Five ways A/NZ organisations will evolve their networks in 2026

The Australia and New Zealand IT space is undergoing a rapid shift, with organisations demanding more resilience, better connectivity at the edge, and technology that can scale rapidly. It’s an exciting time for the region as digital investment accelerates across every sector.

Businesses are moving faster, expecting tighter integration, stronger security and solutions that genuinely simplify operations. At the same time, AI is making its mark on the networking space. AI is increasingly being built directly into the network and the edge, turning networks from static systems into autonomous, adaptive digital environments. 2026 will mark another major step as AI begins to sense, predict and optimise everything to do with connectivity in real time.

Below are five ways we expect networks will evolve over the coming year.

Networks will become living systems

Networks will use AI to continuously monitor activity, learn patterns, predict issues early, optimise themselves, interact naturally with humans and adapt to IoT and edge workloads automatically.

By the end of 2026, we expect to see AI and ML engines analysing live telemetry and user behaviour to predict failures before they occur and continuously tune performance based on real demand. Such capabilities are commonly associated with self-healing networks, a ‘North Star’ for many network teams. AI will also be used at scale to dynamically respond to real-time conditions, based on jitter, congestion and link performance, automatically fixing or routing around brownouts to proactively prevent performance drift in the first place.

Generative AI will also continue to change the way that engineers interface with their networks. Within the next year, engineers will use conversational interfaces in place of traditional CLIs to interrogate the network and make changes. “Show me top latency sources”, “Deploy this config to all branches”, or “Simulate the impact before pushing changes” will all become possible.

In addition, we expect AI inference to move closer to the edge, to devices and sensors that generate data, creating the conditions for ultra-low-latency decisioning and real-time automation.

Accelerated adoption of AI-operated networks driven by skills shortages

Australia and New Zealand are on the frontline of one of the most acute IT networking talent shortages globally. Embracing network automation will be vital to organisations achieving their digital and AI ambitions.

By 2026, organisations will increasingly rely on AI-powered network operations to close the skills gap. AI technologies can analyse vast amounts of data in real time, uncovering patterns and insights that would be impossible for humans to detect. This allows for proactive identification of issues, predictive maintenance, and intelligent automation of routine tasks, freeing up IT staff to focus on higher-value activities. Growing complexity of networks, combined with skills shortages, mean these capabilities are no longer just a ‘nice to have’ but are now mandatory for minimising complexity and keeping networks running with lean teams.

The standardisation of wireless-first architectures as 6 GHz adoption expands

Connected experiences are now a standard expectation in offices, universities, hospitals, venues, retail and more. These experiences are increasingly enabled by wireless-first networking as opposed to CapEx-heavy cable refreshes. People expect to be able to connect wirelessly wherever they are and may not even own a computer today that has network cable ports.

The opening of 6GHz spectrum delivered by Wi-Fi 6E/7 technology delivers faster speeds, lower latency and more security across networks. The pace of wireless-first architecture adoption and 6 GHz use will accelerate in the next year, improving front-end user experiences while simplifying operations. Real-time analytics from these networks will improve organisations’ understanding of space utilisation and bandwidth requirements, allowing capacity and connectivity to be fully optimised.

Cloud-first, platformised networking will replace legacy controller-heavy environments

Australia and New Zealand are among the world’s most cloud-receptive regions. Cloud-first and cloud-only models proliferate in both the public and private sector. Notably, Australia’s banks, retailers and others have 70% to 90% or more of their application workloads and infrastructure in the cloud. The federal government is now aiming for similar.

Platformisation efforts that started this year will take off in 2026. These efforts see organisations moving to a single network management tool for better visibility and control across access points, switches and SD-WAN. By the end of 2026, we anticipate a critical mass of networks will be cloud-managed, and this will accelerate as older on-premises network controllers approach their end of life.

Network-as-a-service will explode in popularity

The cloud era ushered in flexible consumption and pricing models, and these have since transcended cloud to become part of the landscape when it comes to purchasing IT. Rising OpEx scrutiny and unpredictable CapEx cycles have Australian and New Zealand organisations increasingly moving to flexible consumption models for network services. The advent of subscription and lifecycle-based models for networking fit this market shift towards predictable costs. Gone are the surprising variable costs associated with buying new equipment and the support services needed to keep it optimised. Organisations are increasingly paying for networking based only on their actual per port utilisation.

By 2026, we anticipate that network-as-a-service adoption will rise, especially in local councils, independent schools, retail chains, aged care and private health.

Australian and New Zealand organisations are on the cusp of a major shift in the quality and performance of their networks, as AI, cloud, security and wireless come together. Organisations that effectively plan for these shifts today will be best-positioned to emerge from 2026 with a truly world-class network and operations function that is built for a digital and AI-driven future.

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