Trust is a buzzword in our industry in 2026. It often refers to trust, or, more often than not, a lack of trust, in AI. But for once, we’re not going to talk about that in this article. It’s also worth taking a closer look at trust in a fundamental component of every organization: the network and the operational tasks associated with it. During Partner Summit, Cisco announced several updates and innovations related to this topic.
Last year, AgenticOps was briefly the most commonly used term at Cisco events. By 2026, that will no longer be the case. Now, it’s all about Cisco Cloud Control (for partners, it’s primarily Cisco IQ). This doesn’t mean that AgenticOps is no longer interesting or relevant. On the contrary, we’d even go so far as to say. AgenticOps is still very much present under the Cloud Control umbrella. It’s still important, among other things, to ensure the network performs optimally.
Deeper integration of ThousandEyes
To gain insights into how a network performs, Cisco has had ThousandEyes in its portfolio since 2020. That acquisition also brought Joe Vaccaro to Cisco. As SVP & GM of Network Platform and Assurance, he is now responsible for more than just ThousandEyes. This makes sense, as ThousandEyes is now so deeply integrated into various parts of Cisco that it’s difficult to think of it as a completely standalone product anymore.
Note, however, that ThousandEyes still exists as a standalone product. Its added value is much greater now that it’s also embedded in other parts of the company. Cisco is happily continuing this trend at the Partner Summit. “ThousandEyes has always been an authority when it comes to insights into its own networks and those of others,” Vaccaro notes. In combination with AI agents, however, there should be many more possibilities. For some customers, though, achieving that integration proved to be quite a challenge. With today’s announcements, Cisco aims to resolve this.
ThousandEyes runs on access points
One of the first ways employees interact with a network is through the access points installed throughout the company. That’s why Cisco has implemented its first integration there. From now on, ThousandEyes will run embedded on select, unspecified Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 access points.
Of course, not the entire ThousandEyes platform runs on the access points. It only involves the component dedicated to synthetic testing. ThousandEyes knows the exact topology of a network and tests whether everything is functioning optimally. It can do this at any time, including overnight. The idea is that this allows any errors or disruptions to be detected before they cause problems.
Experience metrics and agentic actions
Cisco is introducing two other updates related to ThousandEyes and insights into network performance: Experience Metrics and Agentic Actions. Experience Metrics isn’t new, by the way. What is new, however, is that applications will now also be included. This integration bridges the gap between the network and the applications that depend on the network’s performance. Here, too, the results from Experience Metrics are intended to make it clear, or at least clearer, where any application issues are coming from. Once that’s established, the appropriate actions can be taken.
This brings us to Agentic Actions. It brings all the insights together, so to speak, and then puts them to use. Vaccaro refers to Agentic Actions as the “manifestation of the agentic loop.” Its operation is not separate from the overarching Cisco Cloud Control, but rather leverages the workflows available there.
You can let Agentic Actions operate autonomously, or escalate issues to a human. Every action it can perform is assigned a score indicating the level of confidence in a specific intervention and a score for any potential risk. Here, too, there is a link to Cloud Control, as this is essentially AI Canvas. Agentic Actions primarily shows organizations how AI agents arrived at a conclusion, what actions it proposes, and whether the solution actually helped.
More trust = more autonomy
With the announcements discussed above, Cisco aims to make the network as a whole more reliable. However, the main goal is to slowly but surely build trust in how the operational side of the network functions. By working very closely with access points and applications, among other things, the results coming in through various channels must be, and remain, highly reliable. This, in turn, should lead to increasing autonomy in how network interventions are carried out.
Full autonomy in operations doesn’t happen overnight. It must occur step by step. Initially, human approval may still be required for each individual action, with autonomous actions permitted later within clear boundaries. To instill this trust in customers, a key part of what Cisco does in this area is to provide full transparency in the agentic workflows.“‘Show your work’ is very important,” he says. Once customers can see all the steps and reasoning, they gain greater insight and, ultimately, trust.
Where have we seen this before?
The announcements we’ve discussed in this article are undoubtedly useful and important. However, they aren’t things we haven’t seen before. With Marvis Minis, HPE Networking offers something similar to the ThousandEyes integration in Cisco access points. The focus on application performance is also something Mist has been working on for quite some time.
We’ve written before that Cisco had quite a bit of ground to make up in the area of AIOps or AgenticOps. There’s nothing wrong with that in itself. In recent years, Cisco has taken major steps to close the gap. AgenticOps, and AI Canvas in particular, have already shown that Cisco means business.
When we tell Vaccaro that today’s announcements closely resemble what the competition already offers, he certainly doesn’t deny it. However, he also says it’s important to take a broader look at Cisco’s network offerings. If customers do that, they’ll see that Cisco has more to offer as standard, without the need for an upsell to other subscription plans. “Cisco brings together networking, security, and observability like no other player can,” he notes.
Finally, there’s Cisco Cloud Control, of course. This enables companies to truly get the most out of all those different components, and more. While HPE Networking will have to continue, for the foreseeable future, keeping Mist and Aruba Central separate, whether artificially or not, Cisco is adding not only the network stack but also other stacks from its portfolio to Cloud Control. The impact of this, if executed properly, could very well be significant.