Networking giant Cisco Systems Inc. has announced the $28 billion acquisition of digital infrastructure firm Splunk, claiming the deal would enable it to "supercharge" and transform its customer service through artificial intelligence (AI).

According to The Register, the announcement was made public in a regulatory filing on Monday, confirming Cisco's earlier suggestion that the purchase might close in the first quarter of 2024. It happened at a time when many large mergers were being blocked or delayed by regulators. 

Strengthening Portfolios of Cisco

In a press release, Cisco said the acquisition of Splunk makes the networking giant one of the largest software companies in the world.

Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins and former Splunk CEO Gary Steele, who will now serve as Cisco's executive vice president and general manager of Splunk, laid out an integration strategy for the two companies' products.

"Over the next several months, we intend to incorporate Cisco's Talos threat intelligence into Splunk," the duo said. 

This effort is expected to standardize their AI security assistants so that security analysts may use the same tools to solve problems and complete jobs across the board.

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Splunk's Market-Leading SIEM and SOAR Platform

Robbins and Steele also announced plans "to enable Splunk's market-leading SIEM and SOAR platform to utilize cloud, network, and endpoint analytics available from Cisco's security portfolio, enabling new ways for customers to detect, investigate, and respond to threats that can only be identified via lateral movement in the network."

Developing an observability platform that can connect to several clouds is also in the works.

In addition, the two executives said that Cisco would prioritize developing and distributing top-tier integrations between its own and Splunk's products.

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