The future of network automation is set to transform how businesses manage their IT infrastructure. According to Gartner's latest research, network automation will significantly increase by 2026, bringing improvements in efficiency, cost reduction, and flexibility just like when you buy Gaming Servers.
According to Chris Saunderson, Senior Director Analyst at Gartner, “Infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders are increasingly looking to AI-based analytics and augmented decision making including intelligent automation to improve operational resilience and responsiveness, address complexity and process increasingly large amounts of data through automation.”
The Gartner report highlights how automation can play a crucial role in delivering business value. Here is what the report states, “Automation is the engine that accelerates delivery of business value. Infrastructure and operation leaders must view automation as a core capability that optimizes their capacity to deliver high-velocity, high-efficiency, and high-performance services to their stakeholders.”
According to a Gartner report, “Automation profoundly affects the roles, skills, and expectations of infrastructure and operations leaders and their staff. It remains an area of focus for our clients to adopt, sustain, and proliferate automation across their hybrid operational world.”
In this article, you will learn about the seven key insights from Gartner’s network automation report.
7 Key Insights from Gartner's Network Automation Report
Here are seven key insights from Gartner’s network automation report.
1. Network Automation Will Triple by 2026
Gartner forecasts a 3X increase in the deployment of network automation tools by 2026. This growth will be driven by the rising demand for more agile and scalable networks as businesses embrace cloud-native technologies and digital transformation. With IT budgets staying stagnant or increasing slightly across the board, expect more and more businesses to leverage automation to minimize cost and increase productivity and efficiency. Budget constraints will force businesses to automate mundane network management and monitoring tasks. That is where these network automation tools can come in handy.
2. Network Outages Will Be Reduced by 50%
Widespread automation will also translate into a massive dip in network outages. According to Gartner, automation will reduce network downtime by 50 percent in 2026 based on advanced monitoring, analytics, and real-time response capabilities.Â
Network issues are not the only part of the network that advanced monitoring solutions can detect and alert you about. Real-time response capabilities enable troubleshooting of network issues before they can disrupt your business, and predictive analytics helps you predict when that issue will occur based on past data.
3. Network Management to Become the Norm, Driven by AI
Network automation will start to use artificial intelligence and machine learning programs. AI-driven algorithms will offer real-time insights, automate network configuration, and resolve issues faster. That’s why Gartner is predicting a dramatic increase in AI adoption in network operations.
4. Primary Areas of Security Automation focus
Securing business modern networks has grown more important due to their increasing complexity. Notably, research from Gartner goes as far as saying that security automation is a fundamental feature of network management — a primary workhorse of network tools — and forecasted upcoming automated threat detection, response systems, and compliance monitoring for the future.
5. Reducing Human Intervention through Self Healing Networks
In the years to come, just as with network automation, self-healing networks will be more prevalent. Network monitoring systems will become smarter and will detect and resolve network problems automatically without humans. This results in faster recovery times and so much less disruption to business processes.
6. By 30%, operational efficiency will improve.
In 2026, network management should be capable of integrating automation to achieve an operational efficiency improvement of 30% by 2026. Reduced manual workloads, faster deployment, and overall productivity will be achieved with the setup of this, among other things.
7. Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Networks Will Be Seamlessly Managed
Many businesses have migrated their workloads from dedicated server hosting to the cloud. Gartner highlights the growing complexity of managing hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Automation will be key to simplifying these processes, enabling seamless management, monitoring, and optimization of multi-cloud networks without the need for excessive manual configuration.
According to a Gartner network automation report, “Infrastructure automation for operations is being used more to enable business agility and drive advanced service enablement. With generative AI capabilities, there is an increased demand for intelligent automation platforms that use analysis and automation to deliver improved operations, efficiencies, and insights.”
Gartner Advice For IT Leaders
To develop a service-oriented automation strategy, businesses should adopt a platform as a product mindset. This will ensure that they deliver value through automation, agility, and continuous improvement. From improving the infrastructure and operation team capability to shortening the delivery cycle. Adopting a platform as a product approach will speed everything up.
In addition to this, it will also help you to adapt quickly and respond to shifting business needs instantly. By focusing on infrastructure skills acquisition, organizations can upskill teams to better manage and optimize the platform. This allows them to lay a solid foundation for robust automation processes.
That is not all. It can also help you improve your core skills and help you explore different generative AI use cases for infrastructure and operations. Automation can unlock new efficiencies, enabling teams to scale automation efforts both inside and beyond infrastructure and operations.
By harnessing the power of artificial intelligence for repetitive tasks and optimizing workflows, businesses can extend automation across the organization, driving innovation and operational efficiency. This holistic approach ensures that automation is continuously evolving and remains aligned with strategic business objectives.
Conclusion
Gartner’s network automation report paints a promising picture of the future of network automation. As artificial intelligence technology continues to evolve, businesses can expect enhanced network reliability, security, and performance. This can lead to more efficient and cost-effective operations. Organizations that invest in network automation now will be better positioned to thrive in this rapidly changing technological landscape.
Gartner's Chris Saunderson said in a statement, “Technology providers that offer best-of-breed tools for AI for IT operations (AIOps), application performance monitoring, and generative AI will influence artificial intelligence greatly in the future,” This indicates that the influence of larger technology providers over the industry will grow in the coming months.
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