Splunk and Cisco Advance Predict-and-Prevent Operations
Predict and Prevent Operations Take Shape
Predict and prevent operations are becoming a central theme as Splunk and Cisco bring observability, security, networking and AI together. In this Techstrong TV interview from SplunkConf 2026, Alan Shimel talks with Cory Minton, Global Field CTO at Splunk, about what this shift means for digital resilience.
Minton says the industry is moving beyond a world built only around detect and react. For years, teams focused on reducing mean time to detect and mean time to repair. The next goal is more ambitious. Organizations want to predict likely failures, investigate them before they affect customers and prevent outages from happening in the first place.
Trusted Telemetry Comes First
The conversation explains why a self-healing enterprise starts with data. Teams need trusted telemetry across applications, infrastructure, networks, security tools and emerging agentic systems. Without that operating picture, AI systems lack the context required to make useful recommendations.
Splunk’s role as a system of record for operations becomes important in that model. Cisco adds network telemetry, topology context and enforcement capabilities. Together, those signals can help teams understand whether a problem is tied to security, software, infrastructure, networking or some combination of those domains.
AI Agents Help Investigate Before Impact
Minton describes a four-step model for predict and prevent operations. First, organizations collect trusted telemetry. Next, fit-for-purpose AI models predict anomalies or likely failures. Then, agents investigate the why behind those signals before an outage occurs. Finally, humans receive guided remediation and decide how to close the loop.
That human role remains critical. Minton frames the change as moving from human in the loop to human at the helm. AI agents can reduce toil and accelerate investigation, but people still need explainable and auditable recommendations before operational changes are made.
Digital Resilience Becomes the Outcome
The interview also connects the Splunk and Cisco integration to a broader digital resilience strategy. Minton says the combination gives network operators, security teams and SREs more useful signals and more ways to act on them.
For technology leaders, the takeaway is clear. Predict and prevent operations require more than dashboards or broad AI claims. They require trusted data, purpose-built models, agentic investigation and human judgment working together to keep services secure, available and resilient.
