TCS focused on delivering business outcomes for customers through Cisco and Splunk partnership

Rajnikant (Raj) Gupta Global Head Partnership Ecosystems and Alliances Tata Consultancy Services believes that when hardware and observability come together, it is a great mix, but at the same time it can also be complicated for customers who are more focused on their business.

The launch of the new Cisco360 partner program will include the integration of current Splunk partners into the program following the acquisition. So far, most of the Splunk partners have been positive about the integration, feeling it gives them the opportunity to expand their capabilities to their customers.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has been a Splunk partner for more than a decade and also a partner with Cisco for nearly two decades. For TCS, the integration of the partner programs following the acquisition is something they are very excited about, especially since they have been working very close with on network observability.

“You suddenly realize that observability with the infrastructure from a hardware point of view, could actually be a game changer. That's the way we looked at it because we always realized that over the last couple of years, some of our clients have grown inorganically in terms of their infrastructure with multiple vendor scenarios. They were actually looking at a single PAIN of glass, as I say with P-A-I-N. And then now they're looking at a single PANE of glass, which their intent is,” said Rajnikant (Raj) Gupta Global Head Partnership Ecosystems and Alliances Tata Consultancy Services.

Raj believes that when hardware and observability come together, it is a great mix, but at the same time also feels that it can be complicated for customers who are more focused on their business. This is why Raj believes the storytelling on use cases and customer success will be key when working with Splunk and Cisco.

“Storytelling is going to be the key area. We [need to] tell the right stories. This is the way we see that help coming out (from Cisco and Splunk), so that we can create this storyline to go to the customers. That's one thing I really need from this partnership,” explained Raj.

He shares more about the partnership and hopes from the new partner program in an interview with CRN Asia. What follows is a transcript of the interview.

As TCS has been a partner to both Splunk and Cisco for a long time, would you see the new partner program enhancing the relationship you guys have been both vendors?

For us, everything is customer driven. When we are talking to our customers, what is it that they are coming to us is very important to understand. One thing they are saying to us is: I have been seeing digital transformation for which network transformation has been a part of my strategy every two few years. Now I throw a few more mixes into it.

So, we are mixing a few things into it. [And] now you suddenly start talking about edge. You suddenly start talking about a hybrid cloud. You suddenly start talking about data, not being just data, but being unstructured data and structured data, leading into artificial intelligence, AI, at an enterprise wise landscape, right? When we are looking at this entire range in discussions, what we are seeing is the customers are saying, “how do I really look at it?”

I see chaos. [And] I saw from chaos to clarity at the Splunk conferences. From chaos, how do I move towards clarity? and what we would sell them is, do you think you were all you were always like this? And he says, no. [But] I said, actually wrong, you were always chaotic, it was managed chaos and unmanaged chaos. So now, how do you bring that storyline together with this coming in? So they are saying, give me something where I can look at a full stack observability.

So, when I look at full stack observability: our questions is, why do you need and what do you need in a full stack observability scenario? So this is where the traditional infrastructure is moving to an AIOps kind of a storyline now. And a security observability is the next big thing, and then Sustainability Observability will tie the entire threads together.

Now you suddenly start to see observability [end] to end piece. What would [the] change in temperature do, when the performance happens? The semiconductor players talk about what per power performance and the prices associated with that. So we see a very holistic play that system integrators can play along with Cisco and Splunk together in that portfolio.

So, with this, the partnership program that they are bringing and introducing into the mix should become holistic. They should become one. And it should not be just a product centric. It should really be the problem or domain centricity and then I think that would be key.

How are customers reacting to the integration of solutions between Cisco and Splunk?

Our customers do not get excited with technology at all and that's what we are seeing. They have a business to run. So, they're already confused with the part whether they should spend their resources to save costs or spend money on new product introductions and new innovations.

They’re already asking us those two question – how we can, along with Cisco and Splunk, come together to be able to be that glue of being the integrators in between so that the operators who run the enterprise and the innovators who change the enterprise can work together.

This is very important from a customer perspective, and that's why we keep on hearing that there are a lot more proof of concepts running than actually deployments at scale because they don't see the ROI so quick. And we need to bring those templates out, those playbooks out to make them easy for the client.

So it takes the technology portion away from them but gives also the confidence that the business outcome will be achieved when they work with TCS and a partner like Cisco and Splunk and that's where we are working towards now.

Are you seeing this kind of reaction among all the customers globally, or is it like by region?

Around 60% customers are still looking at keeping the lights on. That doesn't go away. So we want to run after that business.

5% of the customers we see have a decent maturity in them, where we see that they know what they want to do. And most of the other clients, which we really look at, they are looking for a focus where we can come in as an advisor.

When we come and sit down, we want to bring in an ideal scenario of a partner in the mix right in the beginning of that story, so that we can shape up opportunities in the right fashion to solve that problem.

There are very few customers which are mature. They do know what they want to do, but mostly we want to come with them and share with them what they should look at, AI as an agent or agentic AI or agent to agent scenario. Then we start to come up, and that's where we are seeing things very different than what we are working on with our clients today.

There is also a lot of vendor consolidation happening right now. How is TCS dealing with this kind of conversations with your customers?

The questions we ask customers is why do they want to do a vendor consolidation? Is it because expenses? Yes, most of them have that thing. Second, is it the ease of operations in terms of single pane of glass with a P-A-N-E spelling, yes. Or is it mostly driven from an AI perspective?

So, we see that when the discussion is happening, they are saying they want the best outcome at the least amount of time and resource expenses into the mix. So we say, absolutely, that is doable. Now that industry domain becomes important. If you are looking at manufacturing, we are talking about factories of the future. If we are looking at retails, we are looking at digital reality. We are starting to shift when you look at telcos, that's a very interesting play itself, because telcos basically are struggling on the cost because they have no ways to make money.

So their optimization, from an AI perspective, is more network driven, data driven, IT driven than anything. So what we are saying to them is, if we draw the right KPIs sitting based on their business challenge, that would be helpful.

TCS worked with MIT to create a white paper called ICA, Intelligent Choice Architecture. And the whole idea, in essence behind this is how to make the decision environment smarter again and KPIs have become KPAIs - Key Performance AI Indicators.

And that's where it is, so now you want your environment to be very agile. You want your environment to adapt very fast. And you want your adapt environment to learn. Because now when you are looking at the outcomes, you know that the confidence in the outcome is far more than when you were just looking the outcomes in the same environment.

So, this is where that consolidation you want to bring in that theme, as to how that consolidation will happen, in order to give them that outcome that they are looking for.

TCS also works with other vendors as well. How do you manage different vendors, different teams and meeting different requirements of customers and partners?

For TCS, the customer comes first, and their business outcome is primary. Now how we look at the right technology, the right solution, and the right technology partner to solve this problem is completely dependent on the outcome that we are looking at.

Now, we have been great partners to Cisco, and now with Splunk coming in, we are now coming in together into that mix. So now we are starting to see how we can look at certain full stack observability labs that we can create and prove certain performance parameters from an enterprise perspective, along with the Splunk story.

So, this is how we look at validations around certain partnerships. Having said that, in all honesty, we work with all of them. That is why we are trusted business adviser to our clients, and we have to work with the right partner for the right solution.

With that said, where do you see the success and the growth coming from? Which markets are you guys going to be focusing on?

If I were to put my responsibilities out, I have the entire stack which runs from silicon to OEMs to software and services. My unit's name that I lead is called Partner Ecosystems and Alliances. So, the most important word is the E in between the ecosystems.

So, what we see is that the strength is coming from the systems. If we can start to look at multiple dimensions of us working together, from the right [silicon] at the layer, from a performance perspective, because they are very important from a performance and a heat and a cost perspective to this as well as the right OEM coming in from a liquid, cool data centres, things like that. And then looking at how secure the entire platform is, can we throw in, say, a hyper convergent infrastructure with a hybrid cloud environment into the mix? How do we work with all of them coming together?

So, we look at the right partnerships and that where when we go to vendor summits, we see that ecosystem live, that this is how it is working. This is how people are leveraging it, and this is how we are part of the same ecosystem. We get ideas, we contribute ideas, and that's when we become relevant in the game.