Artificial intelligence (AI) has proven to be a transformative technology for businesses in every sector. At the same time, it’s hard to overstate the impact that Agentic AI, its next big iteration, is set to have in turn. Case in point: The technology is expected to generate $450 billion in value in the next three years alone. Noting this, it’s no surprise that market researcher IDC estimates that 20% of the enterprise application vendor market has already moved to integrate full-fledged AI agents into its software products to date. For IT leaders, that means potentially having to reinvent everything from the way that executives manage teams to how they fundamentally design technology infrastructures and enterprise-wide computing strategies.
Granted, from automating mundane tasks to enhancing everyday decision-making efforts, smart technology tools are already changing the way in which enterprise leaders plan and approach IT operations. But Agentic AI – which effectively empowers you to leverage teams of virtual assistants that are smart enough to independently perform complex series of tasks on-call in lifelike fashion – may soon change everything.
Daniel Saks, CEO of marketing firm Landbase, told The Forecast that agentic AI not only allows the outsourcing of complex computing needs to assorted digital helpers, saving time, money and effort in the process.
In an interview for this article, Rob Enderle, technology analyst and CEO of The Enderle Group, noted that Agentic AI can be a strategic force multiplier that can help IT teams turbo-charge productivity and performance at scale.
“Typically, today, you are using a form of Generative AI that answers questions and follows [simple] directions,” Enderle said.
“Agentic AI is more autonomous; it will typically engage you rather than the other way around in order to complete some task that it was designed for… anywhere where having a separate agent act on your behalf is where the would be useful. And it is far more likely to displace a human employee as well since its primary role is to take the place of people or older technologies.”
Deloitte chief futurist Mike Bechtel recently told The Forecast that in a world where chatbots may soon be our colleagues, IT leaders and the humans that they oversee will still play a significant role in shaping the future of technology operations and infrastructure. Which is to say that the future of business isn’t expected to be fully autonomous, but rather AI-enhanced and -augmented… and that human-led, AI-assisted IT operations will be the norm, rather than the exception, going forward.
Agentic AI has the potential to fundamentally redefine how IT operations are managed – making tomorrow’s technology solutions smarter, more agile, and more autonomous. But what exactly is Agentic AI, how does it operate in practice, and how might it affect IT teams and their workflows? The answers may be surprising.
Agentic AI: What Is It? – A Definition and Explanation
An AI agent is essentially an application that’s smart enough to understand the world around it, autonomously make decisions and complete tasks on its own, Jeremiah Owyang, a partner at Blitzscaling Ventures, told The Forecast. In other words, it’s not just a reactive tool. Rather, it’s a proactive piece of software designed to take action and apply elements of agency without manual prompting from a human. At odds with historical AI solutions, generally designed to analyze data and generate insights, Agentic AI is also equipped to think ahead and take actions based on those insights. Or, in simpler terms, an AI agent is designed to think and act more akin to a real human.
Enderle noted that these smart agents already have the power to act autonomously, make decisions, and execute tasks across systems without requiring constant human oversight as we speak. And going forward, IT teams will be able to leverage them to perform an increasingly broad and ever more advanced series of tasks such as optimizing infrastructure, managing cloud environments, or ensuring software compliance…and do so with a minimum of actual workforce intervention. It also requires IT leaders to adopt new modes of thinking and best practices.
“Executives need to aggressively use and learn about these solutions, not just rely on marketing representations from the companies behind them,” Enderle pointed out. “They also need to have strong monitoring and quality control practices in place for any Agentic AI solutions that they leverage, so these tools don’t go off the rails.”
Enderle explained that Agentic AI offerings (especially early offerings) aren’t magic bullets for solving all problems. Instead, they are time-saving tools that require a degree of oversight.
In contrast to traditional AI that relies on human input for every decision or action, Agentic AI is its own self-contained entity of sorts, Enderle notes. One that specifically leverages advanced machine learning (ML) algorithms and real-time data analytics to autonomously handle tasks like resource allocation, fault detection, and even security incident response. The shift from simply using AI as a tool that supports human teams to managing a team of AI agents that’s an active participant in managing your company’s IT operations is a significant one to grasp.
“The rise of Agentic AI will significantly change, for good or ill, the perceptions surrounding a company, its employees’ morale and satisfaction, customer retention efforts, and product and services direction,” Enderle said.
“I expect there will be a lot of initial mistakes which will badly damage if not destroy companies who don't implement it prudently.”
He sees Agentic AI has great potential to enhance business operations if they’re used and managed strategically.
Happily, companies like Nutanix now offer enterprise-ready solutions that can help you design, deploy and manage Agentic AI efforts with a minimum of stress… and less time, effort and expense than ever.
To bring the strategy to life requires underpinning technologies that must work together.
Nutanix Enterprise AI (NAI) software, for example, integrates with NVIDIA Enterprise AI, including NVIDIA NIM™ and NVIDIA NeMo™ framework, which can ease the deployment of Agentic AI applications in enterprises. According to a May 2025 Nutanix blog post, the updated NAI offering extends a shared model service methodology, streamlining resources and models for multiple applications, and includes a centralized LLM model repository designed for secure and private connections to generative AI applications and agents.
How Agentic AI Can Help Your Business Enhance IT Efforts
Speaking of the possibilities, it’s hardly any secret that in most organizations, IT operations teams have been bogged down over the last several years by routine tasks and recurring maintenance requirements at every turn. Regular needs like monitoring server health, troubleshooting network issues, patching vulnerabilities, and managing cloud resources can consume significant time and resources… quickly eating up IT pros’ schedules and delaying work on more strategic, value-adding initiatives.
AI tools have the potential to help continuously optimize operations without constant human input – and next-level Agentic AI solutions can handle much of the management of these efforts almost entirely on their own. But when paired with the oversight of human IT leaders, acting as conductors who can steer large groups of Agentic AI solutions towards bigger-picture goals in concert, be advised. The technology’s potential becomes outright transformative, with Harvard Business Review calling it a dramatic leap forward for how humans interact with technology going forward.
“This is where Agentic AI and the humans working with it can be primed to optimize solutions initially… and then further learn over time, [improving results with each passing day as they go],” Enderle notes. That’s why it’s critical right here, right now for organizations to learn the strengths of this technology, he says, before competitors do. Because Agentic AI doesn’t just follow pre-set rules or guidelines like standard software programs; rather, it learns from patterns in data and past actions to get smarter with each interaction, only adding greater value over time.
Already, more and more enterprises are actively embracing the potential of deeply integrating Agentic AI with their IT operations with each passing day. Bearing this in mind, it’s no surprise that PwC now reports that 88% of senior executives plan to increase corporate AI budgets within the next year due to due to agentic AI’s arrival. And, for that matter, 4 in 5 say that AI agents are already being adopted in their companies.
By way of illustration, in a cloud environment, Agentic AI could automatically scale resources up or down based on usage patterns and predicted demand, ensuring optimal performance without over-provisioning or under-provisioning resources. Alternately, it could help IT teams manage cybersecurity efforts, alerting network administrators to potential threats and helping fend off large-scale attacks on business operations. All of which is to say that Agentic AI doesn’t just automate tasks. Rather, it’s fully capable of autonomously optimizing, streamlining, and managing complex technology solutions on its own without human prompting…ultimately taking a more active role in driving IT operations.
Ways That Agentic AI Will Change the Shape of IT Operations
The way that Enderle and others tell it, the rise of new Agentic AI solutions, which can now be rapidly deployed across an ever-growing range of enterprise environments, will have profound implications for IT teams. It’s a notion that global consulting firm McKinsey seconds, noting the potential of AI agents to supercharge operational agility and unlock new revenue opportunities. That said, the company notes that unlocking Agentic AI’s potential demands more than adding these solutions to existing workflows. Rather, the consultancy reports that “it calls for reimagining those workflows from the ground up, with agents at the core.”
It may help to consider common use cases where Agentic AI can plug in to get a better sense of how the technology will transform the shape of the modern enterprise. And, for that matter, as an IT leader planning for this shift, why it’s important to pick Agentic AI solutions that are designed to grow and scale with your business.
Managing IT Operations More Autonomously
A big upside of Agentic AI is the technology’s capacity to autonomously manage IT infrastructures and cloud applications 24/7/365. From handling tasks like juggling workloads in hybrid cloud environments to managing storage, networking, and computing resources, Agentic AI can handle a wide range of tasks sans human intervention. For instance, without demanding much work or oversight from systems administrators, AI agents can not only detect issues in real time but also take corrective actions before they impact users or operations. Imagine that if a server is overloaded or experiencing performance issues, an AI agent could detect this and automatically redistribute workloads across other servers without the need for human intervention.
Accessing Predictive Analytics and Enhanced Decision Making
Today’s Agentic AI tools are intelligent enough to predict spikes in demand, detect anomalies, and identify potential risks before they materialize, allowing business leaders to take proactive action.
For instance, enterprise IT teams can now use such tools to predict when a system is likely to fail or when it’s necessary to scale up resources in anticipation of increased virtualization or workforce demands. IT teams who adopt the technology essentially gain access to a hyper-intelligent and widely-aware AI partner that can monitor IT operations at a speed and scale far greater than humans are capable of… then make more informed, data-driven decisions.
Lowering Operational Risks and Reducing Human Error
It’s no secret that IT operations are complex and convoluted, and that humans can be prone to making errors. Whether challenges relate to user permissions, system misconfigurations, incorrect software patches, password-related concerns or overlooked security vulnerabilities, such mistakes can prove costly nonetheless.
Bear in mind that Agentic AI has the power to help mitigate human error by performing all sorts of demanding high-tech tasks with precision and consistency… and do so all day long (and on holidays or weekends) without the need for food or sleep. By continuously monitoring systems, Agentic AI can detect issues before they become full-blown problems.
For instance, if an IT administrator accidentally misconfigures a system setting, an AI agent can help automatically identify the issue and correct it, reducing the chances of downtime or security breaches.
Enhancing Cybersecurity and Compliance
Cybercrime is growing by leaps and bounds, with a staggering 600 million digital attacks now happening daily. With such incidents up 25% year on year, it’s a huge concern for businesses in every space, especially as IT systems become more complex and interconnected. Traditional security tools rely on set rules and occasional human interventions to respond to potential threats. But agentic AI adopts a more dynamic approach to maintaining digital defenses.
In effect, the technology can monitor systems in real time for abnormal behavior, analyze potential threats, and even respond autonomously to mitigate risks. An agentic AI tool could detect an unusual spike in network traffic and autonomously block suspicious IP addresses, quarantine infected systems, or alert security teams to take further action in turn as needed. Also note that AI agents can help ensure that compliance requirements for enterprise IT and data privacy needs are continuously met by monitoring for regulatory changes, auditing systems, and automatically updating configurations to stay aligned with industry standards.
Improving Incident Response and Speeding Up Recovery
No matter the size of scale of an enterprise, or its industry, the capacity to respond quickly and effectively to incidents is critical for minimizing downtime and business disruptions. Using AI agents, IT teams can respond to issues quickly and effectively.
When a system failure or security breach occurs, smart and self-aware technology helpers can rapidly diagnose the problem, identify its root cause, and initiate any remediation procedures that are needed without manual prompting.
If a critical application goes down, agentic AI could automatically trigger a failover to a backup system, fix the underlying issue, and ensure that end-users experience minimal disruption. This level of automation drastically reduces mean time to recovery and ensures business continuity.
Preparing for Agentic AI in IT Operations
While agentic AI technology presents incredible opportunities for enterprise leaders, Enderle re-iterated athat its adoption across IT operations requires businesses to carefully plan, implement and manage their strategies.
“It’s imperative that IT leaders have strong monitoring and quality controls put in place to complement any such solution,” he asserts. “Remember that the reliability and quality of these systems can vary widely depending on their training (both initially and once in service)… and how easily these systems might be compromised by a hostile internal or external actor,” Enderle said.
A number of secure, standardized, and configurable Agentic AI solutions can help enterprises embrace the technology and manage challenges as they arise.
Industry experts expect that the dawn of agentic AI points to a pivotal moment in the evolution of IT operations. In essence, by helping streamline and automate workflows, optimize resource management, improve security, and enhance decision-making, the technology has the potential to significantly boost the efficiency and agility of IT teams. But making it work in an enterprise environment (let alone staying compliant with oversight and regulations) will demand careful planning, collaboration, and a commitment to upskilling staff to work alongside these intelligent systems. And that’s going to demand active participation and interest, not to mention forward thinking, on the part of business leaders.
Still, it’s clear the future is coming on fast, and that it won’t be long before the concept of the workforce also has to account for intelligent chatbots and virtual helpers of all sorts collaborating alongside humans.
“Technology is no longer just a tool in the cognitive era, it's becoming an active participant in decision-making,” stated the World Economic Forum.
Scott Steinberg is a business strategist, award-winning professional speaker, trend expert and futurist. He’s the bestselling author of Think Like a Futurist; Make Change Work for You: 10 Ways to Future-Proof Yourself, Fearlessly Innovate, and Succeed Despite Uncertainty; and Fast >> Forward: How to Turbo-Charge Business, Sales, and Career Growth. He’s the president and CEO of BIZDEV: The International Association for Business Development and Strategic Partnerships™. Learn more at www.FuturistsSpeakers.com and LinkedIn.
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