11 December 2025

Enterprise networking is heading into a year where automation grows up, cybersecurity gets more urgent, and digital sovereignty reshapes infrastructure choices across the UK…

How do you see AI-driven network automation reshaping IT operations?

John Smith, EMEA CTO, Veracode: In 2026, the biggest shift we’ll see will be centred on automation finally becoming trustworthy enough to run itself. Like we’ve seen with the rise in vibe coding this year, AI-driven network tools will start taking over routine configuration and threat monitoring, which means IT and security teams will spend less time firefighting and more time validating what AI systems are doing.

Marcus Bentley, ICT Solutions Architect, Kyocera Document Solutions UK: The shift from manual network administration to policy-driven automation is accelerating. We’re seeing organisations leveraging data analytics for capacity planning and automated fault remediation, with AI recommendations set to play a major role in future network development. As automation advances, traditional configuration skills will inevitably decline, giving rise to new roles such as AIOps specialists and engineers focused on policy-based management and AI scripting.

Greg Jones, Senior Vice President of MSP Enablement (EMEA & North America), Kaseya: AI is still in its early stages, and its potential is extraordinary. We have only just begun to see how it can transform operations, drive efficiency and unlock entirely new ways to deliver outcomes that matter. We are also seeing the rise of data-driven MSPs that use analytics, automation and AI insights to make smarter business decisions, predict client needs and measure outcomes in real time. Rather than reacting to issues, these MSPs operate proactively, anticipating challenges before they arise and proving value through measurable business impact.

With the UK pushing for digital sovereignty, how will local regulations influence network architecture?

Aaron Allsbrook, CTO, ClearBlade: We’re seeing a proliferation of data centres, meaning the cloud will be more distributed with more locations. As this happens, networks will become distributed data centres that automatically enforce regional regulations (like GDPR’s Model Clauses), much in the way current tools implement tax codes. This will simplify compliance for enterprises as networks will know which setups to honour in a more localised and automated fashion.

Álvaro Gómez, Senior Network Consultant, Kocho: Local regulations will accelerate hybrid and multi-cloud strategies, with enterprises prioritising UK-based data centres to store and process their data for compliance purposes. Network architectures will need to incorporate compliance-aware data location, routing of data and encryption, ensuring data residency and regulatory adherence without compromising performance. The biggest challenge will be securing and managing distributed edge nodes at scale. Enterprises will need robust orchestration tools and AI-driven monitoring to maintain visibility and enforce consistent policies across fragmented environments.
Smith: New UK data sovereignty rules will push companies towards more localised, hybrid architectures, and increasing complexity in the supply chain just as automation scales up. With GenAI models choosing insecure code 45% of the time, the challenge will be keeping automated networks secure and accountable, not just building smarter new ones.

Scott Gray, Product Marketing Manager, 11:11 Systems: Enterprises will fully standardise hybrid and multi-cloud architectures to optimise cost, cyber resilience, and compliance. Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) will emerge as a critical enabler, offering the on-demand, software-defined connectivity needed to manage distributed environments. Expect centralised policies, usage-based pricing, and simpler integration across data centres, clouds, and edge sites.

What are your expectations for cybersecurity strategies for UK enterprises in 2026?

Mike Puglia, Kaseya Labs General Manager: Up until now, law enforcement and governments have been making rules for organisations to protect themselves, which is only one part of the solution. With recent arrests in the US and Europe of cyber-attackers, we are starting to see them ‘join the fight’ as they do with any other type of crime.

Gray: Organisations will deepen their commitment to cyber resilience by maturing their zero trust security models. The increasing use of AI in cybersecurity tools will drive a focus on continuous verification, identity-first controls, and a significant reduction of the attack surface. Pervasive multifactor authentication (MFA), passwordless solutions, and micro-segmentation will become standard practice. AI-powered automation and threat intelligence will be instrumental in enhancing detection and response capabilities, drastically reducing threat dwell times and allowing teams to neutralise attacks faster.

“AI is set to become the most transformative force in networking. By automating threat detection, predicting performance issues, and guiding scalable network design, AI enables faster, smarter decisions.”

Micah Deriso, Global Head of Channel at Verkada: As security technologies become more integrated and valuable across organisations, we expect more decision-makers will be involved in the buying process – including groups like IT, HR, and operations. Organisations will need partners who understand how security fits into these broader business ecosystems and can communicate how modern security solutions can facilitate smoother operations, improve visitor management, and provide actionable data insights.

Babak Behzad, Head of AI at Verkada: Agentic AI tools will be able to power a security operator’s entire workflow, enabling them to focus on their highest-value work: AI is already redefining what it means to secure the physical world. Tools to date have been focused primarily on speeding up investigations, and while that is incredibly valuable, it’s really just the start of what AI can do. As AI models become more capable and intuitive, they’ll transform physical security into a proactive, intelligent discipline that helps teams detect and deter incidents before they escalate, not just respond after the fact.

If you had to bet a pint on one major disruption to the UK enterprise networking market, what would it be?

Gómez: Quantum computing breaking actual encryption protocols, forcing the need to update protocols and technologies, to the ones that are resistant to quantum computing, and making obsolete most of the encryption protocols used today to protect traffic over the internet.

Puglia: Every single company is under enormous pressure to ‘deploy AI’ – it’s the wild west as organisations bring the technology in-house to replace processes, customer-interaction, etc., which will perhaps be the largest deployment of an untested/poorly understood technology in IT history. We simply don’t have IT teams with technical experience in AI and there is virtually zero understanding of what/how to monitor from a cybersecurity perspective.

Allsbrook: AI and widely used common standards allow for small changes to have huge impacts. This is highly likely to result in a major physical disruption, whether through error or attack, much like we saw this year with major outages from small issues at cloud providers. These disruptions create a major loss of trust between enterprises and their network providers; we may see less reliance on major network providers as a result.

Bentley: AI is set to become the most transformative force in networking. By automating threat detection, predicting performance issues, and guiding scalable network design, AI enables faster, smarter decisions. It could even recommend when private 5G is preferable to wireless LAN, optimising for capacity, latency, and security. I firmly believe this shift will drive consistent, automated deployment across entire network estates, making cloud computing, edge computing, and end-user mobility more secure and efficient than traditional manual approaches ever could.