AI is Coming to a Network Near You and Sooner Than You Think

While hindsight is always nearly perfect, forecasting future trends where technology is concerned can be daunting. After all, you might be wrong. Then again, you might be right.

The thing is that when you’ve got year after year (like ten years) of data about technology, you can start to forecast what’s going to happen with fairly decent accuracy.

For example, back in 2020, we learned that the average enterprise application portfolio was comprised of 71% traditional apps and 29% modern apps. Then, the pandemic hit, and digital transformation accelerated beyond anyone's expectations.

Modernization madness kicked in, and most of it was focused on applications and operations. There was a move toward modern applications—containers and microservices—which was necessary to facilitate the rapid demand for digital services.

Based on all that, you could model the impact on the enterprise portfolio with relative ease—which we did. Our model told us that modern applications would overtake traditional applications in 2025.

We were a year off. Because this year (2024) modern applications are now 51% of the enterprise application portfolio.

But we were close, and we were right. APIs have become the dominant force in security and delivery because they now tend to outnumber applications.

So when I tell you that AI is coming to a network near you, it’s because the trend lines around AIOps are pointing (strongly) upwards.

But you might like some data to back that up. So sit back and I’ll drop some on you.

Right now, operational scripts and toolchains managing networking, security, and delivery are on the cusp of being mostly driven by automation. 

Now, I like to use data from my own research, but consider that a Comcast survey recently uncovered this nugget:

Back to my own data, I can tell you where a lot of organizations would like to implement AI in operations:

Where AI fits in

Given this data, I expect, in the next year, that most of the automation in operations will be driven by a system (probably AI-backed) and not initiated by a human being. We’re already close, and the interest and desire to leverage AI for that automation is significant.

I might be off by a year again, but I am confident that all the data out there—mine, yours, and in the industry—is pointing toward an AIOps dominated operational paradigm.

AI is coming to a network near you, and it might be a lot closer than you think.

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