The CIO’s playbook for business-critical networks in 2026

The network is now arguably your most critical business system — and the one least discussed by your board, until something goes wrong. A single outage can freeze production, stall transactions and burn hard-won trust among both employees and customers in minutes.

As 2026 approaches, digital operations span hybrid cloud, distributed workforces, AI systems, IoT and global supply chains — all interdependent and real-time. The CIO’s challenge is to go beyond building a robust network and recognize that network strategy determines mission success. AI workloads, escalating threats and sustainability targets are pushing legacy designs past their limits.

Acknowledge the stealth shift: Make the network visible to the board

Connectivity isn’t “plumbing.” It’s the foundation for every experience, transaction and collaboration. When it fails, the business stops: Productivity halts, customer experience collapses, supply chains stall and cybersecurity weakens.

The network became mission-critical quietly, woven into every process, so it rarely gets boardroom time until something breaks. Your 2026 imperative: Elevate network strategy to a funded, executive-sponsored priority.

7 business-critical priorities for your enterprise network

1. Prepare for AI agents as co-workers

Plan for human–AI operations as we enter 2026 and organizations move toward a fundamentally different operational model.

Picture an organization with 100,000 employees operating alongside 30,000 AI agents — digital workers that never sleep.  Unlike human teams working in shifts, AI agents operate 24x7, fundamentally changing network traffic patterns from spiked usage during business hours to constant, optimized performance. Architect for low latency, high throughput, safe autonomy (guardrails and change verification) and continuous optimization.

2. Embed security at every connection point

Design security into the network fabric — don’t bolt it on later. Converge networking and security so controls are enforced at every edge and identity context, with architectures like secure access service edge (SASE), zero trust network access (ZTNA) and microsegmentation. According to Gartner®, “Universal zero-trust network access is expected to grow to widespread adoption, greater than 40%, by 2027.”*

At the Schwarzwald-Baar Klinikum, the academic teaching hospital in Germany, NTT DATA embedded security controls directly in the network, protecting patient data across distributed sites while giving clinicians frictionless access.

3. Predict and prevent failure with AIOps and self-healing

Treat downtime as a business risk. Move from reactive monitoring to predictive observability and autonomous remediation (for example, automatically restart failing access points, correlate events across domains and self-heal before users notice).

Gartner reports that, “By 2028, 35% of enterprises will use artificial intelligence to improve network operations and resilience, which is a major increase from fewer than 10% in 2025.”**

4. Empower employees anywhere, and design for experience, not just access

Deliver seamless, secure access with user-centric design, intelligent access management and performance visibility. Network modernization must extend beyond hardware refreshes to include intelligent access management and performance visibility.

When Pick n Pay, the large South African retail group, modernized their store networks with NTT DATA, they saw a 1% uplift in turnover across 3,000 stores — millions in incremental revenue from better network uptime and experience.

5. Engineer sustainability into architecture

Reduce embodied carbon with modern modular hardware and virtualization, and optimize runtime energy usage with more efficient power supplies and software-defined architectures. Move beyond sustainable network infrastructures to scale carbon savings via IoT (for example, through leak detection and smart buildings).

Organizations are seeing how intelligent networks cut energy consumption while improving the occupant experience. Sustainable networking is now both an operational advantage and a brand differentiator.

6. Turn the network into an innovation platform

Adopt software-defined, cloud-integrated architectures to deploy faster, scale elastically and support edge and AI workloads. Favor open, programmable designs to integrate across vendors and bring new sites online in hours, not weeks.

Business and IT teams can more easily innovate when they don’t need to worry about connectivity and can focus instead on delivering business outcomes.

7. Elevate operations from manual toil to intelligent automation

Standardize, orchestrate and automate for consistency and speed. Embed automation and AI into network operations, using platforms like NTT DATA’s Software-defined Infrastructure Services to improve efficiency, resilience and license optimization for measurable business outcomes. Run routine operations at scale so your teams can focus on transformation and value creation.

• ALSO READ → Secure networking: Is your network ready to support AI workloads?

Apply these priorities across your network architecture

Mission-critical networks aren't built in silos. They require seamless integration across three critical domains:

Reshape your campus for AI and dense connectivity

Your campus network spans offices, retail locations and manufacturing facilities. Mission-critical campus networks must:

• Support AI protocols and AI agent traffic, handle increased IoT device density and deliver the latency that modern applications and AI systems demand.
• Deliver consistent, high-performance access for real-time applications, video and analytics.
• Embed security in the core of the network to protect users and devices, using zero trust principles without creating friction.
• Enable predictive automation and self-healing to protect network health and prevent issues before intervention is required.
• Use automated provisioning that rapidly deploys architectures to open sites faster and scale operations.

Rearchitect your wide area network (WAN) for secure, 24x7 human–AI agent traffic

Your WAN connects locations, users and applications across geographies. Mission-critical WANs must sustain constant, machine-generated traffic patterns while preserving the global user experience. It should:

• Apply application-aware routing and dynamic path selection in real time to optimize performance and cost.
• Integrate software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) and cloud-delivered security for secure, optimized connectivity across geographies. Consider post-quantum cryptography techniques for a stronger security posture.
• Provide seamless multicloud on-ramps without performance penalties.
• Instrument the WAN for continuous observability and policy-driven changes.

Scale cloud networks for AI and truly hybrid enterprise

Your cloud networking strategy determines how effectively you use hybrid and multicloud environments, and how networks cope with large-scale AI workloads. Does your connectivity enable fast application rollouts, compliance and the latency your AI services require? Mission-critical cloud networks must:

• Orchestrate predictable performance on-premises and across multiple clouds, where it matters most — for example, for AI workloads that use sovereign data.
• Enforce consistent microsegmentation and network-scale security policies that follow workloads everywhere.
• Automate provisioning, scaling and migration for rapid release cycles, and ensure the network provides application acceleration, availability and security services.
• Meet latency and performance requirements for AI and analytics platforms and critical software as a service.

Your mission is only as strong as the network that supports it.

The question isn’t whether networks are business-critical, but whether your network is ready for modernization, an AI-driven operating model and the executive sponsorship its status demands.

As AI, automated platform-delivered services and cybersecurity reshape infrastructure, leaders who treat the network as the heartbeat of their organization will outpace those who see it as basic plumbing.

• ALSO READ → AIOps injects intelligence into the heart of IT operations

* Gartner Research, Emerging Tech: Universal ZTNA Drives Secure Access Consolidation, Charanpal Bhogal, Andrew Lerner, John Watts, Marissa Schmidt, 20 December 2024.

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** Gartner Research, Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Wired and Wireless LAN Infrastructure, Mike Leibowitz, Christian Canales, Nauman Raja, Tim Zimmerman, 25 June 2025.