partner prior to the acquisition, but President Ryan Morris sees a lot of “natural synergy” and opportunities with Splunk-Cisco product integrations, noting that “Cisco has such a broad range of technologies” and that “the entire world uses Cisco,” he said in an interview with CRN at .conf25.
Morris understands the Splunk vision of using its platform in conjunction with Cisco technology to provide a supporting architecture for AI and agentic workloads and how those workloads will integrate with other systems, agents and people. He also sees a big role for Splunk in providing observability for agentic systems. But he thinks Splunk’s plans to position its platform as a hub for federated data architectures will have a bigger impact in the more immediate future.
“We’re excited to see the progress of the acquisition and how [Splunk and Cisco] are building AI into their products so we can help our customers,” said Matt Clemmons, strategic director of the Splunk Division at TekStream Solutions, an Atlanta-based strategic consulting, managed services and solutions provider that partners with Splunk.
He said TekStream clients have been asking for joint Splunk-Cisco solutions such as the Cisco Data Fabric, AI Canvas and federated data search. “These are really positive, in our eyes,” he said in an interview with CRN.
TekStream’s expertise is in security, observability and IT operations and Judd Robins, TekStream co-founder and executive vice president, said in the same interview that he sees the value in Splunk’s plans to introduce more AI into the company’s security and observability offerings. Clemmons said those plans are complementary to the AI capabilities TekStream is already building into its solutions.
Chicago-based Evolutio has long worked with both Splunk and Cisco as the foundation of its observability practice. With Cisco’s AppDynamics observability platform now under the Splunk umbrella, “We now have a bigger role in Splunk’s future, Splunk’s strategy,” said Laura Vetter, Evolutio co-founder and CTO, in an interview with CRN.
“Cisco sees observability as a growth area and Evolutio has the expertise,” added George Nassopoulos, vice president of strategic partnerships at Evolutio, in the interview. And as Splunk goes deeper into AI and agentic AI, Nassopoulos expects the company will partner closely with Evolutio “to help clients innovate in this area.” (At .conf25 Evolutio was named the 2025 Splunk Global Technology Innovation Partner of the Year.)
Vetter, meanwhile, is onboard with Splunk’s belief that AI is going to produce “an explosion of machine data” that the Splunk platform is well-positioned to take advantage of. And she likes “the thought leadership” the company is showing in terms of using machine data to train AI models.
Splunk Partner Operations, Program Evolution Continues
Splunk’s channel organization and its Partnerverse partner program, meanwhile, continue to evolve. The new Cisco 360 Partner Program is slated to launch on Feb. 1, 2026, with Splunk Partnerverse fully merging with that program sometime after that, according to details provided by a company spokesperson. A key component of Cisco 360 is the Partner Value Index that will measure partners across four areas: foundational, capabilities, performance and engagement.
Within the Cisco 360 Partner Program Splunk will start as its own “portfolio” group with a dedicated Splunk Partner Value Index, according to the spokesperson, a move designed to protect existing Splunk partner investments. Rebates to reward sourcing for net-new Splunk customers will continue through fiscal 2026.
Partnerverse badges will be recognized within the Cisco partner program, including badges for Splunk Observability Solutions, IT Service Intelligence, Security Solutions, Enterprise Security Solutions, and SOAR. And those badges will be promoted as specializations in the Cisco Partner Finder.
While Tim Coogan is the channel chief for Cisco and all of its portfolios, including Splunk, Splunk’s partner operations are under the management of Frank Dimina, Splunk senior vice president and chief revenue officer, and Scott Powers, Splunk group vice president, customer and channel strategy, and chief of staff.
Dimina is a 10-year Splunk veteran who was senior vice president and general manager for the Americas before assuming his current post in April. He is part of the executive team (along with Kamal Hathi) that manages the Splunk business unit, and he manages Splunk global channel organization—which just last month was integrated with Cisco’s global partner organization. (Dimina reports to Cisco Chief Sales Officer Oliver Tuszik.)
“It’s a great time to integrate and get the best of both worlds and access to all [of Cisco’s] resources, like Cisco’s obviously tremendous scale compared to ours when it comes to the channels,” Dimina said in an interview with CRN at .conf25, noting that Cisco does 90 percent of its business through the channel. “You’ve never had a more partner-friendly environment.”
“They have a huge partner organization, it’s globally established and it can reach markets we’re not in yet, which is fantastic,” he said. “We’re investing in international markets, Cisco’s already established with partners in all those markets. Then you think about the scale factor. Cisco has enormous amounts of market development funds that they can invest in partners.”
Dimina put great emphasis on the need for partners to develop Splunk practices with deep technical skills—something he said Splunk can now do on a bigger scale leveraging Cisco resources.
“To keep customers and to grow customers, you need to have what we call a Splunk practice. You need to have technical skills. You need to be able to help customers with adoption…and Cisco can help them build those practices. It’s another example of Cisco’s scaling resources being an advantage to us. We were too small to say, ‘Hey, we’re gonna go and invest in hundreds of partners now,’” he said of pre-acquisition Splunk.
“I was stunned at how much channel resources they offer,” TekStream’s Robins said after learning about what Cisco’s partner program provides. He also sees “a massive opportunity” for long-time Splunk partners to sell into Cisco’s huge customer base. And he said TekStream is interested in adding Cisco’s security product portfolio to its own offerings.
Dimina noted that as Splunk and Cisco have been integrating their product portfolios and channel operations, they have sought feedback from regional partner advisory councils. “And a lot of those conversations [were about], as we evolve [Cisco] 360, how we make sure Splunk partners aren’t left behind and that the program works for them too.”
TekStream, a member of Splunk’s Partner Advisory Council, has been one of the company’s partners working to provide the partner perspective throughout the Cisco integration. (At .conf25 Atlanta-based TekStream was named Splunk’s Global Joint Selling Partner of the Year.)
Opportunities For Both Splunk And Cisco Partners
Cisco and Splunk have, between them, 1,245 solution providers that overlap as partners with both companies. But one of the key initiatives of the newly integrated Cisco-Splunk entity is to encourage more of Cisco’s legions of partners, particularly those with expertise in security and observability, to develop Splunk practices.
“We’re working very closely with Tim Coogan. Some of the first conversations I’ve had with him is, ‘What else can we do? How can we develop? How do we move faster in helping those top Cisco partners who want to develop Splunk practices.’ And you’re already seeing some of that,” Dimina said.
Robins said TekStream sees big opportunities to work cooperatively with global solution providers that are long-time Cisco partners, such as World Wide Technology, ePlus and Presidio, but may not have deep Splunk practices.
Nassopoulos at Evolutio likewise praised efforts by Cisco and Splunk to foster partner-to-partner cooperation. “Cisco sees observability as a growth area and Evolutio has the expertise,” he said.
Scott Powers, who reports to Dimina, said that Cisco’s security business is eager to recruit Splunk partners to work with the Cisco security product portfolio.
Ryan Morris said Blackwood has recently become a Cisco partner and “we’re ready to see how we fit into the Cisco ecosystem.” Anecdotally, he related how he now joins company calls that include both Cisco and Splunk partner representatives and channel managers, and he sees them working together more today than in the days immediately following the acquisition.
And Splunk partners have nothing to fear from the move to Cisco 360 metrics, Powers said. “There is very little culture shock with the [Cisco] 360 criteria,” he said, noting that partners are rewarded for technical skills and for providing long-term service and support for customers—something Splunk solution providers excel at, he said.
Morris at Blackwood, headquartered in Annapolis, Md., agreed. Cisco 360 “is a very clear statement by Cisco” that partner value is being judged on customer outcomes and partners being “continuously involved” throughout the customer lifecycle.
Ultimately, the task ahead for Cisco and Splunk is to “remove any friction” in terms of products, partners and support while leveraging their synergies, Splunk SVP and GM Hathi, told CRN.
“We want to amplify the fact that these two companies can win and can offer industry-leading solutions,” he said. “Ultimately, Cisco and Splunk are one company.”