Networks will no longer be judged by speed or standards

According to Mark Ablett, Vice President, Asia Pacific and Japan at HPE Networking, networks will no longer be judged solely by speed or standards in 2026, with businesses shifting how they operate networks.

As enterprises move deeper into an AI-driven, hybrid-by-design future, networking is emerging as a decisive business enabler rather than a supporting function. According to Mark Ablett, Vice President, Asia Pacific and Japan at HPE Networking, networks will no longer be judged solely by speed or standards in 2026.

Instead, he believes the network’s intelligence, adaptability, and ability to deliver consistently exceptional digital experiences at scale will be key. Ablett explained that with AI workloads spanning data centers, clouds, and the edge, the network becomes the connective tissue that determines performance, security, and resilience.

“This shift is redefining how networks are built, operated, and managed, placing automation and full-stack integration at the center of enterprise strategy, and setting the stage for a fundamentally more autonomous and experience-driven era of networking,” said Ablett.

As such, Ablett shared 4 predictions that businesses will need to lookout for when it comes to the network in 2026. First, Ablett pointed out that 2026 will see enterprises shift how they operate wireless networks.

“AIOps will become non-negotiable: multi-link operation, wider channels, and deterministic latency will only reach their potential when AI takes over spectrum decisions that humans can’t make fast enough. Continuous learning models will predict congestion, optimize RF behavior, and reshape channel usage in real time, making the traditional debates about SSIDs, “best band,” and manual tuning obsolete. Wired and wireless performance will converge not because speeds increase, but because AI will manage the experience as a single, intent-driven fabric,” explained Ablett.

Another interesting trend in the network would be the industry’s long-running journey toward the self-driving network that will move from early adopters to mainstream operations. While what’s changing isn’t the concept, he believes that it’s the maturity of agentic AI and cloud-delivered intelligence that can act on behalf of IT with confidence and speed.

“LANs won’t simply “heal themselves”; they’ll proactively optimize user experiences. Embedded AI agents in switches and APs will interpret behavior patterns, anticipate service needs, and take corrective action before a person ever feels a slowdown. This isn’t about the network adapting to users in real time, but it’s about predicting impact minutes or hours ahead. For example, hardware RMAs will happen automatically. AI will detect degradation, validate the fault, file the case, and initiate a replacement shipment before the user or admin even knows something was wrong,” said Ablett.

At the same time, Ablett also foresees product decisions to shift dramatically as enterprises move away from piecemeal networking. He explained that the next wave of modernization will be driven by a desire for one operational framework across wired, wireless, WAN, and ultimately compute and storage.

“Cloud-delivered orchestration and AI-native automation will push IT leaders to expect a single source of truth—and a single intelligence layer—that manages performance, experience, security, and lifecycle from the client to the cloud. This shift won’t be limited to networking. As platforms like OpsRamp bring observability and operations together across servers, storage, and applications, organizations will demand the same unified approach for connectivity. The value won’t come from individual products outperforming competitors but will instead come from how seamlessly they operate as a full-stack system under common AI governance,” said Ablett.

He added that the winning architectures this year will be those that behave like one organism, not a collection of parts.

“AI will unify them; cloud will deliver them; and enterprises will choose vendors based on who can make the full stack operate as a single experience,” he said.

The great talent shift

While talent shortage remains a concern among organizations, Ablett also predicts a great talent shift in networking. He believes that the real talent shift in 2026 won’t be about replacing engineers, but it will be about elevating them.

“With conversational AI copilots and agentic assistants becoming embedded members of the IT team, the traditional workflows of dashboard-hopping, manual triage, and endless ticket queues will fade. GenAI accuracy and functionality have reached a tipping point, and AI will manage the first line of support: answering routine questions, resolving policy conflicts, identifying anomalies, and even auto-initiating RMAs,” said Ablett.

For Ablett, the next generation of experts won’t just configure networks but will partner with AI copilots to manage thousands of endpoints with the precision of one.

“Engineers won’t spend their time navigating dashboards; AI will surface insights, take action, and guide decisions through natural language interactions. The most effective professionals will be those who not only know how to configure but also know how to teach and collaborate with AI: shaping prompts, validating intent, and orchestrating automation at scale. In 2026, the network engineer becomes a strategist, and AI becomes the operational backbone,” he concluded.