Amid rising complexity, organizations are moving quickly toward agent-driven operations: AgenticOps, according to The Impact of Agentic AI on Network Operations, a new report from Cisco.

More than four of every five respondents expect to reach an AI-led operating model within 12 months, with more than three-quarters willing to grant agentic AI significant autonomy in NetOps, including nearly a quarter that are comfortable with fully autonomous operation and no human oversight.

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.

"Agentic AI represents a fundamental paradigm shift: moving from running operations to orchestrating intent," said Joe Vaccaro, SVP/GM, Network Platform & Assurance at Cisco. "Agentic AI for NetOps requires trust built on visibility into every decision, explainable context behind every recommendation, and guardrails that ensure deterministic outcomes. Organizations that master this balance will keep operators firmly in command while enabling agentic systems that act with confidence, validate outcomes, and continuously prove operational trust."

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.

• 92% report that performance issues commonly span multiple domains, requiring correlation across ten or more tools for resolution.
• 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.

• AI traffic is on a trajectory to double every six months, according to a Cisco analysis of aggregated direct-to-AI network telemetry.
• 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.

• 75% have already deployed AI for NetOps.
• 51% run agentic AI that acts  in production today.
• 80% are comfortable granting AI a high or fully autonomous role in NetOps, including 24% who are comfortable with AI acting with no human oversight.
• 82% are comfortable allowing AI to make at least some production network changes without prior human approval.
• 84% expect an AI-led operating model within twelve months.

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.

• 86% say a single integrated platform is the most effective path forward.
• 69% require detailed explainability for agent-driven actions.
• 36% say full observability, including detailed tracing, summarized rationale, and post-action audits, is the minimum acceptable standard.

"The striking takeaway is not simply that AI adoption in NetOps is growing, but how quickly organizations are preparing for AI-led operations," said Jim Frey, Chief Analyst, Network and IT Operations, from Omdia. "The findings point to a broader shift from the advisory model of AIOps to agent-powered operations, AgenticOps, that can take action. As that shift accelerates, integrated visibility, strong governance, and measurable outcomes will be critical to expanding autonomy while maintaining operational control."

Methodology: The report 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.