Cisco IT modernizes network observability strategy to enhance digital resilience
Cisco IT used Splunk and ThousandEyes to unify telemetry across its distributed network, delivering deeper visibility and automating 99.998% of alerts.
Cisco IT needed a better way to empower its engineers to proactively manage network health sustainability and at scale.
Challenge
Previously, Cisco IT outsourced basic monitoring and triage for network operations to a team that used traditional methods involving manual intervention and siloed dashboards. This limited in-depth network insights and was unsustainable for Cisco’s lean engineering team. When determining a better solution, the team also had to consider:
A complex, global landscape with owned and unowned environments
High volumes of diverse telemetry data and alerts
Limited staffing
A short time frame of just 40 days to insource a portion of network operations
Solution
Cisco IT designed and built a network observability system to collect, normalize, and route massive volumes of data in a common language using Cisco technology, including:
Splunk Cloud Platform consolidates diverse data in a unified dashboard for real-time monitoring and automated incident workflows, enabling engineers to focus on critical alerts.
ThousandEyes delivers comprehensive visibility into network and application performance across both owned and unowned environments, and deeper insights into user experience and connectivity.
Cisco's network management solutions — including Catalyst Center, Meraki Dashboard, SD-WAN Manager, and Nexus Dashboard — collect critical telemetry, performance, and security status data. This data is fed into Splunk Cloud Platform to enable a unified view and real-time monitoring.
Outcomes
Dramatically reduced major incidents
Cisco IT reduced major incidents to 0, down from 3–4 per quarter while maintaining service availability at nearly 100%.
Expanded visibility & insights
The team now monitors 10x more data and has gained deeper visibility and insights into network health and user experience.
Maximized efficiency
Automation now handles 99.998% of 4 million alerts generated daily, leaving just 0.002% for engineers to manually address and more time for innovation.
Enabled future AI-driven operations
The new observability system established a foundation for future expansion into advanced AIOps capabilities.
Testimonials
Unprecedented visibility
“Now that we have this unprecedented network visibility, we can proactively solve issues before users are impacted — making us a stronger, more resilient organization."
Manny Gracia Distinguished Engineer, Cisco IT
Cisco
Prioritizing the user experience
“We don't want our users to open cases. By the time someone has opened a case, they’re already in a bad place. Moving from reactive to proactive is a differentiator for IT service, which is where we want to be."
Dipesh Patel Principal Engineer, Cisco IT
Cisco
CMDB: The key to successful network observability
“One of our biggest lessons learned is the importance of a well-maintained CMDB. Without accurate data in your CMDB, effective enrichment — and ultimately, successful observability — becomes extremely difficult. Leverage your CMDB as a foundation for everything you do.”
Jon Heaton Director, Cisco IT
Cisco
Enhanced visibility for smarter action
“With all this visibility, we're a lot smarter about how we act on things. We're building automation to keep unplanned work — those cases that pop up — very small and manageable, instead of overwhelming our teams.”
Manny Garcia Distinguished Engineer, Cisco IT
Cisco
Dive deeper
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