Splunk CEO Doug Merritt plans push to put Splunk data analytics at the heart of every business process

Merritt touts Splunk's "enterprise machine-data fabric" in bid to put the company's technology at the centre of every organisation

Splunk CEO Doug Merritt today outlined his vision for the company at his keynote speech at the company's seventh annual conference, .conf2016, focusing on the importance of machine learning and machine data - as well as pitching Splunk as key not just to the analysis of operational IT and security data, but data drawn from every activity in a typical organisation.

"What's the future of Splunk? Where are we taking you next?" asked Merritt. "There's been a fundamental shift in the way that we all interact with, think about and use technology as we live in an always-on, always connected, always listening world that's using data in gargantuan amounts."

Machine data, he added, will be the building block of any digital transformation.

"Taking in huge amounts of data - machine data - is absolutely key to digital transformation. Amazon doesn't do nine releases a day, it releases a change every quarter-of-a-second. They are only capable of doing that if they can 'listen' to their data and sense that data, and then do the right thing around that data.

"We believe that requires an enterprise machine-data fabric that's able to grab that data and allows you to collect, store, analyse, share and interoperate with any data that's going to be critical to your decision making.

"And, as you are working with this enterprise machine-data fabric, you are going to want to explore, experience and play with data of all labels. Of course, [that will not just include] IT operations data and security data, but also sales data, marketing data, manufacturing, distribution, customer service and support.

"Machine data has gold in there for every one of these processes," said Merritt.

One of the technical innovations he was keen to push was the company's "link-binding schema that allows different people to ask different questions of that same single, logical data instance and get completely different answers that are tuned to their use-cases and their business needs".

Ultimately, said Merritt, Splunk aims to provide the "single, logical fabric that allows correlations and interrogations across it so that you can drive multiple use-cases... [in order to] to kick-ass in the digital age, you need Splunk as your enterprise data fabric", he claimed.

The first demonstrations of that shift to broader data analytics was revealed with the launch of Splunk Enterprise 6.5 at the company's conference today, along with updates to a number of the company's other key products - which Computing has already covered.

Splunk is also under consideration as a core analytics tool in the UK Ministry of Defence's forthcoming MoDnet IT transformation project.

Digital revolution

Appearing on stage in the keynote alongside Merritt, Amazon Web Services (AWS) vice president Mike Clayville suggested that 2016 will be looked back upon in 10 years' time as a transformational year in terms of cloud computing, digital transformation, and a coming shake-up of the technology sector and business more widely.

"Ten years from now we'll look back and recognise that 2016 was a transformational time for cloud and the digital transformation for companies that emerged at this time. Now is the time to get started, to begin that journey. If you haven't begun the journey it's critical that you do it now," urged Clayville.

He continued: "It is a journey that will maintain long-term strategic competitive advantage. Cloud is the new normal - most of our customers have decided that they really don't want to own data centres... And the patterns that we're seeing around digital transformation are becoming really clear."

Data, too, is central to the digital revolution, not just for helping to better run organisations or even as the building block for machine learning and automation, but also as a source of new revenue streams.

"This is a unique time when you can create an entirely new market. The first part is people seeing unique opportunities and creating an entirely new market space. People are taking the cloud and extending their current products and creating entirely new revenue engines.

"There's the example of Capital One, General Electric... Or Samsung's smarthub TV - the stuff you see on your Samsung TV - all of that is running on AWS creating an entirely new revenue engine around their TV platform," said Clayville.

However, it's in the inter-connection of various different technologies that the businesses of the future will be created. "It's through the deep integrations that you really get the value... We are at a time, I believe, where market share shifts will occur.

"Those people that take advantage of the new technologies and aggressively adopt those technologies - starting out with experimentation - it will be those that gain market share. Those that hesitate, those that are slow off the mark, those are the ones that are most at risk," said Clayville.

Technologies like Splunk, he concluded, rolled out to encompass every corner of the enterprise, will be central to the creation of that innovation.