AI is rapidly becoming the main driver of innovation for businesses, promising to transform industries and create new value. However, despite ambitious plans, many companies aren’t fully prepared to harness its power. Cisco’s recent AI Readiness Index shows that in EMEA, only 11% of companies are completely ready for AI compared to 13% worldwide. This is a number that hasn’t changed much in three years. While 82% of organizations intend to use AI, and 44% anticipate a significant increase in AI workloads within a year, only 30% believe their current IT infrastructure can support today’s AI technologies. This gap in readiness has major consequences for businesses aiming to lead in the AI-driven economy.
AI starts with a secure, intelligent network. We need a bold new approach to the network, rethinking, and reinventing the very foundation of our digital infrastructure. Here are three reasons why modernizing the network is essential for success in the AI era, and our recommendations for IT leaders to chart the path forward.
1. AI Demands More Than Compute Power
While much of the industry discussion has focused on compute, data, and models, the rise of real-time agentic AI exposes a critical, and often overlooked gap: the need for future proofing the very foundation for this new era.
AI is network-bound. As always-on models demand up to 100 times more compute, storage, and bandwidth, traditional networks risk becoming bottlenecks both on capacity, and latency.
For AI tasks that happen instantly, like self-driving cars or automated stock trading, even tiny delays can cause problems.
Modern network infrastructure needs to be more than just fast. It also needs to be safe from cyberattacks and strong enough to handle more AI growth in the future. To realize AI’s full potential, businesses must build purpose-built “AI superhighways”, secure networks designed to scale seamlessly, handling distributed AI workloads across core, cloud, and edge environments. Without this foundation, even the best AI investments will falter.
2. The Secure Network: From Backbone to Engine Room
Over the years, the network has been cast in a supporting role, the backbone quietly enabling the flow of data. But in the AI era, this metaphor no longer stands up.
The value organizations expect from AI, be it automating workflows, unlocking predictive insights, or powering new digital experiences, depends on more than just compute power or clever algorithms. Furthermore, the demand for real-time machine data from business operations to train AI models is increasing the need for more detailed and extensive networks. This, in turn, accelerates the integration of IT and OT, and expands the adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT)
Today’s secure networkhas become the platform, unifying management and troubleshooting, serving as the first line of defense for security, delivering end-to-end assurance and visibility, and orchestrating resources with predictive precision – turning it into the operational engine of every business.
3. Need for A Resilient, Secure Foundation
The sensitivity of AI data flows is raising the bar for security and compliance. The risks of sticking with outdated infrastructure are stark. 95% of technology leaders say a resilient network is critical to their operations, and 77% have experienced major outages due to congestion, cyberattacks, or misconfigurations.
A secure network offers the architectural solution to these challenges. Since every packet traverses the network, it serves as the ideal point for detection and enforcement, capable of operating in a highly scalable and granular manner. Legacy architectures simply cannot deliver the resiliency, performance, and scalability that AI-powered business demands. The result? Outages, bottlenecks, and missed opportunities to detect and block cybersecurity attacks.
The Path Forward: Building Secure AI-Ready Networks
So, how do enterprises close the readiness gap and seize the AI opportunity? The answer lies in strategic, sustained network modernization. At Cisco, we have built our AI-ready secure platform to support our customers in modernizing their networks. Its architecture is purpose-built for the challenges and opportunities of the AI era. By unifying management and visibility, automating operations, and securing data flows, Cisco empowers enterprises to confidently adopt and scale AI solutions.
As an example, in the very near future, AI agents will deliver precise network insights and execute actions, transforming reactive security postures into proactive, self-healing defenses capable of predicting and preventing issues. Cisco’s AI Canvas, for instance, is a generative user interface that was designed to redefine how teams and agents work together. It unifies network management, integrating real-time telemetry from various sources to provide an always-on, collaborative environment.
What should IT leaders be doing
For IT leaders, meeting the demands of the AI era begins with an assessment of their current network capabilities, measured against the rapidly evolving requirements of AI-driven and digital workloads. Also, IT leaders should re-assess the role of the network in face or the new security landscape that Agentic AI is bringing, and the need to fuse security functions into it. Once this baseline is established, the next step is to invest strategically in automation, advanced security, assurance, real-time analytics; critical tools that can dramatically enhance both responsiveness and resilience across the enterprise.
Shaping the Future Together
The urgency is clear: modernizing business networks is not just a technical upgrade; it is a strategic necessity for unlocking the full potential of AI. It is our collective responsibility across IT, business, and the technology ecosystem, to reimagine the secure network, ensuring it can support the next generation of AI-powered business. Now is the time to invest, innovate, and build the digital foundations that future generations will rely on.
This article was submitted by Cisco.