Cisco Systems has unveiled a new wave of AgenticOps innovations designed to reimagine how IT teams automate, scale, and simplify operations in the AI era. Announced at Cisco Live EMEA, the updates extend the company’s agent-first operating model across networking, security, and observability environments.
AgenticOps, first introduced last year, is positioned as Cisco’s operating model for modern IT. Built around autonomous action with embedded oversight, it enables intelligent execution while maintaining the reliability, governance, and control enterprises require. The latest enhancements aim to help organizations manage increasingly distributed and dynamic IT environments while reducing operational strain on overstretched teams.
Cisco said the new capabilities are informed by system-wide awareness drawn from cross-domain telemetry spanning Cisco Networking, Security Cloud Control, Cisco Nexus One, and Splunk. By ingesting live signals from both owned and unowned networks, security controls, applications, and collaboration platforms, including Cisco ThousandEyes, Secure Firewall, and Splunk Observability, AgenticOps delivers context-aware, closed-loop execution. The approach shifts routine operational tasks from humans to machines while preserving human oversight.
Across campus, branch, and industrial environments, Cisco is rolling out autonomous troubleshooting designed to triage connectivity and experience issues end to end, reducing mean time to resolution to minutes. The system applies reasoning from telemetry data to identify root causes, validate multiple hypotheses simultaneously, and execute deterministic remediations. Continuous optimization capabilities aim to prevent performance degradation by autonomously tuning RF, QoS, path selection, and control planes based on live network conditions. Trusted validation features assess network changes against topology, configuration, and telemetry data, including compliance checks and impact analysis. These campus, branch, and industrial capabilities are set to begin rolling out in February 2026.
For data center environments, AgenticOps introduces early detection and intelligent event correlation to provide prescriptive recommendations that optimize performance across traditional and AI workloads. The enhancements strengthen observability and unified operations within Cisco Nexus One. Controlled availability is targeted for June 2026.
In service provider networks, agentic capabilities embedded in Crosswork AI are designed to identify, diagnose, and resolve complex, multi-vendor issues with greater speed and accuracy. The offering is currently in beta.
Cisco is also expanding AgenticOps within its security portfolio through enhancements to Cisco Security Cloud Control. New proactive recommendation features analyze firewall traffic patterns and application access modes to identify opportunities for stronger zero trust controls. The system can propose environment-specific actions executable with a single click. Agentic troubleshooting and optimization aim to detect issues such as performance-impacting “elephant flows,” conduct full-context analysis, and suggest remediation steps. Continuous compliance features evaluate firewall configurations to identify PCI-DSS deviations and recommend corrective actions. General availability is targeted for May 2026.
On the observability front, AI Agent Monitoring in Splunk Observability Cloud will provide visibility into the performance, cost, quality, and behavior of large language model and agentic applications. The solution visualizes agent workflows and is expected to integrate with Cisco AI Defense to address risks such as bias, hallucinations, data leakage, and prompt injection. General availability is scheduled for February 25.
Cisco said these innovations reinforce its broader strategy to embed agentic AI capabilities across its platform, helping enterprises manage growing scale and complexity while maintaining governance and operational control.
KEY QUOTES
“For teams responsible for operating and securing distributed networks and infrastructure, AgenticOps represents a profound and fundamental shift away from complexity. This is the true power of Cisco as a platform. By delivering agentic capabilities aligned to critical IT operations priorities, we’re combining Cisco’s unique cross-domain visibility, purpose-built models, and governance together to supercharge teams.”
Jeetu Patel, President and Chief Product Officer, Cisco Systems
“The industry is clearly moving toward more agentic models of IT operations, but execution and trust will determine who leads. Cisco’s AgenticOps approach is compelling because it grounds AI-driven operations in decades of operational expertise, strong guardrails, and clear human oversight. That combination positions Cisco firmly as enterprises look for practical ways to manage growing scale and complexity without introducing new risk.”
Ron Westfall, VP and Practice Leader, Infrastructure and Networking, HyperFRAME Research
