Network Automation Isn’t Optional. It’s an Operational Imperative.
The Gartner 2025 Market Guide for Network Automation Platforms is clear: Automation is now a business requirement — but most enterprises are still stuck in silos.
Download the report to understand what’s changed, what’s holding teams back, and why a unified platform approach is the key to scale.
Key Report Insights
- 67% of enterprise network activity is still manual.
- 80% of automation efforts stall due to skills, silos, and complexity.
- Most enterprises run 3+ automation tools — but struggle to connect them.
- Gartner recommends platforms that support end-to-end workflows across domains.
Your Automation Isn’t Failing. It’s Fragmented.
This year’s guide reinforces what infrastructure and operations leaders already feel: Automation can’t be limited to config management or a handful of scripts. It must drive operational outcomes across all domains—network, cloud, security, and service operations. But most enterprises are stuck with fragmented tooling and lack the resources to unify it all. Gartner’s 2025 Market Guide calls this out directly: “the usage of multiple tools creates fragmentation, or silos/islands of automation, that makes it difficult to automate an end-to-end network service.”
Gartner’s Prescription: Shift from Tools to Platforms
Enterprises today rely on a patchwork of DIY scripts, open-source frameworks, and domain-specific tools. This “tool sprawl” creates automation islands — disconnected, domain-specific processes that are hard to scale, secure, or govern.
To succeed, organizations need a platform that orchestrates workflows across their entire network ecosystem. As environments grow more complex, only a unified approach can drive agility, reduce risk, and deliver consistent outcomes across provisioning, change, and incident management.
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 Protocols (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.
Itential will make us more money by increasing our velocity to deliver infrastructure, it will save us money, because to deliver more, I won’t need any significant increase in headcount and it keeps me off the front page of the newspaper, by allowing me to ensure the infrastructure is consistently secured everywhere- no matter whether it’s a CPE that’s at a retail store, or it’s an Internet facing router that’s terminating VPNs or it’s a workload in public cloud – Itential gives me that ability to deliver consistency and pull all three levers at the same time.
Michael Wynston | Director Global Network Architecture & Automation, Fiserv
Get Started with Itential
Schedule a Custom Demo
Schedule time with our automation experts to explore how our platform can help simplify and accelerate your automation journey.
Take An Interactive Tour
See how Itential products work firsthand in our interactive tours.
Watch Demo Videos
Watch demos of Itential's suite of network automation and orchestration products.
Gartner, Market Guide for Network Automation Platforms, Ted Corbett, Chris Saunderson, Andrew Lerner, 7th April 2025.
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s Research & Advisory organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.