Cisco Unveils Major Innovations in AgenticOps to Enhance IT Operations in the AI Era

In a remarkable announcement made at Cisco Live EMEA, Cisco Systems, Inc. introduced substantial advancements in its AgenticOps framework, which is set to redefine the landscape of IT operations during the AI era. Initially launched last year, AgenticOps shifts the model from traditional IT management to agent-driven operations, emphasizing automation, scaling, and simplification for IT teams.

The Modern Needs of IT Operations

IT environments are increasingly becoming more distributed and dynamic, leading to heightened operational and security demands for network and infrastructure teams. As these professionals juggle multiple tasks, managing complexity while ensuring reliability and accuracy becomes essential. Cisco’s AgenticOps is specifically tailored to meet these challenges, enabling intelligent execution and allowing teams to focus on primary objectives without becoming overwhelmed by the intricacies of their environments.

In discussions surrounding this revolutionary change, Jeetu Patel, President and Chief Product Officer at Cisco, commented, "For teams responsible for operating and securing distributed networks and infrastructure, AgenticOps represents a profound and fundamental shift away from complexity." He emphasized that Cisco’s platform consolidates agentic capabilities to enhance productivity, efficiency, and control.

Advancements in AgenticOps

The highlights of the new AgenticOps capabilities include:

- Autonomous Troubleshooting: Cisco's innovative end-to-end investigations can quickly identify and remediate connectivity issues, dramatically reducing mean time to resolution (MTTR) to mere minutes. By utilizing a robust telemetry system, the solution offers precise operational insights.
- Continuous Optimization: This feature autonomously enhances user experience by tuning various network parameters in real-time, ensuring users do not experience performance degradation.
- Trusted Validation: The new agentic assessments verify changes by utilizing deep reasoning, ensuring that network modifications align with the live topology and configurations.
- Experience Metrics: Transforming numerous network signals into actionable insights, this feature enhances user experience by providing critical metrics.
- Agentic Workflow Creation: Users will have the capability to create production-ready automations through the Cisco AI Assistant, tailored to specific environmental conditions.

These features will begin rolling out in February 2026, marking a new era of IT operation capabilities for campus, branch, and industrial networks.

Data Center and Service Provider Innovations

Moreover, the enhancements extend to data center operations, where early detection and intelligent event correlation using AgenticOps optimize performance. The proactive nature of these insights promises to drive significant improvements in operational outcomes. This feature will see controlled availability in June 2026. For service providers, Cisco’s Crosswork AI will harness agentic capabilities to efficiently diagnose and resolve networking issues, currently in beta testing.

Optimizing Security and Compliance

As cybersecurity remains a top priority, Cisco is focusing on enhancing firewall operations through its Security Cloud Control. Proactive recommendations tailored to zero trust standards enable organizations to improve security measures rapidly. Continuous compliance checks will automatically identify deviations from standards such as PCI-DSS, allowing teams to maintain high-security integrity with minimal effort. Essentially, these capabilities enhance both the speed and accuracy of network management, fostering greater confidence in organizational resilience against threats. General availability is aimed for May 2026.

A Vision for the Future

In conclusion, Cisco's innovations in AgenticOps signal a monumental shift in how organizations will approach IT operation management. With an emphasis on agent-driven methodologies, Cisco positions itself at the forefront of enterprise networking, offering solutions that not only simplify operations but do so in a manner that prioritizes security and reliability. As Ron Westfall, VP at HyperFRAME Research notes, "Cisco's AgenticOps approach grounds AI-driven operations in decades of operational expertise, strong guardrails, and clear human oversight. This combination shines as enterprises confront the growing complexity of IT environments without succumbing to heightened risks."

For those interested in learning more about these innovations and how they may apply to their own organizations, visit the Cisco newsroom for comprehensive updates and insights.