Today’s hybrid, distributed environments are more complex than ever. Outages don’t just create technical headaches; they ripple outward to affect customer experience, revenue, and even long-term trust in a brand. That’s why we need intelligent tools that can act on our behalf to mitigate risks, prevent outages, and accelerate responses to disruptions.
On October 8, during our SolarWinds Day virtual event, we unveiled the SolarWinds® AI Agent alongside expanded AI features spanning observability, incident response, databases, and service management. The new agentic experience is set to offer an early glimpse into an autonomous future where systems take on the cognitive load and only involve IT pros only when their expertise is truly needed.
The State of Operational Resilience Today
The SolarWinds 2025 IT Trends Report highlights how far many teams still have to go on the road to operational resilience. Only one in three surveyed IT pros described their organization as “very resilient,” and the reasons aren’t hard to discern. Teams contend with sprawling hybrid infrastructure, siloed tools, and limited staffing. Even when the right technology is in place, information often gets lost between systems, leaving workflows broken, priorities unclear, and responses slower than they should be. The human cost is just as real. Nearly 70 percent of IT professionals said operational resilience influences job satisfaction and career stability. Constant reactivity erodes confidence and leaves little room for strategic work. The data is clear: most organizations are progressing, but the resilience gap between where teams are today and where they need to be remains wide.
The Role of AI in Bridging the Observability Gap
More tools don’t always make IT simpler. Often, they add noise and complexity. But thoughtfully integrated AI systems create clarity by:
- Analyzing data in real time
- Filtering out distractions
- Surfacing only what matters
Instead of chasing alerts across fragmented systems, IT pros can focus on clear decisions and faster action. Crucially, AI doesn’t replace human expertise; it augments it by delivering the right insights at the right moment. Astute organizations will steadily move from reactive responses to proactive detection, predictive forecasting, and eventually to safe automation of repetitive tasks. Progress is gradual, but every step builds confidence, reduces stress, and strengthens resilience. Various strands of machine learning and, more recently, GenAI have worked to assist IT professionals in managing their environment. Agentic AI is set to go further than ever in relieving the cognitive toll of IT pros and making the constant repetition of mundane tasks a thing of the past for users.
How Agentic AI Changes the Game
It’s no cure-all, but agentic systems represent one of the most powerful levers available for closing the resilience gap. Observability has long promised visibility across complex environments, yet many teams still struggle with fragmented workflows, lost context, and the sheer scale of alerts. Agentic AI shifts this balance with the ability to act autonomously with human oversight to complete tasks in the IT environment. Instead of waiting for humans to connect the dots, agentic systems can analyze signals in real time, correlate anomalies, and take measures to keep operations on track. They act as active participants in operations—context-aware, conversational, and capable of carrying work forward.
A service owner can request a summary of systems under strain, while during an incident, the agent can post diagnostics or root cause analysis into a shared channel before responders even log in. These capabilities reduce cognitive load, cut wasted cycles, and allow teams to focus their energy where it matters most. In the process, agentic AI helps transform resilience from a reactive exercise into a baseline state of operations. That shift from recovery to continuity is the hallmark of operational resilience in modern IT.
Frameworks for Responsible AI Development and Implementation
How AI is built matters as much as what it does. At SolarWinds, we follow an approach called AI by Design, our framework for safe, responsible, and effective AI development. The original framework, rolled out last year, consisted of four key principles.
- Principle 1: Privacy and Security
- Principle 2: Accountability and Fairness
- Principle 3: Transparency and Trust
- Principle 4: Simplicity and Accessibility
More recently, we’ve revised and expanded the framework to address the shifting imperatives of autonomous AI systems. We’ve added a fifth principle, Autonomy Boundaries and Safety, acknowledging the new risks created by the autonomous capabilities of Agentic AI.
For customers, AI by Design means the technology is embedded directly into the workflows they already use, with no need for extra products or toolsets. It’s built to adapt across hybrid environments and distributed teams without introducing new complexity. Users understand why an alert was triggered or a root cause suggested, and they always retain the final say in how to act. Crucially, AI by Design is about augmenting expertise, not replacing it. Filtering signals and automating routine tasks enables IT pros to focus on higher-value challenges. This approach also builds trust. Sensitive data is processed securely and in compliance with industry standards. Models are rigorously tested to mitigate bias and help ensure consistency across various environments. The result is an AI system that’s both powerful and dependable, capable of enhancing resilience without undermining confidence.
The Dawn of Autonomous Resilience
In the near future, systems will not only detect and diagnose issues but also resolve the routine ones on their own, escalating to humans only when judgment, context, or strategy is required. Observability data will flow seamlessly into agentic AI systems that filter noise, anticipate risks, and optimize resources in real time. For IT teams, this means less time firefighting and more time guiding, governing, and innovating. Of course, there will be challenges along the way, and frameworks like AI by Design are built to help ensure that no innovations come at the cost of safety, fairness, or trust. But, slowly but surely, the industry is moving toward an environment where IT operates like a self-healing organism—always on, adaptive under pressure, and resilient by default. With the arrival of agentic AI, that future is beginning to come into view.
Missed our big announcement at SolarWinds Day? Get the full report here
