Cisco Survey Reveals Half of Network Ops Teams Already Use AI Agents

Cisco's recent survey on network operations reveals that AI is increasingly taking on operational tasks in production networks. According to the report, 'The Impact of Agentic AI on Network Operations', 51% of respondents already have agentic AI acting in production network operations (NetOps), while 84% expect an AI-led operating model within 12 months.

The study, conducted by Omdia Research among 1,000 IT and network-operations leaders at organizations with 500+ employees, found that the average organization receives about 4,100 monitoring alerts and events a day. This is in addition to the alert volume generated by traditional infrastructure, which can lead to rising alert volumes and problems spanning multiple systems.

Cisco's testing also showed that tasks performed by AI agents generate up to 450% more total network traffic than non-agentic tasks. This raises concerns about the impact of agentic NetOps on network load.

Despite these challenges, the report found that organizations are not ready to make the shift to agentic operations without clear governance mechanisms in place. Thirty-six percent of respondents said full observability is the minimum acceptable standard for agentic operations.