IDC Report: Networking Crucial for Agentic AI Production

Networking is essential for agentic AI, providing connectivity, security, and governance. It acts as a control plane for policy-based controls, observability, and consistent security across distributed agent activities.

An IDC survey reveals that infrastructure, particularly networking concerns, is the main obstacle to moving agentic AI projects from pilot to production. Key issues include security, automation challenges, and limited staff time and talent.

Agentic AI's distributed interactions across various applications, services, and data sources expand the operational scope and increase security and governance surface area, demanding more complex networking.

Enterprises face a choice between platform-based and best-of-breed solutions for agentic AI infrastructure. While best-of-breed addresses specific needs, platform approaches offer stronger security, reduced complexity, and faster deployment, with a balanced approach being ideal.

An infrastructure-led approach, supported by open, flexible, and extensible platforms, is required for operationalizing agentic AI at scale with effective governance and observability. This approach enables cohesive security and governance frameworks.