Agentic AI won’t scale on ambition. It will scale on infrastructure.

Agentic AI is moving into the enterprise faster than the infrastructure beneath it can keep up. In Cisco and Omdia’s survey of 650 executives, 87% said it’s reshaping strategic priorities, yet 62% said they’re struggling to secure networks, manage agent identities, and protect data in motion. For CIOs, that’s the job now: build the infrastructure, security, and governance to scale AI without also scaling risk.

Secure, observable infrastructure is the new constraint

At enterprise scale, agentic AI exposes whatever the infrastructure can’t support. Agents need low latency access to data, resilient connectivity, zero trust identity, and governance. The people working with them need the visibility to monitor what those non-deterministic agents are doing. If the infrastructure isn’t secure, scale won’t create value. It’ll create exposure.

That’s the bigger shift the research points to: Agentic AI turns infrastructure into a strategic business decision, not a back-office one.

The network is the make-or-break layer

The research is clear: 96% of executives said real-time AI requires robust networks. That’s not a technical detail. It’s the operating requirement for agentic AI.

Agents don’t live in one place. They move across applications, clouds, and data centers. The network has become the runtime. So, it’s not surprising that the research found that network performance and resilience is the top indicator executives are tracking to judge whether agentic AI is creating competitive advantage. Before AI can transform the business, leaders have to trust the network carrying the workloads, the data, and the policies around them.

If the network can’t deliver speed, uptime, and security, the business won’t get scalable AI.

The workforce shift is already underway

 Within 24 months, executives expect 55% of employees to work alongside AI agents. That’s a major change in how work gets done — and it puts new demands on the systems underneath it.

For people to collaborate with AI agents effectively, they need to see what those agents are doing, trust the data behind their actions, and step in when something looks off. None of that is possible without resilient networks, strong identity controls, and real-time visibility of agent behavior.

This is what scale really requires. Not just more AI, but AI that employees and the organization can trust — because the systems around it are secure, observable, and under control.

Investment is increasing. Infrastructure has to keep up.

The clearest signal that agentic AI is more than hype is where the money is going. On average, organizations are directing nearly 37% of their technology budgets to agentic AI initiatives. That’s not experimentation spending. That’s transformation spending.

But spending isn’t the same as scaling. The companies pulling ahead aren’t just funding agentic AI. They’re building the infrastructure — secure, resilient, observable — that lets it operate consistently across the business.

For CIOs, that’s the real signal. The next advantage won’t go to the company with the biggest AI budget. It’ll go to the one with the infrastructure to turn that investment into impact.

The findings from 650 executives reveal where agentic AI is headed — and what it will take to scale it. Explore The Race to Agentic AI.