The emergence of a transformative technology never fails to spark a frenzy of excitement, and agentic AI is no exception. However, as vendors rush to position themselves as “agentic-ready” and customers seek a solution to deeply rooted challenges, a fog of hype can make it difficult to discern what’s truly valuable.

At our recent SolarWinds Day event, we launched the SolarWinds^® AI Agent—a new agentic AI experience that will appear first in SolarWinds Observability and then across our entire portfolio. Built according to our AI by Design framework, the release marks a shift in how the IT professionals we serve will work hand-in-hand with their tools to keep operations on track.

When we launched our AI by Design principles in April 2024, the IT industry’s focus was on generative AI models that could produce single outputs from single prompts. In just one year, the conversation has shifted rapidly toward agentic AI: autonomous or semi-autonomous systems that plan, act, and learn over multiple steps.

Recent developments in machine learning herald a promised land of automation, where artificial intelligence can maintain large swathes of IT infrastructure with minimal intervention from human agents.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is shifting from tools that aid with tasks to systems capable of autonomous reasoning, planning, and action. Infrastructure observability is changing as a result.