Originally sourced from a Splunk press release via businesswire.com, published August 2019.
Splunk Launches Industrial IoT Specialization to Connect Partners with Industrial Buyers
Splunk Inc. (NASDAQ: SPLK) announced in August 2019 that customers and partners across multiple industries were achieving measurable improvements in customer satisfaction, operational efficiency, and cost reduction through Splunk’s enterprise Internet of Things (IoT) solutions. Central to this announcement was the introduction of an Industrial IoT Specialization within the Splunk Partner+ Program — the first vertical specialization offered under that program.
The specialization is designed to help channel partners with deep industrial domain expertise build and deliver Splunk-based solutions tailored to industrial buyers — a segment with distinct data challenges compared to typical enterprise IT environments.
Why Industrial IoT Requires a Different Approach
Industrial environments generate data from sources that are fundamentally different from traditional IT infrastructure — SCADA systems, industrial control systems (ICS), sensors on physical assets, energy meters, and operational technology (OT) networks. This data is often siloed, difficult to correlate, and locked in proprietary formats that general-purpose analytics tools struggle to process efficiently.
Jim Gillespie, CEO of GrayMatter (one of the launch partners), described the challenge clearly:
“Operational data is complex and often gets stuck in organizational silos, so it’s exciting to see so many technological breakthroughs available to industrial customers that break down the silos, and provide a complete view of their data to make better business decisions. By partnering with Splunk, we can offer data combination solutions to industrial organizations that provide a simple and secure way to combine data from sources previously hard to correlate, whether it is energy usage, customer sentiment, weather or cyber security for OT information.”
— Jim Gillespie, CEO, GrayMatter
The Splunk Enterprise IoT Solution Stack
Splunk’s enterprise IoT offering at the time of this announcement combined three core components:
- Splunk® Enterprise — the core platform for ingesting, indexing, and searching machine data at scale.
- Splunk Machine Learning Toolkit (MLTK) — enabling predictive analytics and anomaly detection on top of operational data streams.
- Splunk Industrial Asset Intelligence (IAI) — a premium application providing visualizations and insights specifically tailored to industrial asset management and monitoring.
Together, these components are intended to help organizations shift from reactive operations — responding to failures after they occur — to predictive operations, where potential issues are identified and addressed before they cause downtime or safety incidents.
Real-World Use Cases: Customers Putting IoT Data to Work
Puget Sound Energy: Bridging OT and IT in a Utility Environment
Puget Sound Energy, a utility company operating in the Pacific Northwest, deployed Splunk to analyze data from its industrial control systems and SCADA integrations. The goal was to break down the traditional wall between Operational Technology (OT) and Information Technology (IT) teams — a common friction point in utilities organizations.
“Puget Sound Energy is excited to work with Splunk to help us bridge the gap between OT and IT, enabling genuine collaboration between both teams. With Splunk’s data analytics platform, we can better deliver services and manage infrastructure, ultimately enabling us to deliver a seamless experience for our customers.”
— Chris Perez, Advisor and IT Facilities Infrastructure Engineer, Puget Sound Energy
This OT/IT convergence use case is increasingly common across utilities, manufacturing, and critical infrastructure sectors, where historically separate teams manage physical assets and digital systems with little shared visibility.
Sapura Brazil: Real-Time Insights Across Remote Oil and Gas Assets
Sapura Brazil, described as one of the world’s largest integrated oil and gas services and solutions providers, uses Splunk’s enterprise IoT solutions to aggregate and analyze data from complex, geographically distributed systems. The primary benefit cited was the ability to receive real-time information from remote field sites at company headquarters, enabling faster decision-making.
“The use of Splunk in our assets enabled the company to receive real-time information from remote sites to the company’s headquarters, allowing us to take immediate actions when required, with unprecedented celerity. As a result, Sapura is better prepared to fulfill the industry’s high standards and to achieve our targets, not only economically speaking, but especially with regards to quality, health, safety and environment.”
— Rogerio Salbego, CEO, Sapura Brazil
In the oil and gas sector, the cost of unplanned downtime and the safety implications of delayed incident response make real-time data access a high-value capability — not merely a convenience.
Initial Industrial IoT Specialization Partners
At launch, the following partners achieved the Industrial IoT specialization within the Splunk Partner+ Program, each bringing domain expertise in industrial process management, asset management, and operational data:
- Computacenter AG & Co oHG
- ESE Engineering und Software-Entwicklung GmbH
- GrayMatter
- Malisko Engineering, Inc.
- Robotron Datenbank-Software GmbH
- Strategic Maintenance Solutions, Inc.
These partners work directly with shared Splunk customers to design and deliver solutions that address industrial-specific data challenges — from energy monitoring to OT cybersecurity to asset performance management.
Key Takeaways for DevOps and Platform Engineering Teams
For DevOps and platform engineers working in or adjacent to industrial environments, this announcement reflects several broader trends worth tracking:
- OT/IT convergence is accelerating. Tools like Splunk are increasingly being positioned as the bridge between traditionally siloed operational and information technology stacks.
- Vertical specialization in partner ecosystems matters. Generic systems integrators often lack the domain knowledge needed to map industrial data sources to analytics platforms effectively. Vendor-certified vertical specializations help customers identify qualified partners faster.
- Predictive maintenance and real-time monitoring are the primary IoT value drivers. The customer examples cited here — utility SCADA analysis and remote oil and gas asset monitoring — both center on reducing reactive responses in favor of proactive, data-driven operations.
- Security for OT environments is an emerging requirement. The reference to OT cybersecurity in GrayMatter’s comments signals that securing operational networks is increasingly part of the IoT data conversation, not a separate workstream.
About Splunk Inc.
Splunk Inc. (NASDAQ: SPLK) provides a platform for searching, monitoring, and analyzing machine-generated data. Its solutions are used across IT operations, security, and IoT use cases by organizations worldwide. At the time of this announcement in 2019, Splunk positioned its enterprise IoT suite — combining Splunk Enterprise, the Machine Learning Toolkit, and the Industrial Asset Intelligence app — as its primary offering for industrial and IoT customers.
Splunk, Splunk>, Listen to Your Data, The Engine for Machine Data, Splunk Cloud, Splunk Light and SPL are trademarks and registered trademarks of Splunk Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective owners. © 2019 Splunk Inc. All rights reserved.