UPDATED 13:00 EDT / OCTOBER 14 2016

NEWS

Splunk CTO explains the ‘art of the possible’ for connected devices | #GuestOfTheWeek

When one thinks about the vast number of connective devices and data that is available today, it is important to consider the art of the possible when it comes to how all of this information can make life better for businesses and people.

Snehal Antani, CTO of Splunk Inc., joined John Furrier (@furrier) and John Walls (@JohnWalls21), co-hosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, at the Splunk.conf 2016 conference in Orlando, FL, to talk about landing and expanding technology to improve the enterprise and other professions.

This week, theCUBE highlights Snehal Antani as our Guest of the Week.

Meet the engineer

Walls opened the interview asking Antani about his take on the conference. He related how he has seen the show from both sides, as a customer and an employee.

“I’ve visited .conf as a customer, and now I’m here as an employee. And .conf was always about bringing our engineers closer to the customers, our customers close to the engineers,” he explained. “This is a technical group. This is about lessons learned, sharing ideas, and it’s amazing, because when I was a CIO at another vendor, most of the sessions were very ‘markety,’ very high level; you would blow them off. [At .conf] people would get really offended if they miss a session.”

He added, “It’s just amazing because every session [is] for the customer, and the level of just depth and knowledge sharing … people don’t want to miss sessions. I’ve never seen that in an event before.”

Use-case driven

Furrier wanted a sneak peek into Antani’s keynote coming up the next day. First, he began by describing how Splunk is about solving problems for the enterprise.  

“We’ve always been very use-case driven, so the thing about Splunk is it’s all about what problem are you trying to solve so we can land and fix that one problem. Then you realize that the data needed by IT to keep the systems up and running — web, app, network, endpoint, identity, infrastructure, logs — it’s the same data needed by security to hunt a breach,” he stated.

“It’s the same data you can use to run the business in real time, or you can use to catch frogs or do all these other use cases and scenarios. We have this amazing ability to land in any one of these use cases and then systematically grow and expand the account across the entire enterprise,” Antani said.

A backward evolution

Antani then talked about the event’s opening keynote, given by Doug Merritt, CEO of Splunk.

“… He really talked about a few things. First was the evolution of going from a tool to becoming a platform to becoming a data fabric and the investments we’ve made in the product to help make that easier, both technically and from a user adoption standpoint,” he explained. “… And we learned about IT operations and security this morning and how we’re disrupting those spaces. So tomorrow, it’s the art of the possible. It’s about all the use cases and the power of Splunk outside of IT and security.”

Antani continued: ” … It all comes down to becoming a data-driven organization using data to make better decisions faster, and then I’m going to talk about how we take in retail analytics, point-of-sales data, digital marketing data and digital payments data to help drive better revenue. … It’s everything we are doing in business analytics and IoT [Internet of Things].”

A different trajectory

Furrier wanted Antani to drill down on how the company uses new and creative use cases that come from the customers and discuss the new creative “things.” Antani started with a personal story that led him to consider how data can transform dangerous situations.

“Let me tell you a personal story, which I’ll tell on stage tomorrow again, and that is a starting point for some of the really cool use cases we’re looking at today. I was in London a couple of months ago at the Bond Street tube station going up the escalator; suddenly, 200 people started stampeding behind me. … People thought there was an active shooter in the tube station,” he explained. “This is the day after Orlando [terrorist attacks] and everyone’s already on edge. I didn’t know what was happening.”

He continued: “Once I ascertained that [my family was] safe, I got angry because the Wi-Fi access knew 200 people were running in one direction. The microservice locations could detect that there was a stampede in place. The sensors in the tube station could detect [if] there were shots fired or no shots fired. [If] there were bombs or no bombs. The machine data was there, and we failed to connect the dots and draw a conclusion that there is no danger and broadcast out an alert saying keep calm. More importantly, I think of the ways for people at risk [to know] there’s danger and run south.”

The art of the possible

Antani then continued discussing how to connect the dots.

“When I think of the art of the possible, it’s the ability to connect the dots in all of those types of environmental sensors and data and then actually doing something about it. So we can transform first responders,” Antani stated. “We’re doing some amazing stuff with the military. We’re going to show off tomorrow around soldier health and optimize medical evacuation. It comes down to synthesizing the machine data through sensors, with the digital data, with the Twitter feeds and so on, to provide better situations.”

Antani continued the conversation, explaining how there are three types of data: transactional data, digital exhaust from processing the transaction, and the enrichment data that comes from social media and other points. He feels the physics of each of the types of data can make it possible to connect the dots and provide better insights.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of Splunk.conf 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE

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