AI-Driven Assistants and AIOps Transform Enterprise Networks in 2022

In the past year, enterprises have taken aggressive measures, adopting better technology and innovation to support new business priorities and workflows. Major upgrades to networking, security, and automation are being made to support the growing hybrid‑work environment, with a Google and Economist Impact survey showing 53% of APAC employees view productivity as a significant advantage of hybrid work.

Supporting seamless hybrid work requires massive infrastructure investment; IDC data predicts a 9.3% increase in ICT spending in APAC for 2021, with AI investment growing fastest at 30.1% and projected to reach $250 billion globally by 2025.

AI adoption is a primary focus for APAC enterprises upgrading their ICT infrastructure. A 2021 AI research report indicated that about 99% of respondents believe their organization will benefit from embedding AI into daily operations, products, and services, and 42% reported that 50% or more of their operational decisions are already or soon will be assisted by AI, compared with 23% in North America.

AI‑driven assistants will largely take over network troubleshooting processes

AI, natural language processing (NLP) and natural language understanding (NLU) are replacing charts, pie charts, and dashboards. Decision makers now simply input questions to receive answers, or tag issues that can be auto‑remediated, a concept called autopilot. Enterprises will see AI‑driven assistants replace traditional dashboards and fundamentally change IT team troubleshooting, eliminating the “chair‑turning” interface.

Full‑stack AIOps will be a key AI theme for enterprise networks in 2022

With increasingly complex networks and distributed workloads, AI for IT operations (AIOps) has become a top priority. Companies will invest in four key impact areas: user experience, operational experience, DevOps/application experience, and location services. Organizations will also turn to AIOps to improve network security and to identify and mitigate potential issues before they occur.

As remote and hybrid work become the norm, enterprise‑grade networking and security will extend into the home network space. 2022 will further cement the home as a primary enterprise micro‑branch, prompting IT teams to scrutinize network edges. To ensure end‑to‑end visibility, reliability, and security, enterprise network solutions will begin permeating remote and hybrid workforces, with many companies adopting a hybrid approach that shifts from traditional security solutions to a client‑to‑cloud Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) model, integrating networking and security into a single architecture for direct, secure cloud access.

AI assistants capable of managing and troubleshooting network issues at the level of human domain experts will be promoted to IT team members in 2022

In enterprises, AI, machine learning, and AIOps could eventually become as trusted as the most experienced IT domain experts. While not there yet, next year we can expect AI assistants and conversational interfaces to play more serious, trusted roles. Currently, AI conversational interfaces can answer up to 70% of support tickets with effectiveness comparable to domain experts. As network complexity and distributed workloads increase, AIOps and virtual AI assistants will be seen as essential members of IT teams. The expansion of cloud services provides limitless, cost‑effective processing and storage, giving enterprises and vendors the data needed to train AI assistants and improve their accuracy.

Longformer and Few‑Shot Machine Learning Algorithms Will Bring Conversational Interfaces Closer to Passing the Turing Test

In the next ten years, AI technologies across many industries will achieve accuracy comparable to human expertise. In enterprises, AI‑powered conversational interfaces supported by AIOps are only a few years away from 90% accuracy, a milestone similar to IBM Watson’s Jeopardy victory. This progress means AI will be able to answer questions and manage technical issues like IT domain experts, learning and improving over time until it becomes indistinguishable from human specialists.

The Boundary Between Networking and Security Will Continue to Blur

Network experts once spoke one language and security experts another, but today they must be bilingual, especially at the edge of architectures like SASE. Traditional security vendors are moving into networking and vice versa, requiring integrated solutions. At every step, security must be tied to routers, switches, and access points to make decisions and enforce policies across the connected fabric.

Undoubtedly, AI brings massive benefits to enterprises of all sizes, from chatbots in customer service to new operational‑efficiency discoveries and intelligent network solutions that enable seamless device handoff. These use cases define what it means to work in an experience‑first era. Business leaders should strongly consider applying AI‑driven technologies to their workflows and daily operations to prepare for a digital‑first environment and ultimately elevate their position in the value chain.