As developers reach down the stack and network engineers stretch upward, they must meet in the middle with visible, integrated data from both ends, according to Wissam Ali-Ahmad(pictured), lead solutions architect at Splunk Inc.

“You need visibility to everything, and Splunk is that platform where you have access to all that data throughout all,” Ali-Ahmad said during this week’s Cisco DevNet Create event in San Francisco, California.

This rings true not just for programmable networks and DevOps, but also security inside firewall parameters, he told John Furrier (@furrier) and Peter Burris (@plburris), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live streaming studio. (* Disclosure below.)

Splunk has carved out a niche in machine-generated big data for operational intelligence. Machine data collated with network data and application data, gives a more complete picture for analytics, machine learning and DevOps, Ali-Ahmad said.

API Super Glue

Splunk manages to integrate all of these datasets cohesively with Application Programming Interfaces, Ali-Ahmad pointed out. The company’s “full-feature platform for machine data and big data” integrates with many APIs, including Cisco’s Meraki and Identity Services Engine APIs, he said.

This topic featured prominently in Ali-Ahmad’s special on-stage session at DevNet Create. “With Splunk, you are able to bring in a lot of the data through API integrations,” so during the presentation he showed “how easy that process is.”

As one measure of this, the Mexican government is using Splunk and the Meraki API to integrate the country’s internet usage and coverage data for analytics, Ali-Ahmad stated.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s independent editorial coverage of Cisco DevNet Create 2017. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Cisco DevNet Create. Neither Cisco DevNet nor other sponsors have editorial influence on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE