Must-See Splunk Observability & ITOps Content at Cisco Live 2026

AI is driving innovation at a scale we’ve never seen. Applications, infrastructure, and networks are generating massive amounts of telemetry data and you need real-time visibility into the performance and uptime of your services. Splunk offers the ability to monitor AI agents and applications, as well as use AI tools for your Observability stack. If your primary interest at Cisco Live 2026 is learning more about Splunk Observability solutions to help you build digital resilience in the AI era, then this is the track for you.

If you’re already a Splunk Observability customer or your primary interests at Cisco Live 2026 Las Vegas are around observability or IT operations, these are just a few of the sessions, talks, and demos that you should try to prioritize when building your itinerary:

Keynotes & Keynote Deep Dives

Keynotes:

• Lead in the Agentic Era: Tuesday, June 2^nd (8:30 AM – 10:15 AM PDT)

  • Speakers:

    • Chuck Robbins (Chair and Chief Executive Officer, Cisco)
    • Jeetu Patel (President and Chief Product Officer, Cisco)
    • Brian Niccol (Chairman and CEO, Starbucks Coffee Company)

• From Agentic Vision to Enterprise Reality: Wednesday, June 3^rd (8:30 AM – 10:00 AM PDT)

  • Speakers:

    • Liz Centoni (EVP and Chief Customer Experience Officer Cisco)
    • Jeetu Patel (President and Chief Product Officer, Cisco)

Keynote Deep Dives:

• Operating at Agentic Scale: Re-thinking the AI Data Center with Simplified Ops and Security at Every Layer: Tuesday, June 2^nd (2:30 PM – 3:15 PM PDT)

  • Speaker: Tom Gillis (SVP/GM, ISG, Cisco)

• Digital Resilience in the AI Era: Building a Secure and Trusted Agentic Enterprise: Wednesday, June 3^rd (3:45 PM – 4:30 PM PDT)

  • Speaker: Cory Minton (Field CTO, Cisco)

Center Stage Sessions & Product Strategy Overviews

Center Stage Sessions:

• Trust & Compliance in the AI Era: Keeping Infrastructure, Systems, and Apps Secure and Compliant: Monday, June 1^st (2:15 PM – 2:45 PM PDT)

  • Speaker: James Hodge (VP, Global Specialists – Splunk, Cisco)

• Using Splunk to Reduce Major Incidents by 25% and Network Outages to Zero: A Cisco Case Study: Wednesday, June 3^rd (4:30 – 5:00 PM PDT)

  • Speakers:

    • Justin Waite (VP, DevTools & Release Engineering, Cisco)
    • Ryan Smalley (Splunk Platform Architect, Cisco)
    • Ines Thornburg (Splunk, Customer Experience, Cisco)

Product Strategy Overviews:

• Building a Winning Observability Strategy: Monday, June 1^st (11:00 AM – 11:30 PM PDT)

  • Speaker: Annette Sheppard (Director, Product Marketing – Observability, Cisco)

• Take a Deep Dive into Splunk's AI Innovations: Monday, June 1^st (1:00 PM – 1:30 PM PDT)

  • Speaker: Hanlin Fang (VP of Product Management, Splunk, Cisco)

• Observability for AI: Reduce risk, ensure performance, and optimize costs: Monday, June 1^st (4:00 PM – 4:30 PM PDT)

  • Speaker: Annette Sheppard (Director, Product Marketing – Observability, Cisco)

Breakout Sessions, Theater Talks, Labs, and Seminars

Breakout Sessions:

• Splunk IT Service Intelligence: A Unified View for Network Service Health: Monday, June 1^st (8:00 AM – 9:00 AM PDT)

  • Speakers:

    • Matthew Hanlon (Software Engineering Technical Leader, Cisco)
    • Tapan Shah (Director, Product, Splunk Observability, Cisco – Distinguished Speaker)

• Monitor your LLMs, AI Agents, and AI Infrastructure with Splunk Observability for AI: Monday, June 1^st (1:00 PM – 2:00 PM PDT)

  • Speakers:

    • Bob Ni (Senior Product Manager, Cisco)
    • Joe deBlaquiere (Principal Product Manager, Cisco)

• Optimizing AI Observability for 3^rd Party Agents using Model Context Protocol: Tuesday, June 2^nd (1:00 PM – 2:00 PM PDT)

  • Speaker: Joe deBlaquiere (Principal Product Manager, Cisco)

• Building a Mature Network Observability Practice for NetOps with Splunk, ThousandEyes, and Meraki: Tuesday, June 2^nd (4:00 PM – 5:00 PM PDT)

  • Speaker: Chris Crocco (Director of Technical Interlock, Splunk, Cisco)

• Unified Network Observability for fault domain isolation with Splunk ITSI: Tuesday, June 2^nd (1:30 PM – 3:00 PM PDT)

  • Speakers:

    • Tapan Shah (Director, Product, Splunk Observability, Cisco – Distinguished Speaker)
    • Anusha Nataraj (Leader, Service Delivery Management, Cisco)

• AI for Observability to Reduce Downtime and Accelerate Investigations: Wednesday, June 3^rd (1:30 PM – 3:00 PM PDT)

  • Speaker: Archana Padmasenan (Director of Product Management, Cisco)

• Splunk Observability: A Unified Solution for En-to-End Visibility and Troubleshooting Across Applications, Infrastructure, and Networks: Thursday, June 4^th (9:00 AM – 10:00 AM PDT)

  • Speakers:

    • Bill Grant (Director, Observability Specialists, Cisco)
    • Tapan Shah (Director, Product, Splunk Observability, Cisco – Distinguished Speaker)
    • Deena Shanghavi (Leader Product Manager, Cisco)

• Driving Superior Customer Outcomes: How Cisco and Splunk Leverage OpenTelemetry to Deliver Business Impact: Thursday, June 4^th (1:30 PM – 3:00 PM PDT)

  • Speaker: Morgan McLean (Cisco)

Interactive Breakout Sessions:

• Implementing a Unified AI-Enhanced Observability Strategy: Monday, June 1^st (8:00 AM – 9:00 AM PDT)

  • Speakers:

    • Leila Reyhani (Solutions Architect, Cisco)
    • Jesse Galliers, (Solutions Engineer, Cisco)

• Observability for the full-stack: unifying alerts and insights: Monday, June 1^st (1:00 PM – 2:00 PM PDT)

  • Speakers:

    • Steven Moore (Technology Strategy, Global Systems Engineering, Cisco – Distinguished Speaker)
    • Chris Crocco (Director of Technical Interlock, Splunk, Cisco)

• Reducing Alert Fatigue with Adaptive and Explainable Alerting: Tuesday, June 2^nd (4:00 PM – 5:00 PM PDT)

  • Speaker: Nivedita Narayanan (Senior Product Manager, Cisco)

• Cisco IT’s Transformative Observability Journey with Splunk: From Silos to Seamless: Wednesday, June 3^rd (10:30 AM – 11:30 AM PDT)

  • Speakers:

    • Anusha Nataraj (Leader, Service Delivery Management, Cisco)
    • Vikas Agrawal (Leader, Software Engineering, Cisco)

• AI Remediation Agents in Splunk Observability Cloud: Automated Resolution & Accelerated Insights: Thursday, June 4^th (9:00 AM – 10:00 AM PDT)

  • Speakers:

    • Marcio Kugler Rodrigues (Technical Marketing Engineer Leader, Cisco)
    • Leila Reyhani (Solutions Architect, Cisco)

Instructor-led Labs:

• From Data to Decisions: Synthesizing Network Insights from Catalyst Center, ThousandEyes, and Splunk: Monday, June 1^st (8:00 AM – 12:00 PM PDT)

  • Speakers:

    • Diego Granados (Technical Consulting Engineering Leader, Cisco)
    • Eduardo Olague Salas (TCE, Cisco)

• From Deployment to Deep Insights: Mastering AI/ML with Cisco AI Pods & Splunk: Wednesday, June 3^rd (8:00 AM – 12:00 PM PDT)

  • Speakers:

    • Marcio Kugler Rodrigues (Technical Marketing Engineer Leader, Cisco)
    • Leila Reyhani (Solutions Architect, Cisco)

Walk-in Labs:

• Monitoring AI Applications with Splunk Observability: Monday – Wednesday (8:30 AM – 6 PM), Thursday (8:30 AM – 2 PM)

  • Speakers:

    • Mithun Banerjee (Software Consulting Engineering Technical Leader, Cisco)
    • Ramiro Garza Rios (Customer Delivery Architect, Cisco – Distinguished Speaker)
    • Azhar Mohammed (Customer Delivery Architect, Cisco)

• Proactive Network Monitoring and AI-Driven Alerting with Cisco Catalyst and Splunk: Monday – Wednesday (8:30 AM – 6 PM), Thursday (8:30 AM – 2 PM)

  • Speaker: Eduardo Cerezo Alvarez (Technical Consulting Engineer, Customer Delivery, Cisco)

• Powering the AI Era: Building AI-Ready Data Centers with Real-Time Power Visibility Using Splunk: Monday – Wednesday (8:30 AM – 6 PM), Thursday (8:30 AM – 2 PM)

  • Speaker: Vanitha Kannan (Sr. Manager, Customer Delivery, Cisco)

Technical Seminar:

• Into the Observability-Verse: Achieving End-to-End Visibility from Network Infrastructure to AI Workloads: Sunday, May 31^st (2:00 PM – 6:00 PM PDT)

  • Speakers:

    • Mithun Banerjee (Software Consulting Engineering Technical Leader, Cisco)

IT Leadership Session:

• Beyond the Network: End-to-End Observability with Cisco: Thursday, June 4th (10:00 AM – 10:30 AM PDT)

  • Speaker: Patrick Lin (SVP and GM, Observability, Cisco)

Cisco World of Solutions Showcase: Opportunities for Splunk Observability Content

When you’re not in technical breakout sessions or keynotes, stop by the Cisco World of Solutions showcase to find product demos, grab swag, network with colleagues, and learn even more. Splunk products and capabilities will be shown off across 11 dedicated demo stations, eight demos alongside the Pulse Wall, and as part of numerous other Cisco demos.

There will be two interactive capture-the-flag demos (Splunk Arcade and KubeDoom) where you can further your Splunk expertise with hands-on examples. Don’t forget to check out the Cisco Store to watch Splunk in action while you pick up some swag.

The Fun Beyond the Tech

• Celebrate with Maroon 5 and The Chainsmokers: June 3, 2026 at 7:30 – 11 PM, with a performance from Maroon 5 and The Chainsmokers at Allegiant Stadium. Learn more about the celebration here!
• Healing Hounds: Take a break from the bustling show floor to pet adorable therapy dogs, grab dog-friendly swag, and see how we’re using Splunk to monitor everything.
• Oxygen bar: Rest your feet for a few minutes at the oxygen bar, where you can recharge and reduce muscle tension with a short but soothing hand or neck massage.
• Receptions, happy hours, and brunch: Download the Cisco Events mobile app for the schedule of receptions, happy hours, and meals.
• Leading the Future: Leading the Future track sessions in the Session Catalog focus on executive mentoring and networking. Get inspired by bold ideas and leaders while playing games or sipping signature cocktails and mocktails.

Additional Resources

Get more details on the Cisco Live website as we add new agenda items and promote more on-site learning opportunities. Keep these resources handy for the latest and greatest on Cisco Live:

• Week-at-a-Glance calendar to review

• Once the show starts, tune in to the Global Broadcast online and follow along in all of the following places:

  • Ciscolive.com/global
  • Cisco.com
  • Join the conversation online by following @Splunk across all social platforms

• Shuttle schedule
• Hotel map & rates
• Convince your boss letter to easily share the necessary details when you need to get travel expenses approved.
• Download the Cisco Events mobile app and complete mini challenges while on-site to climb the Cisco Live Challenge leaderboard. Learn more here.

Cisco Live 2026 Las Vegas is a must-see event! Register today or, if you’re already registered, check out the session catalog to start planning your week. You can watch sessions from Cisco Live 2026 Las Vegas and past Cisco Live events in the on-demand library after the show.

Don’t forget to bookmark this comprehensive attendee guide so you don’t miss out on any of the learning and fun at Cisco Live 2026 in Las Vegas. We're excited to see you there, May 31 – June 4!