Guest Blog: Cisco Technical Marketing Engineer Karthik Karupasamy highlights his experiences from Splunk's recent .conf2016 event in Orlando, FL.

What an amazing week I had at Splunk's annual user conference,. conf2016! This is the second year I attended and it just keeps getting better. This year the focus was on delivering operational intelligence by leveraging machine data with a particular focus on machine learning.

I really enjoyed meeting so many folks face-to-face who I had previously only interacted with via telephone or WebEx. I was very happy to share how Splunk and Cisco are paving the way to digital transformation with our programmable UCS infrastructure and the Cisco + Splunk integrations around operational intelligence & security analytics. Together Cisco and Splunk help organizations derive hidden insights from their machine data, whether it's from a little VM, a container, a data center switch, an application server, or a sensor hidden deep in an underground tunnel.

At .conf2016, I co-presented with Splunk's Brian Wooden. In our talk, we highlighted the benefits and long term value of deploying Splunk Enterprise on the Cisco UCS Integrated Infrastructure for Big Data, our strong partnership with Splunk and about how you can effectivelysplunkthe UCS infrastructure using the Cisco UCS App.  During my presentation I announced the release of a new version of UCS Director Express for Big Data with support for Splunk. Check out this video that shows how easily UCS Director Express provisions the entire Splunk cluster (8 indexers, search head cluster with 3 search heads, and an admin node with cluster master, DMC, deployer and license manager functions) -access the video here (1:31).

This further demonstrates the extent of our partnership with Splunk. Check out the breadth and depth of Cisco and Splunk integrations below (over 20).

Here are some other highlights:

1. Cisco won the inauguralSplunk Partner Revolution Awardat .conf2016! This recognizes Cisco's role in enabling customers to make a difference through their innovative use of Splunk software in their organizations.
2. Splunk Enterprise 6.5 -I am particularly excited about these new features that were made available with this release.
   1. Data rebalancing -Rebalance indexer data across all available indexers achieving even data distribution and optimal utilization of available physical resources in the indexers.
   2. Hadoop data roll -Migrate historical data to Hadoop without loss of functionality. This feature brings two major big data technologies together -Hadoop and Splunk to help customers gain even better value from their infrastructure.
   3. Machine Learning Toolkit that puts machine learning to work on your machine data.
3. We updated the Cisco UCS reference architecture for Splunk enterprise and the Cisco Validated Design (CVD) which now includes the guide to automating the deployment of a Distributed Splunk Enterprise cluster using Cisco UCS Director Express for Big data.

That's not all, check out these eBooks and blogs for more:

• Operational Intelligence at scale(eBook).
• Big Data for Dummies (eBook)
• Real-Time Operational Visibility for Cisco Collaboration Tools with Splunk (blog by Friea Berg).
• Digital Transformation, Big Data, and Cisco (blog by Raghunath Nambiar).
• Cisco Loves Big Data and They Can't Lie (blog by Robert Novak).
• Cisco and Splunk Deliver IT and Security Analytics (blog by Gary Serda).

For more information on Cisco's Big Data and Analytics architectures and solutions, please access these resources:

Cisco Big Data Portal 
Cisco UCS Big Data Design Zone
The Business Value of Cisco UCS Integrated Infrastructure for Big Data