Converting big data analytics into tangible business results is not easy — many businesses still struggle to do it. It doesn’t help that many software services vendors indiscriminately throw out slogans like digital transformation or form buzzworthy partnerships. What does help businesses actionize data are intimate customer conversations and deep, joint engineering efforts, according to Brian Goldfarb (pictured), chief marketing officer of Splunk Inc. With this in mind, Splunk teamed up with Dell EMC to manifest solutions customers asked for.

Splunk was active early in the big data market, when advanced analytics became a white hot tech trend. But the data log management provider never tooted the big data or digital transformation horn with its marketing, “because it doesn’t help anyone,” said Goldfarb in an interview during the Splunk .conf2017 event in Washington, D.C. earlier this year. “At the end of the day, you have to find the problems that our customers have and build solutions to help them solve that.”

That is why the company stays close to its customers through intimate conversations at events such as Splunk .conf2017, he added. Customers can share information with each other on best practices for working with Splunk, Goldfarb told John Walls (@JohnWalls21) and Dave Vellante (@dvellante), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio. (* Disclosure below.)

The company also uses data to connect more personally with all of its customers through advanced marketing. “Marketing is data,” Goldfarb said. Making predictions about customers with operational data allows the company to make better decisions. Instead of blindly tossing out one big, loud ad, “I can engage with you and you in a personal and intimate way,” he added.

Customer feedback is then baked into new product development at Splunk. To deliver the out-of-the-box solutions customers desire, it may be necessary to join forces with partners. For example, Dell EMC has worked deeply with the company to optimize its infrastructure for Splunk’s machine data technology.

Dell EMC whacks infra weeds so you don’t have to

Dell EMC’s Ready Systems for Splunk come in a variety of flavors to suit the full range of Splunk users, according to Cory Minton, data analytics go-to-market leader at Dell EMC. “Whatever reason they buy Splunk for, whatever workload or business outcome they’re trying to achieve, we accelerate it,” Minton told theCUBE.

How can Dell EMC’s infrastructure help companies that just want to run Splunk applications? More than they know, Minton added.

In this era of cloud and instant spin-up/spin-down gratification, customers may forget about low-level infrastructure. But no high-level application is independent of infrastructure beneath it. Lest they forget, cloud is another term for infrastructure as a service. They have not gotten rid of infrastructure, even if they can’t see it.

“Whether they like infrastructure or they think it’s valuable or not, what they need to understand is that there are impacts,” Minton said. A company running Splunk Enterprise for collecting and indexing data might decide to add on the newer Splunk Enterprise Security. Easy, right? Not so fast, Minton stated. There are considerable downstream effects the new addition may have in terms of capacity or performance. If the application team has not accounted for these, they could cause serious issues and slow down business, he added.

This is the point of Splunk and Dell EMC’s joint engineering and joint certification for Ready Systems. The infrastructure comes pre-fitted for Splunk apps. “That’s work that customers don’t have to do, and that’s value that we can deliver to them,” Minton said.

Cloud service consolidation

Even with on-premise infrastructure from providers like Dell EMC, customers still expect a cloud-like experience. They want to work as close to the application layer as possible, not down in the weeds, Minton explained.

Hybrid cloud adoption grew 3x last year, according to McAffe’s study on the state of cloud adoption and security. The study also found that the number of cloud services that organizations are using dropped from 43 in 2015 to 29 in 2016. Interestingly, the study also shows that the number of cloud services companies use dipped from an average of 43 in 2015 to 29 in 2016. This suggests that many companies desire greater consolidation of services with centralized control.

“That’s what we can do with our ready system,” said Colin Gallagher, senior director of VxRail product marketing at Dell EMC. “We can bring that level of shared management, shared performance management to the Splunk world,”  he said.

It may be wise for other partners to jump on the Splunk bandwagon and consolidate their products and services with it. Splunk nabbed the greatest market share in information technology operations analytics for the last three years, according to International Data Corporation.

Show, don’t tell in IoT

What sets Splunk apart from other big data services in customers’ eyes? Maybe its ability to suck in data not just in bulk, but from numerous different sources, Gallagher suggested. “The value of Splunk is being able to pull that [data] from those disparate sources altogether and give you those analytics,” he said.

Could this even help solve that most vexing of IT puzzles — “internet of things” connected device analytics?

Splunk, along with some connected device partners, demonstrated an internet of things use case at Splunk .conf2017. It tested the happiness of attendees via multiple data streams checking sleep, activity, etc. Pulling this data in through application user interfaces, Splunk rendered analytics on a dashboard. “In the IoT context, it’s an absolute analog for what a lot of organizations are trying to do,” Minton said.

Despite Splunk’s growing reach, it will not likely become and application development platform, Minton stated. Although, “They have visions of it.” However, with over 1,200 apps on Splunk Base already extending its platform, it is clearly a formidable force.

Going forward, Splunk will continue chugging its own data analytics home brew to win customers, according to Goldfarb. “Technology is an enormous driver of modern marketing, and being at a data company makes it incredibly easy,” he concluded.

Watch the complete video interviews, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Splunk .conf2017. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Splunk .conf2017 event. Neither Splunk Inc., the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE