What Gartner’s 2025 Market Guide Means for Network Leaders & Why It’s Time to Rethink Your Automation Strategy

Network automation has reached an inflection point. According to the newly released Gartner 2025 Market Guide for Network Automation Platforms, enterprise IT and network teams are facing mounting pressure to scale automation – but most are falling short due to tool sprawl, siloed workflows, and manual processes that continue to dominate operations.

This year’s Market Guide makes the case clear: automation is no longer a tactical initiative. It’s a strategic imperative. But the path forward doesn’t look like the past.

Your Automation Isn’t Failing, It’s Fragmented.

Despite years of effort, 67% of enterprise network activity remains manual, leading to slower change cycles, higher risk, and growing operational complexity. And while most organizations have made some automation progress, Gartner notes that the majority remain stuck in “automation islands” – disconnected tools and scripts that can’t scale beyond isolated tasks.

These fragmented efforts leave teams unable to automate end-to-end workflows, often relying on handoffs between systems, manual validations, or custom-coded workarounds. As network environments expand across data centers, WANs, and public clouds, the cracks in this approach are widening.

Gartner’s Prescription: Shift from Tools to Platforms

The report urges infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders to move beyond narrow task automation and adopt platforms that:

• Orchestrate across domains like network, cloud, ITSM, and security.
• Support lifecycle workflows from provisioning to incident remediation.
• Integrate with existing investments – including Ansible, Python, Terraform, and ServiceNow.
• Lower the barrier to entry with modular capabilities and low-code design.

In other words, automation alone isn’t enough. Enterprises need a consistent, scalable way to execute and orchestrate across an increasingly diverse and dynamic technology landscape.

Itential: Built for the Platform Era of Network Automation

The 2025 Market Guide affirms the exact shift Itential was built to support. As the only cloud-native platform that combines automation execution, workflow orchestration, and toolchain integration, Itential enables enterprises to operationalize automation across any combination of CLI, API, or AI-driven Model-Context Protocol (MCP).

We believe in using the right tool for the right job – and in giving teams a platform that brings it all together:

• Unified Execution: Leverage a single unified execution method across all your automation tools – Ansible, Python, OpenTofu, and more – from a single control point, eliminating silos and simplifying operations.
• Orchestrate Everything: Build workflows that connect change, incident, and compliance processes across hybrid infrastructure.
• Integrate Seamlessly: Leverage pre-built connectors for ServiceNow, CMDBs, telemetry, cloud platforms, and more.
• Scale with Control: Empower network teams with low-code design and modular adoption.

Whether you’re automating service turn-up, accelerating change implementation, or enabling self-service for app teams, Itential is the orchestration layer that transforms automation into outcomes.

Explore the Full Capabilities of the Platform

What Network Leaders Should Do Now

The future of network automation is no longer just about writing scripts – it’s about building a foundation that connects tools, teams, and technologies into a unified, scalable system. If you’re a network leader evaluating your next move, consider these actions:

• Prioritize platforms that support automation execution and orchestration across the full lifecycle.
• Eliminate tool silos by integrating with existing automation and IT systems.
• Focus on outcomes, not just tasks – tie automation to change, compliance, and incident resolution.
• Make automation consumable with workflows that can be delivered as self-service products to IT and application teams.

Explore the 2025 Gartner Market Guide

For a deeper look at the trends shaping enterprise automation – and how vendors are evolving to meet them – download your complimentary copy of the 2025 Gartner Market Guide for Network Automation Platforms.