Splunk has been having some revenue difficulties after some initial successes during the start of the Pandemic. After a few disappointing earnings reports, Doug Merritt stepped down as CEO. This leaves Splunk in a vulnerable position and open to a buyout. If investors are not confident that existing or new leadership can right the course of the company things could get ugly fast.
Cisco, for their part are always in the hunt for technologies they can integrate into their existing product line. Grabbing Splunk would allow them to expand this into the SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) realm more than they already are and with a widely accepted product. The question would be, will Cisco leave enough of Splunk to keep the fanbase happy?
The news about Cisco show that large companies are looking to consolidate their reach and penetration into the market. This consolidation could have unforeseen consequences to the security landscape. In short, this type of move can make things easier for attackers as the compromise of a single vendor stack has wide reaching impacts.
That aside, we do expect to see more announcements like this as some companies look to recover from overspeculation caused by early performance during the start of the Pandemic. Security is going to be a major spend in the next few years, but it is not going to be the mad consumption that we saw in early 2020 when money was being thrown around without a lot of thought on what the purchases were resolving. The market also needs to adjust as buyers are looking to recover from the economic impacts they incurred during the pandemic as well.
It is going to be an interesting time in the security world for the next 10-18 months from everything we are seeing.
