Cisco’s Data Fabric Transforms Machine Data Chaos Into Unified AI Intelligence

Cisco Introduces Data Fabric to Organize Machine Data with AI

Cisco Systems Inc. is stepping up its role in the artificial intelligence era by launching the Splunk-powered Cisco Data Fabric. Revealed at Splunk’s .conf25 event, this network architecture aims to unify fragmented machine data scattered across different systems.

Alongside this, Cisco introduced Splunk Federated Search for Snowflake, allowing users to access Snowflake data directly within the Splunk interface. This integration merges operational machine data with business datasets for more comprehensive insights.

How Cisco Data Fabric Works

The core of the fabric is the Time Series Foundation Model, an AI engine optimized for analyzing and forecasting time-series data at scale. It supports use cases such as anomaly detection, forecasting, and automated root-cause analysis, which help teams respond to issues faster and operate proactively.

Data ingested into the fabric is contextualized and converted into actionable insights in real time, streamlining decision-making processes.

Key Components of the Architecture

• Unified Intelligent Data Foundation: A data normalization layer that consolidates inputs from security, operations, development, and networking. This layer simplifies data management and reduces costs.
• Borderless Real-Time Search: This feature federates queries across multiple data sources—including Amazon S3, Apache Iceberg, Databricks Delta Lake, Snowflake Data Cloud, and Microsoft Azure—routing workloads efficiently to the right compute engines.
• Splunk Machine Data Lake: Provides a persistent storage layer for model training and enterprise analytics.

Together with the Splunk AI Toolkit and MCP server, these components support AI-native services for onboarding, monitoring, and self-healing operations. Cisco emphasizes that this architecture is open and adaptable, enabling unlimited onboarding of Snowflake as a data source. Users can run Splunk Search Processing Language queries across Snowflake datasets, distributing workloads automatically between Snowflake’s analytics and Splunk’s search layers.

A New Direction for Cisco in AI

Previously, Cisco had difficulty presenting a clear AI strategy. However, the control plane approach outlined at Cisco Live 2025 marked a shift. Rather than a patchwork of acquisitions, Cisco now offers an integrated platform that spans networking, compute, security, and analytics—strengthened by Splunk’s data fabric.

This approach addresses the challenges enterprises face managing vast amounts of machine data, such as logs, telemetry, and event streams. By unifying data, applying real-time AI analytics, and enabling federated search across distributed data stores, Cisco supports faster, smarter operations.

Importantly, the federated Snowflake search shows Cisco’s willingness to integrate with existing enterprise data platforms instead of trying to replace them, a notable change from past strategies.

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