Research Report
2026
The Year of Autonomous IT
5 ITOps Trends Turning Automation Into Action
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Based on survey data from 100 VP+ IT decision-makers with observability budget authority.
Executive Summary
The Infrastructure Visibility Gap is No Longer Acceptable
IT operations have outgrown the model they were built on. Enterprises now monitor tens of thousands of metrics, ingest terabytes of logs, and generate thousands of alerts daily, all while managing increasingly complex infrastructures that span on-prem data centers, multiple cloud environments, and emerging AI workloads. Yet despite all this telemetry, too many teams still learn about outages from customers before they see them in their tools.
Recent high-profile outages at CrowdStrike, Cloudflare, and others have demonstrated just how quickly a small issue can ripple across industries, interrupt daily life, and cost companies billions.
The next phase of AI-first observability requires something bigger. It must extend beyond the data center and cloud. It must encompass the Internet itself, where applications, identity, payments, APIs, and user experience actually live. This is where business resilience is won or lost. This convergence of hybrid infrastructure observability, Internet Performance Monitoring, and Digital Experience Monitoring is the real beginning of autonomous IT.
The answer is not another tool or more humans chasing alerts. The real shift requires a new operating model that moves IT from reacting to predicting and from patching to self-healing.
Five Forces Converging
Toward Autonomous IT
Toward Autonomous IT
Survey data from 100 VP+ IT decision-makers reveals five forces converging to accelerate the shift to autonomous operations. Each one reinforces the others, creating a cycle already forming inside the highest-performing organizations.
Each force builds momentum for the other
Observability budgets are
protected infrastructure
Consolidation is the
optimization strategy
Platform loyalty is
giving way to agility
Current tools aren’t
delivering actionable insights
AI adoption is maturing, but
most have significant runway
See Why 2026 is the Year of Autonomous IT
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METHODOLOGY
About This Research
This report draws on survey data from 100 VP+ IT decision-makers with observability budget authority, conducted in Q2 2025. Respondents represent organizations across diverse industries and geographies.
Organization sizes range from under 500 employees to more than 20,000, with 67% representing enterprises with 1,000 or more employees. 75% of respondents have final decision-making authority for observability platform selection and budgeting, while 25% are key influencers.
* All respondents currently use or plan to implement observability solutions within the next 12 months.
