Cisco has released The Impact of Agentic AI on Network Operations, a new study exploring the current state of network operations (NetOps), AI adoption, and organizations’ views on AI autonomy and trust. The research indicates that as network environments become more complex, organizations are rapidly shifting toward agent-driven operations, or AgenticOps. More than four in five respondents expect to adopt an AI-led operating model within the next 12 months, while more than three-quarters are open to giving agentic AI significant autonomy in NetOps. Nearly one in four respondents said they are comfortable with fully autonomous network operations without human oversight.
Conducted independently by Omdia, the Impact of Agentic AI on Network Operations study surveyed 1,000 IT and network operations leaders at organizations with 500 or more employees. The findings indicate that organizations have moved from AI in an advisory role to AgenticOps for agent-powered network operations in which operators set direction and guardrails while AI agents sense, reason, and act across domains. It comes as NetOps teams face rising performance expectations and increasingly dynamic environments, with AI workloads adding new traffic patterns, performance requirements, and operational complexity.
Key Takeaways from The Impact of Agentic AI on Network Operations
The findings show that agent-driven AI has taken on operational responsibility in NetOps. This shift is occurring as the average organization generates about 4,100 monitoring alerts and events each day; more than half of them are network related. At this volume, manually clearing the daily network-alert backlog would require roughly 100 IT specialists. Organizations also report that nearly half of network alerts are closed without investigation and an almost identical number of respondents report investigation time is spent pursuing false positives. As adoption advances, requirements for built-in trust are shaping how organizations implement and scale AI.
- Operational complexity is placing pressure on traditional NetOps models Organizations report managing high alert volumes, continuous change, fragmented tooling, and issues that span multiple domains. Against this backdrop, a vast majority (95%) say their existing, non-agentic AIOps tools fall short in one or more significant areas.
o 92% report that performance issues commonly span multiple domains, requiring correlation across ten or more tools for resolution.
o 57% say their current change processes can’t match the speed required today.
- AI adoption creates new demands on the network. That operational complexity is compounded as AI adoption grows and agents operate at software speed, generating unpredictable traffic patterns and greater data exchange.
o AI traffic is on a trajectory to double every six months, according to a Cisco analysis of aggregated direct-to-AI network telemetry.
o When traffic generated by agentic AI is included, Cisco testing found that tasks performed by agents can generate up to 450% more total network traffic.
- Organizations are turning to an agent-driven network. Many organizations are allowing AI agents to take on more responsibility in NetOps, including making production changes such as rerouting traffic, adjusting wireless parameters, isolating suspicious endpoints, and resolving incidents end to end without prior human approval.
o 80% are comfortable granting AI a high or fully autonomous role in NetOps.
o 24% are comfortable with AI acting with no human oversight.
o 82% are comfortable allowing AI to make at least some production network changes without prior human approval.
- Organizations will scale agentic AI on the condition of visibility and trust. Organizations are open to greater agent-driven operations in NetOps, but their willingness to scale it depends on transparency, visibility, and controls.
o 86% say a single integrated platform is the most effective path forward.
o 69% require detailed explainability for agent-driven actions.
o 36% say full observability, including detailed tracing, summarized rationale, and post-action audits, is the minimum acceptable standard.
Background:
- The Impact of Agentic AI on Network Operations is based on data from an independent global survey of 1,000 IT and network operations leaders, conducted by Omdia.
- Survey respondents were decision-makers at organizations with 500 or more employees across North America, Western Europe, and Asia-Pacific.
To review The Impact of Agentic AI on Network Operations report, click here.
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