Merritt views Splunk's independence from the major cloud players as a huge asset. AWS helped Splunk, but it can't stick with one cloudĪmazon Web Services, led by CEO Andy Jassy, has a been a strategic partner for Splunk, but the company isn't relying on a single cloud vendor. Still, Splunk doesn't plan to stop supporting hybrid or mixed cloud and physical server environments: "I've rarely seen any trend be 100% one way or the other, and as exciting as cloud is, and we're 150% committed to it, there will always be components that will be on-prem," Merritt said. Some of the most cloud apprehensive companies, including in financial services, telecom, and automotive manufacturing, had a breakthrough, telling Merritt, "The only thing that really is working for us is the applications and teams that we have on the public cloud infrastructure," he said. The pandemic served as the impetus for even those companies to start using the cloud, which in turn meant they needed security and analytics tools like Splunk's. Tech companies, as well as "aggressive federal government agencies" like the Department of Defense and CIA, were among the first to adopt cloud technologies and recognize the need for Splunk's products, Merritt said.Įven so, there are plenty of companies still using mainframe computers and other types of legacy systems. Some of those changes led to revenue dips and alarm from Wall Street, despite all its cloud business growth. A bumpy modernization and cloud journeyĪs part of its modernization journey, Merritt said Splunk needed to adjust its pricing model, customer go-to market strategy, and update accounting methods to align with a subscription-based revenue model. The recent hire of a senior executive from Amazon Web Services speaks to the company's confidence in the public sector as it races to take advantage of pandemic-driven momentum in tech modernization. On top of soon adding Microsoft to its cloud partner program, it plans to continue going after enterprises slower to adopt cloud, as well as government IT deals under President Biden's tech modernization and cybersecurity initiatives. Now, with hopefully the rockiest period of its cloud transition behind it, Splunk has big plans for the rest of the year. More recently, shares tumbled when CTO Tim Tully - who was instrumental in its cloud transition and orchestrated a series of critical M&A deals - left the company earlier this month. While the pandemic accelerated overall cloud growth, the company has faced challenges: Splunk reported revenues slipping 5% year-over-year to $2.23 billion in its most recent fiscal year - but cloud revenues jumped up 77% over the same period to $554 million.Īs of market close on Friday, Splunk was trading for about $130 a share, down from its 52-week high of around $226. Last year, it announced a partnership with Google Cloud, and Merritt says Microsoft Azure is next.īut the road to cloud hasn't been easy - since Splunk went public in 2012, its ups and downs have all been in the public eye. Now valued around $22 billion, Splunk went all-in on Amazon Web Services as part of its cloud transition, both in terms of supporting Amazon's cloud customers and in building its own products on the retail giant's cloud platform. In an interview with Insider, he acknowledged Splunk was "behind the curve" when it came to moving from on-premise to the cloud, but a year ago, became a "fully cloud-first" company - with a cyber liability engineering team, a cloud ops team, and regularly-updated cloud products. ![]() Merritt's background is in enterprise software - he led products and solutions marketing at Cisco, and held executive roles at SAP and PeopleSoft, which was bought by Oracle. The company helps IT professionals sift through and analyze enormous amounts of performance and system data in their networks, and later found that its product was a key tool for security professionals, who needed monitoring and visibility into their companies' infrastructure.ĬEO Doug Merritt has been charged with Splunk's aggressive transition to cloud since taking on the role six years ago.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |