Splunk today formally opened its new ANZ headquarters in Melbourne.
Located in central Melbourne, the new premises house nearly half of Splunk's 75-strong Australian workforce.
Splunk, which also has offices in Sydney, Canberra and Perth, has undergone "significant and rapid expansion, according to ANZ country manager Simon Eid.
Victorian Department of Economic Development, Jobs, Transport and Resources secretary Richard Bolt (standing in for the Minister for Small Business, Innovation and Trade Philip Dalidakis, said the state's Invest Victoria office in San Franscisco played a significant part in attracting Splunk's ANZ headquarters to Melbourne.
{loadposition stephen08}But CEO Doug Merritt told iTWire that Melbourne was chosen as the local headquarters because that was where most of the company's initial Australian staff were based.
The new office is located in the Rialto building, and has been fitted out in a mix of semi-industrial (ceilings with exposed ducts and piping) and contemporary hotel/domestic styles (light wood and pendant lighting), with room names drawn from Australian popular culture (eg AC/DC, Midnight Oil, Crocodile Dundee and Neighbours). And being Melbourne, there's also some street art.
Originally designed for log analysis, Splunk is now more widely used for big data analytics.
Minister assisting the Prime Minister on Cyber Security Dan Tehan said the Federal Government was working collaboratively in this area, and had allocated $230 million to its cyber security strategy and another $400 million to cyber defence. "We know we will have to continue to invest in this area," he said, adding that it is important that the small business and not-for-profit sectors are also covered.
He welcomed Splunk's Splunk4Good program, saying education is very important as the country needs people who can keep up with this aspect of technology, which means TAFEs and schools need to be involved in addition to universities.
There is "a huge amount of exploring to be done in this area" of big data analytics, he said.
Splunk4Good has pledged to donate a minimum of $100 million in software licenses, support, training and education over the next 10 years to nonprofits and educational institutions.
Six Australian universities are already benefiting. One example is the photovoltaic and renewable energy engineering department of the University of New South Wales, which is using Splunk to store time series data from commercial-scale photovoltaic systems installed at the main campus along with weather data from local weather stations for use academics, researchers, and students.
Merritt told iTWire that the company has a strategy of making concentrated investments in one country until it reaches critical mass, and then moving on to the next. Thus Splunk's biggest investment in APAC has been in Australia, even though Hong Kong was selected as the regional headquarters.
Local functions include sales, support, marketing, professional services, education, and maintenance engineering, he added: "Having a full slate of people helps us serve our customers better."