Splunk Inc. opened its major annual conference on Tuesday with a series of announcements that included new features for the firm’s machine data processing platform. The news involved expanded artificial intelligence and container support, technologies that could position the company for growth in its total addressable market.

“Today, the whole conversation was about expanding into line of business and industrial internet of things,” said Dave Vellante (@devllante), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio. “This is going to power the next wave of growth at Splunk.”

Vellante and co-host Stu Miniman (@stu) spoke during the Splunk .conf18 event in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, and they discussed Splunk’s central focus on data, its outreach to people beyond the information technology community, and new tools for developers. (* Disclosure below.)

Analyzing user interaction

One of the features unveiled on Tuesday was SmartStore, a new tool for analyzing user interaction with the data they have. “Splunk is a platform company, but with a big ecosystem and at the center of everything they do is the data,” Miniman said. “It’s not Splunk pushing their product; it’s you’re going to have more data from more sources, and it makes sense to leverage the platform.”

A key element of Splunk’s latest announcements involved a deliberate focus on providing tools for developers and process engineers in the operational technology community. Among the beta features unveiled on Tuesday were analytics engines for processing data in real time and search functions for queries across multiple deployments.

“I’m struck by the way that Splunk is providing innovation for non-information technology people,” Vellante said. “It’s exactly the playbook that ServiceNow has used, and it works beautifully.”

Splunk’s updated product vision also includes Developer Cloud, a resource for building data-rich applications by leveraging a variety of services. “This is a cloud-native application, so it’s fitting with that model for next-generation apps and where they’re going to live,” Miniman said. “It makes a lot of sense.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Splunk .conf18 event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Splunk .conf18. Neither Splunk Inc., the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: Splunk .conf18