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Network Automation Enables DevOps Programmability

Shamus McGillicuddy

Nearly 97% of DevOps teams are integrating their orchestration solutions with network automation tools, according to new research from Enterprise Management Associates (EMA).

EMA recently published The Future of Data Center Network Automation, a report based on a survey of 359 enterprises and services providers. The survey explored technology strategies and challenges for automating data center networks.

Integration between data center network automation tools and DevOps tools are nearly universal, but the depth of that integration varies. More than 50% of companies have or plan to have only loose integration between NetOps and DevOps automation, meaning that many NetOps teams are limiting the extent of network programmability that they offer to DevOps.

This conservative approach may mitigate risk, but it could be shortsighted. DevOps groups require agility to achieve their goals. When network engineers limit network programmability, they will inevitably have to respond to a larger number of change tickets from DevOps, leading to human latency in overall operations. Network engineers may maintain more control over how the network operates, but it comes at the expense of agility.

More than 46% of networks teams have or plan to implement tight integration between NetOps and DevOps automation, meaning that they are going to allow DevOps to program most or all aspects of their data center networks. This approach is most popular with best-in-class data center network automation strategies, suggesting that it is a best practice.

Network Automation Strategies are Cloud and DevOps Centric

The typical data center network automation strategy is multi-tool. More than 48% of network teams use two tools for network automation, and 45% use three or more. Quite often, DevOps tools are part of the picture, not just something to be integrated with. More than 42% of network teams use DevOps automation or infrastructure-as-code tools as one of their network automation solutions. DevOps tools are most popular as a network automation solution in companies that have many data centers (11 or more).

Beyond DevOps integration, EMA research found that most companies are thinking about how their data center network automation tools fit into their overall hybrid cloud architecture. Nearly 78% of companies require that their data center network automation tools be extensible to public cloud environments, thus allowing the orchestration of network automation across both data centers and clouds. This requirement is more common among best-in-class companies, against suggesting that it is a best practice.

"The push toward the cloud is one thing that is driving our [data center] network automation," a network automation engineer with a $3 billion retailer told EMA. "With day-to-day operations, we want to be able to provide our new cloud applications with access to resources that are sitting in a data center."

EMA's research is clear. As network engineering teams formulate a plan for data center network automation, DevOps and cloud will be a major factor. If you have a DevOps team, you must be prepared to integrate your network automation solutions with the DevOps toolset. You should also consider how your network automation strategy will be extensible to public cloud environments. And DevOps tools may offer solutions to some of your network automation requirements.

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Network Automation Enables DevOps Programmability

Shamus McGillicuddy

Nearly 97% of DevOps teams are integrating their orchestration solutions with network automation tools, according to new research from Enterprise Management Associates (EMA).

EMA recently published The Future of Data Center Network Automation, a report based on a survey of 359 enterprises and services providers. The survey explored technology strategies and challenges for automating data center networks.

Integration between data center network automation tools and DevOps tools are nearly universal, but the depth of that integration varies. More than 50% of companies have or plan to have only loose integration between NetOps and DevOps automation, meaning that many NetOps teams are limiting the extent of network programmability that they offer to DevOps.

This conservative approach may mitigate risk, but it could be shortsighted. DevOps groups require agility to achieve their goals. When network engineers limit network programmability, they will inevitably have to respond to a larger number of change tickets from DevOps, leading to human latency in overall operations. Network engineers may maintain more control over how the network operates, but it comes at the expense of agility.

More than 46% of networks teams have or plan to implement tight integration between NetOps and DevOps automation, meaning that they are going to allow DevOps to program most or all aspects of their data center networks. This approach is most popular with best-in-class data center network automation strategies, suggesting that it is a best practice.

Network Automation Strategies are Cloud and DevOps Centric

The typical data center network automation strategy is multi-tool. More than 48% of network teams use two tools for network automation, and 45% use three or more. Quite often, DevOps tools are part of the picture, not just something to be integrated with. More than 42% of network teams use DevOps automation or infrastructure-as-code tools as one of their network automation solutions. DevOps tools are most popular as a network automation solution in companies that have many data centers (11 or more).

Beyond DevOps integration, EMA research found that most companies are thinking about how their data center network automation tools fit into their overall hybrid cloud architecture. Nearly 78% of companies require that their data center network automation tools be extensible to public cloud environments, thus allowing the orchestration of network automation across both data centers and clouds. This requirement is more common among best-in-class companies, against suggesting that it is a best practice.

"The push toward the cloud is one thing that is driving our [data center] network automation," a network automation engineer with a $3 billion retailer told EMA. "With day-to-day operations, we want to be able to provide our new cloud applications with access to resources that are sitting in a data center."

EMA's research is clear. As network engineering teams formulate a plan for data center network automation, DevOps and cloud will be a major factor. If you have a DevOps team, you must be prepared to integrate your network automation solutions with the DevOps toolset. You should also consider how your network automation strategy will be extensible to public cloud environments. And DevOps tools may offer solutions to some of your network automation requirements.

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Nearly every conversation about AI eventually circles back to compute. GPUs dominate the headlines while cloud platforms compete for workloads and model benchmarks drive investment decisions. But underneath that noise, a quieter infrastructure challenge is taking shape. The real bottleneck in enterprise AI is not processing power, it is the ability to store, manage and retrieve the relentless volumes of data that AI systems generate, consume and multiply ...

The 2026 Observability Survey from Grafana Labs paints a vivid picture of an industry maturing fast, where AI is welcomed with careful conditions, SaaS economics are reshaping spending decisions, complexity remains a defining challenge, and open standards continue to underpin it all ...

The observability industry has an evolving relationship with AI. We're not skeptics, but it's clear that trust in AI must be earned ... In Grafana Labs' annual Observability Survey, 92% said they see real value in AI surfacing anomalies before they cause downtime. Another 91% endorsed AI for forecasting and root cause analysis. So while the demand is there, customers need it to be trustworthy, as the survey also found that the practitioners most enthusiastic about AI are also the most insistent on explainability ...

In the modern enterprise, the conversation around AI has moved past skepticism toward a stage of active adoption. According to our 2026 State of IT Trends Report: The Human Side of Autonomous AI, nearly 90% of IT professionals view AI as a net positive, and this optimism is well-founded. We are seeing agentic AI move beyond simple automation to actively streamlining complex data insights and eliminating the manual toil that has long hindered innovation. However, as we integrate these autonomous agents into our ecosystems, the fundamental DNA of the IT role is evolving ...

AI workloads require an enormous amount of computing power ... What's also becoming abundantly clear is just how quickly AI's computing needs are leading to enterprise systems failure. According to Cockroach Labs' State of AI Infrastructure 2026 report, enterprise systems are much closer to failure than their organizations realize. The report ... suggests AI scale could cause widespread failures in as little as one year — making it a clear risk for business performance and reliability.

The quietest week your engineering team has ever had might also be its best. No alarms going off. No escalations. No frantic Teams or Slack threads at 2 a.m. Everything humming along exactly as it should. And somewhere in a leadership meeting, someone looks at the metrics dashboard, sees a flat line of incidents and says: "Seems like things are pretty calm over there. Do we really need all those people?" ... I've spent many years in engineering, and this pattern keeps repeating ...

The gap is widening between what teams spend on observability tools and the value they receive amid surging data volumes and budget pressures, according to The Breaking Point for Observability Leaders, a report from Imply ...

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If your best engineers spend their days sorting tickets and resetting access, you are wasting talent. New global data shows that employees in the IT sector rank among the least motivated across industries. They're under a lot of pressure from many angles. Pressure to upskill and uncertainty around what agentic AI means for job security is creating anxiety. Meanwhile, these roles often function like an on-call job and require many repetitive tasks ...