Enterprises are keen to invest in network automation, SASE, and Wi-Fi 7, and they need networking pros with skills that span cloud platforms, AI, and security to make it happen.
AI’s impact on the networking industry is hard to ignore. At a pace that hardly seems imaginable, we have gone from AI as a backend data-crunching technology that required specialized data scientists, to generative AI that puts the power of large language models into the hands of virtually every end user and network practitioner, to AI agents that can act autonomously.
In 2026, AI deployments will continue to accelerate, with profound implications for the network. But AI isn’t the only hot area. Read on to see the trends that are shaping enterprise approaches to wired and wireless connectivity, network security, private cloud, and IT skills development.
1. AI-driven network operations proliferate
There has been a dramatic increase in the percentage of network management tasks automated by AI, with that trend expected to gain more momentum over the next two years, according to an IDC survey of more than 500 respondents.
“In 2026, Tier 1 and Tier 2 infrastructure operations will go ‘no human in the loop,’” predicts Nick Lippis, co-founder and co-chair of enterprise user community ONUG. “Agentic AI systems will autonomously handle incident response, remediation, change management and software updates across networks and security infrastructure. Humans will step in only for policy exceptions and high-risk decisions.”
Enterprises will build on their early successes, says Dell’Oro Group analyst Sian Morgan.
“Many enterprises have already witnessed dramatic results from using machine learning to ease the burden of IT operations, including shorter deployment times, a dramatic drop in the number of trouble tickets, and faster time to problem resolution,” she says. “Layering in AI capabilities makes LAN management applications easier to use and more accessible across an organization.”
Recurring license fees may have dissuaded enterprises from adopting AIOps in the past, but that’s changing, Morgan adds: “Over the past few years, vendors have added features and increased the value of those licenses, including 24×7 support. Now, by paying the equivalent of a fraction of a network engineer’s salary in license fees, a mid-sized enterprise can reduce hours spent on operations and level-one support in order to allocate more of their valuable networking experts’ time to AI projects. Every enterprise’s business case will be different, but with networking expertise in high demand, we predict that in 2026, the labor savings will outweigh the additional license costs for the majority of mid-to-large sized enterprises.”
2. AI boosts data center networking investments
Enterprise data centers, which not so long ago were on the endangered species list, have made a remarkable comeback, driven by the reality that many AI workloads need to be hosted on premises, either for privacy, security, regulatory, latency or cost considerations.
The global market for data center networking technologies was estimated at around $46 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $103 billion by the end of 2030, a growth rate of nearly 18%, according to BCC Research: “The data center networking technologies market is rapidly changing due to increasing use of AI-powered solutions across data centers and sectors like telecom, IT, banking, financial services, insurance, government and commercial industries.”
McKinsey predicts that global demand for data center capacity could nearly triple by 2030, with about 70% of that demand coming from AI workloads. McKinsey says both training and inference workloads are contributing to data center growth, with inference expected to become the dominant workload by 2030.
3. Private clouds roll in
Clearly, the hyperscalers are driving most of the new data center construction, but enterprises are also investing heavily in new data center capacity.
“In response to rising AI costs, data lock-in, and operational risk, at least 15% of enterprises will shift toward private AI deployments built atop private clouds in 2026,” says Forrester analyst Lee Sustar.
Philip Kaye, co-founder and director of data center infrastructure specialist Vespertec, points to the introduction by AWS of a private AI factory as a key indicator of where the market is going. “When an operator at AWS’s scale invests in a model that brings advanced compute closer to where the data resides, the rest of the industry pays attention. In 2026, we will expect to see a noticeable shift back toward private cloud infrastructure.”
“This is not a rejection of public cloud or nostalgia for older deployment patterns, but a reflection of a growing recognition among firms to take control over how their AI workloads run and how performance is governed,” Kaye adds. “For many, regaining control over performance variables is becoming essential to achieving predictable scaling behavior. AWS and Nvidia’s endorsement gives the model legitimacy and sets a direction the rest of the market is likely to follow.”
Other vendors with similar offerings include Oracle, Microsoft, Google, Dell, Nvidia and HPE.
4. Ethernet optimized for AI workloads
It’s not often that a 50-year-old technology suddenly gets hot, but that’s what’s happening as Ethernet becomes the de-facto standard for connecting GPUs within AI clusters and between AI clusters in the data center.
IDC reports that the data center portion of the Ethernet switch market grew an astounding 62% year-over-year in Q3 2025 “as deployments of high-bandwidth, low-latency network infrastructure to support AI workloads accelerate.”
IDC adds that revenues are being driven by the highest-speed ports, with 800GbE switches surging 91.6% sequentially, and revenues for 200/400 GbE switches increasing 97.8% year over year.
“2026 will mark the arrival of AI rack systems that use Ethernet switches to connect GPU and XPU accelerators within those racks for scale-up. This is an alternative to existing proprietary scale-up options, such as Nvidia’s NVLink, and represents a significant new growth opportunity for Ethernet switch vendors,” Seamus Crehan, president of Crehan Research, tells Network World. “Given that connecting AI accelerators within a rack requires orders of magnitude greater bandwidth than that required for connecting between AI racks, I am projecting a profound impact from scale-up Ethernet on the data center Ethernet switch market, with a 15-fold bandwidth increase within the next five years.”
5. SASE adoption accelerates
Dell’Oro analyst Mauricio Sanchez says that SASE has been growing at a solid double-digit rate. “In 2026, we expect security and networking teams to budget less for discrete ‘boxes’ at the branch and more for recurring spend on SASE/SSE, WAF, and the underlying cloud connectivity. Physical access routers and appliance SWGs will continue to shrink as a share of branch networking and security spend, reinforcing that the edge is now a service, not a rack of gear.”
The drivers for SASE are hybrid work, SaaS adoption, and a shift away from private WAN circuits and appliance-based security toward Internet-centric architectures.
Sanchez defines SASE as an architectural framework that combines SSE and SD-WAN. Enterprises can choose to deploy SD-WAN or SSE first, then deploy the other to reach a full SASE implementation.
“In 3Q25, SSE represented 60% of the total SASE market, leaving the remaining 40% to SD-WAN. Looking toward the future, I’m more bullish on SSE because of lateral use cases that it has been expanding into, such as DLP, network observability, and AI security,” Sanchez adds. “There’s just more use case runway than with SD-WAN.”
6. SONiC makes a run
Another beneficiary of the AI-powered data center megatrend is SONiC, the networking operating system that Microsoft developed for Azure and then open-sourced to the Linux Foundation.
“Our latest 650 Group forecasts show SONiC-based data center switching revenue surging past $5 billion in 2026, driven by hyperscalers like Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, and growth in community-hardened architecture for the neoclouds and enterprise,” Alan Weckel, founder and analyst at 650 Group, tells Network World.
“With features like EVPN/VXLAN and advanced telemetry, SONiC excels in Ethernet-based AI backends, supporting 800G and 1.6T ports while integrating with silicon from Broadcom, Cisco, and Nvidia to optimize job completion times and reduce power overhead in scale-out designs,” Weckel adds. “Vendors such as Arista, Cisco, and Nokia are blending SONiC with extensions for validated interoperability.”
650 Group predicts that enterprise SONiC adoption will grow over 25% year-over-year through 2027, fueled by initiatives like PENS (PoE Edge Network SONiC), enhanced L2/L3 security, and zero-touch provisioning for edge switching.
Weckel is also predicting that SONiC will break out of the data center and find a home at the edge, running on white box switches: “As edge inference workloads proliferate, it is likely these SONiC deployments will expand there.”
7. Wi-Fi 7 adoption on the rise
“There’s no doubt: Enterprise-class Wi-Fi 7 will become mainstream in 2026,” says Dell’Oro Group analyst Morgan. “We expect the Wi-Fi 7 adoption curve to become steeper than it was for any other enterprise WLAN technology.”
Morgan says likely adopters will be organizations nearing the end of their WLAN equipment’s lifecycle who are seeing a growing number of Wi-Fi 7-capable devices in their ecosystem and want to future-proof the network. “Others may be in the midst of a massive digital transformation project, needing the best quality WLAN to carry steady streams of data feeding their digital operations.”
Shamus McGillicuddy, vice president of research at Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), also expects that 2026 will be a big year for Wi-Fi upgrades. His research shows 59% of IT organizations will initiate a Wi-Fi upgrade in 2026. Only 7% say Wi-Fi 7 is the predominant Wi-Fi technology in their networks, which indicates that the upcoming adoption wave will be Wi-Fi 6 to Wi-Fi 7.
When it comes to vendor selection, 49% of IT pros in the EMA survey say AI-driven network management capabilities will be a key factor in their Wi-Fi vendor selection.
8. Wanted: Senior-level networking pros
Networking roles continue to rise in demand, particularly those tied to security and cloud environments. Companies are prioritizing candidates who can manage hybrid networks, support cloud-first architectures, and work effectively with AI-assisted monitoring and automation tools, says Thomas Vick, senior regional manager at Robert Half.
Job descriptions are also increasingly highlighting the need for networking professionals to understand the intersection of cloud platforms, automation, and security, Vick adds.
According to Robert Half’s analysis of recent job listings (and the annual salary range), the networking roles most in demand are network/cloud engineer ($110,000 – $155,000), network/cloud architect ($139,250 – $202,250), network security engineer ($119,500 – $169,750), data security analyst ($121,750 – $172,500), network/cloud administrator ($88,500 – $126,500) and security architect ($138,250 – $176,000).
“Technology hiring managers now want network experts who are comfortable aligning technical strategy with business objectives. At the same time, many technology leaders recognize a widening skills gap between early-career network professionals and senior architects,” Vick says. “Entry-level work looks very different from the responsibilities of experts who understand the complexity of AI-supported, security-driven network ecosystems. That gap is also reflected in compensation.”
Robert Half research shows that 87% of IT leaders are willing to pay higher salaries to candidates who bring specialized skills to the same role. Companies are willing to pay a premium for professionals who can design and safeguard modern infrastructure, especially those with a level of skill and experience that are increasingly difficult to find.
Networking roles continue to trend upward because organizations need greater security and stability across increasingly complex environments, Vick says: “Cloud adoption has made networks more powerful but also more intricate. Cyber threats also continue to escalate, and businesses need professionals who can manage both connectivity and defense at the same time. With networks becoming more complex and security requirements expanding, organizations are seeing an increase in the need for experienced networking professionals.”
