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AI is beginning to change more than applications and workflows. It is also starting to change how organizations plan, govern, and manage strategic technology and business decisions.
What matters most is where this leads. As AI becomes a part of how work gets done, organizations that move further in that direction will begin operating differently, and the enterprise architecture (EA) supporting the business will need to evolve as well.
In a recent Gartner note, “90% of Enterprise Architecture Deliverables Have to Change by 2029,” analyst Rimma Gurevich makes a clear prediction about the future of enterprise architecture: “By 2029, 90% of all EA deliverables will need to be built for AI executing agentic workflows rather than (or in addition to) human-based delivery teams.”
The bottom line is that enterprise infrastructure will need to be designed for autonomous execution, not manual intervention—favoring architectures that are standardized, observable, and built for machine-driven operations.
AI is raising expectations
For years, many organizations have managed network technology through layers of manual effort, disconnected tools, and slow cross-team coordination.
As AI becomes more embedded in decision-making and execution, the pressure to modernize networks will only increase, requiring environments that are easier to run, easier to adapt, and less dependent on manual coordination. In our view, this is one of the clearest implications of Gartner’s note.
Traditional networks that add AI on top may help, but they do not address the core challenge: the ability to support a more adaptive way of operating. They’ll need to do more than keep up. AI will require networks that support change at a faster pace, provide consistent execution, and simpler operations at scale.
The real challenge is not adding AI. It is removing friction.
Gartner also notes that the enterprise architecture must become more focused on business outcomes, as AI helps organizations move with greater speed and scale. This matters because speed and scale are not only about intelligence, execution is a must.
If network and security infrastructure is difficult to standardize, heavily manual, or dependent on fragmented systems, it becomes harder for organizations to adapt as quickly as the business requires. In that kind of environment, AI may improve visibility, but the operational bottlenecks remain.
Rather than engaging legacy network vendors about AI features that highlight network inefficiencies, organizations should ask whether their existing enterprise infrastructure can truly support autonomous capabilities—or whether it will continue to require significant human effort, create sprawl, and slow progress.
Business outcomes will become the real test
Gartner emphasizes that enterprise architecture should stay tied to business priorities, not just technical output. The note states that organizations should “measure the success of EA by how quickly the organization can adapt and deliver strategic outcomes, not by the volume or sophistication of traditional architecture outputs.”
That same standard is likely to apply more broadly across enterprise technology.
For CIOs and business leaders, the question is not whether infrastructure includes AI. It will be whether that infrastructure helps the organization move faster, simplify execution, reduce operational drag, and support the business more effectively.
That is an important distinction. Adding AI to resolve legacy complexity is not the same as removing complexity altogether.
Why autonomy matters
In our view, Gartner’s note points to a broader shift in what organizations will require from infrastructure over time. As AI adoption increases, organizations will place greater value on infrastructure that is simple to manage, easy to standardize, and less dependent on manual intervention.
This is why autonomous operations matter. For Nile and its customers, this represents an opportunity to establish a secure, fully standardized infrastructure model capable of supporting today’s AI, cloud, and security demands while providing a stronger foundation for the future.
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