Cisco Wins Microsoft Partner of the Year: What's Next at Ignite 2026

From Marketplace Momentum to AI Innovation

We're heading to Microsoft Ignite 2026 with some exciting news! Cisco is a 2026 Microsoft Partner of the Year in the Business Transformation – Marketplace winner, recognized for the tremendous growth and innovation behind our work with Microsoft.

But this is bigger than the award. It's a reflection of what we are doing for you. Together with Microsoft, we're making it easier to access innovative technologies, maximize your cloud investments, and accelerate AI transformation. We're combining Cisco's leadership in networking and security with deep expertise in data, security, and observability to help you tackle complex technology challenges and unlock new opportunities with AI.

And the momentum doesn't stop with Azure Marketplace. From new AI integrations and trusted enterprise data to sovereign and air-gapped deployments, we're working with Microsoft to expand what's possible for customers. Here's what's new—and what you can explore at Microsoft Ignite.

Cisco + Microsoft: Accelerating Frontier-First Innovation

The 2026 Partner of the Year recognition adds to an already strong track record. In 2025, Splunk was also recognized as a Microsoft Partner of the Year, reflecting our commitment to helping customers modernize security, observability, and cloud operations.

Cisco has been a catalyst for growth across the Microsoft partner ecosystem, helping co-engineer and scale Resale Enabled Offers (REO). By pioneering this Marketplace model and enabling partners to adopt it, Cisco has helped expand the channel, accelerate partner-led selling, and create new opportunities for partners and customers to embrace Azure.

Splunk by Cisco brings critical data, security, and observability capabilities to the partnership. Together with Microsoft, we're advancing joint engineering and innovation across AI, security operations, and cloud infrastructure to help customers become more digitally resilient, AI-powered organizations.

Building the Data Foundation for the AI Era

Every organization wants to do more with AI. But AI is only as effective as the trusted data it can access, understand, and act upon. Much of that critical intelligence comes from machine data generated across networks, applications, and infrastructure. Yet this data often remains siloed, underutilized, or too complex to process effectively.

Cisco Data Fabric, powered by the Splunk platform, helps overcome these challenges by unifying and activating machine data across edge, cloud, and hybrid environments. This next-generation architecture transforms fragmented data into AI-driven insights, proactive operations, and faster decision-making.

Combined with our broader technology portfolio and Microsoft's AI and cloud capabilities, Splunk by Cisco provides the data and operational intelligence foundation to help organizations move faster from trusted data to meaningful action.

Bringing AI and Intelligence Together

AI is changing how security teams, IT operations, and developers work. Cisco and Microsoft are advancing several innovations that bring AI closer to enterprise data, simplify workflows, and help organizations move from insights to action.

Observability for a New Generation of AI Agents

As organizations adopt agentic AI, a new challenge emerges: how do you monitor the agents themselves?

With Cisco's acquisition of Galileo, we're expanding AI observability capabilities to help organizations monitor agent performance, evaluate AI behavior, manage costs, and apply real-time guardrails. For customers building agents with technologies such as Azure OpenAI, this means greater visibility into AI workloads, faster troubleshooting, and more confidence in autonomous operations.

Connecting Splunk by Cisco to the Microsoft Copilot Ecosystem

Through the open-standard Model Context Protocol (MCP), Cisco is expanding its deep co-innovation with Microsoft across AI and security workflows. Building on our production integrations with the Azure SRE Agent and Cisco Workspaces in Copilot Studio, Splunk by Cisco is introducing an Admin-Published Federated Copilot Connector for Microsoft 365 Copilot.

Using natural language, Copilot agents can securely execute targeted Splunk Search Processing Language (SPL) queries, retrieve real-time operational telemetry, and accelerate security threat investigations directly within enterprise collaboration workflows without custom API plumbing.

This enables Microsoft 365 Copilot and custom Copilot Studio agents to securely access and act on enterprise telemetry from Splunk Cloud Platform and Splunk Enterprise Security – bringing Splunk by Cisco intelligence directly into the tools teams already use.

We're also extending our AI toolkit capabilities to support Azure OpenAI, giving customers additional ways to incorporate generative AI into Splunk by Cisco workflows for faster development, easier experimentation, and more ways to put enterprise data to work.

The relationship goes even deeper. Splunk leverages OpenAI models hosted through Microsoft Azure AI Foundry to power its own AI capabilities, bringing Microsoft's AI technology into the Splunk platform itself.

Bringing AI to Your Data, Wherever It Lives

Adopting AI shouldn't require organizations to move critical data to the public cloud or compromise security and sovereignty requirements.

Splunk by Cisco is introducing a new AI tier for self-managed Splunk Enterprise, extending capabilities such as Splunk AI Assistant beyond Splunk Cloud. Alongside our indexing and search tiers, the new AI tier enables organizations to bring AI into their own infrastructure, including fully air-gapped environments, while maintaining control over their data and operations.

More Flexibility Across Cloud, Hybrid, and Sovereign Environments

Deployment flexibility extends beyond AI. With Azure Local, organizations can extend Azure cloud services directly into their on-premises infrastructure to support hybrid, sovereign, and air-gapped environments. Through joint engineering with Microsoft, organizations deploying Azure Local can seamlessly stream infrastructure logs, diagnostic metrics, and control-plane telemetry directly into Splunk Cloud and Splunk Enterprise via Azure Event Hubs.

Utilizing the Splunk Add-on for Microsoft Cloud Services alongside high-throughput HTTP Event Collector (HEC) endpoints, SecOps and IT teams gain continuous correlation across hybrid infrastructure-accelerating incident triage, meeting strict data residency requirements, and strengthening digital resilience without operational complexity.

See Us at Microsoft Ignite

There's a lot happening at Ignite is the perfect opportunity to see these innovations in action.

Visit Our Booth

Stop by booth (#5578) to see live Splunk on Azure demos and connect with our experts. At the booth you can learn how to:

• Strengthen digital resilience with Splunk Cloud Platform, Enterprise Security, ITSI, SOAR, and Splunk Observability.
• Unify security and observability across hybrid environments with AI-powered insights and operational intelligence.
• Maximize your Azure investments with cloud migration opportunities and flexible purchasing options.

Arriving Early? Join Us Monday Night

If you are in town early, come to the Cisco office in San Francisco on November 16 from 4:00–7:00 p.m. for Build What's Next: Secure AI, Digital Resilience, and Intelligent Workplaces. It’s a perfect way to kick off Ignite in a more intimate setting with interactive sessions, conversations with technology experts, and a networking reception.

Space is limited and registration is required. Don’t miss it.

The Next Chapter Starts at Ignite

Cisco's 2026 Microsoft Partner of the Year recognition is another milestone in our growing work with Microsoft. Together, Cisco, Splunk, and Microsoft are accelerating innovation across AI, security, and observability to help customers build a more digitally resilient future.

And we're just getting started. See you in San Francisco!