Riverbed, the leader in AIOps for observability, today announced the results of the Riverbed Global Survey on 'The State of Autonomous IT Operations', which reveals that 90% of organizations want to use agentic AI to drive autonomous IT operations. However, while 76% say that agentic AI is central to their future IT strategy, and 91% agree that AI investments have met or exceeded their expectations, 77% state that their organization is hesitant to allow AI to make operational decisions without human approval.
AI has crossed the threshold from experimentation into the IT operating model, as organizations accelerate efforts to operationalize AI and move toward autonomous IT. The research found that every organization surveyed views agentic AI as important to its future IT strategy, including 76% who consider it critical or very important. As AI delivers tangible business value, 63% have increased AI investment and 91% say AI has met or exceeded ROI expectations. With 90% expecting to achieve human-supervised or highly autonomous IT operations within the next two years, the challenge has shifted from AI adoption to AI execution at scale.
The survey included 1,200 business decision-makers, IT leaders, and technical specialists across seven countries and a range of industries, providing insight into the current state of autonomous IT operations. While enthusiasm is high, only 41% of organizations say their environments are fully prepared for AI, while, on average, just 19% of IT operations are currently automated. Adoption at scale remains limited, with only 8% reporting enterprise-wide AI-enabled operations and just 9% of AI initiatives fully deployed.
The research identifies three routes to success – high-quality data, multi-domain visibility, and tool consolidation – yet significant gaps remain. While 96% recognize multi-domain visibility is critical, only 17% have achieved fully unified visibility across networks, applications, and endpoints. Just 23% rate their data granularity as excellent and only 21% say same of data quality. Tool sprawl further slows progress, with 91% agreeing tool consolidation reduces friction and 90% say a unified platform simplifies problem identification.
"The journey to autonomous IT is well underway. Organizations increasingly see AI as the path to more resilient, efficient, and proactive IT, but our research shows significant gaps between ambition and readiness," said Jim Gargan, Chief Marketing Officer at Riverbed. "The next phase of AI is not simply more automation, but AI that enterprises can understand, trust, and govern."
Security, trust, and oversight must be addressed. Just 42% are highly confident in AI governance, only 36% of technical specialists. As a result, 92% believe AI observability and governance will become critical new IT domain. The research points to major shift in service desk: 93% expect AI-powered operational intelligence to transform frontline IT within two years.
About Riverbed
Riverbed, the leader in AIOps for observability, helps organizations optimize their users' experiences by leveraging AI automation for the prevention, identification, and resolution of IT issues. With over 20 years of experience in data collection and AI and machine learning, Riverbed's open and AI-powered observability platform and solutions optimize digital experiences and greatly improve IT efficiency. Riverbed also offers industry-leading Acceleration solutions that provide fast, agile, secure acceleration of any app, over any network, to users anywhere. Together with our thousands of market-leading customers globally – including 95% of the FORTUNE 100 – we are empowering next-generation digital experiences.
