By Michael Haugh, VP Product Marketing, Gluware
The recent Network Automation Forum’s Autocon4 (AC4) event in Austin made one thing clear. Network automation is maturing rapidly, and this year’s conversations shifted decisively toward business value, organizational readiness, and the role of AI as a core architectural component. Gluware played a central role in shaping that narrative, from the opening keynote to the introduction of the industry’s newest AI automation platform.
Below are my top five takeaways from AC4, updated to reflect the most important themes and Gluware’s leadership position in the evolving automation ecosystem.
1. Culture, Skills, and a Strong Business Case Matter More Than Tools
One of the most influential messages of the event came from Jeff Gray, Gluware CEO and Co-Founder, in his opening keynote on how to build a business case for network automation. Jeff reminded the audience that automation initiatives often fail long before a tool is chosen. The real friction points center on culture, organizational alignment, and the ability to articulate financial value.
Jeff’s central point hit home for both engineers and leaders:
Network automation doesn’t fail because of technology. Automation projects fail because the business case wasn’t made, the culture wasn’t ready, and the organization wasn’t aligned.
Jeff emphasized that engineers must be able to speak in terms executives understand. Automation must connect directly to goals such as improved service delivery, reduced downtime, or faster provisioning. Without that grounding, even the most advanced technical strategy can be dismissed. He also explained that engineers often underestimate how powerful it is to build trust with financial and business stakeholders.
The message resonated throughout the conference. Successful automation is not simply a technical exercise. It is a transformation project that requires clear objectives, documented processes, aligned stakeholders, and a business case that stands up to scrutiny.
2. AI Is Moving from Hype to Architecture, and Gluware Titan Took Center Stage
AI dominated the agenda at AC4, but for the first time, the conversation felt grounded in real architecture and practical implementation. Ernest Lefner, Gluware Chief Product Officer, introduced Gluware Titan, a powerful AI-driven platform designed to help enterprises safely adopt AI for complex network operations.
Ernest explained how Titan brings together an AI copilot, AI agents and a Model Context Protocol (MCP) services layer that ensures deterministic and validated interactions with both the network and external systems. He described this MCP layer as the air traffic controller of enterprise automation. It manages onboarding, change validation, and agent interactions in a tightly governed way, removing the unpredictability that typically surrounds AI.
Across the event, multiple speakers reinforced the same idea. AI is becoming embedded in the workflow of modern network engineers. Whether through natural language interfaces, AI augmented troubleshooting, or agentic systems that take supervised action, AI is no longer experimental. It is becoming a core pillar of future network operations, and Gluware Titan embodies that shift.
The consistent message:
AI won’t replace network engineering—but network engineers who use AI will replace those who don’t.
3. The Network Automation Forum and AutoCon Conferences are Accelerating the Industry’s Momentum
A major theme at AC4 was the growing influence of the Network Automation Forum itself. Rather than simply hosting events, the NAF is now shaping the language, models, and frameworks that practitioners and vendors use to talk about network automation.
Dinesh Dutt introduced the NAF’s Network Automation Framework as a significant milestone. It gives the industry a common vocabulary built around intent, observability, execution, collection, orchestration, and presentation. The goal is not to dictate specific tools, but to unify how we think about automation architecture.
The NAF’s mission is becoming clearer:
Create shared language, shared mental models, and a shared community so the industry can finally move faster.
Simon Lok also reminded the audience that the industry still lacks critical mass and that community development is essential. The NAF is clearly becoming the forum where that mass is starting to form.
4. The Automation Landscape Is Diverse and Increasingly Hybrid
AC4 made it clear that there is no single path to network automation. Organizations are choosing approaches based on skills, culture, complexity, and vendor mix.
Some teams continue to rely on self-built automation rooted in Python and open-source tools. Others depend heavily on Ansible for the structure and repeatability it provides. Vendor native ecosystems such as Arista’s AVD was highlighted multiple times—including USAA’s impressive journey from manual work to fully standardized config-as-code using AVD pipelines. Vendor ecosystems continue to expand and are becoming more opinionated (in a good way), which lowers barriers for new builders.
A fourth approach is gaining increasing traction. Multi-vendor automation platforms like Gluware offer a powerful blend of pre-built capabilities, enterprise governance, and deep customization. Gluware’s message resonated strongly at AC4. Many enterprises want to accelerate automation, but they also want safety, consistency, and the ability to adapt the platform to their own environment. With features such as configuration drift detection and audit, OS management, configuration management, process automation/orchestration, and now AI assisted automation through Titan, Gluware demonstrated that enterprises do not need to choose between speed and control.
The clear message:
Different approaches solve different problems, and most organizations will run a hybrid strategy.
5. The Industry Is Moving Toward Autonomous Operations
The closing sessions of AC4, especially those from Scott Robohn, a co-founder of NAF, and Greg Freeman from Lumen painted a realistic but optimistic picture of autonomous operations. The industry is moving steadily from task-based automation toward autonomous operations that can prevent issues, respond to events, and carry out complex workflows with minimal human intervention.
Speakers described autonomy as a progression. First, humans direct the system. Next, humans supervise the system. Eventually, the system takes action independently for well understood and low risk scenarios. Lumen’s example of millions of automated tasks running every year, many of them triggered by machines, showed how real this progression has become.
The industry is moving from:
- Human in the loop →
- Human on the loop →
- Human out of the loop
Not everywhere, not all at once, but the direction is undeniable.
AI will accelerate this path, not by replacing engineers, but by expanding what can be automated safely and quickly.
Final Thoughts
AutoCon4 showed that the future of network automation is both ambitious and achievable. The community is aligning around shared models, validating the importance of strong business cases, and embracing AI as an essential component of the next generation of operations.
It also highlighted Gluware’s role in this evolving landscape. Enterprises that want automation delivered quickly, safely, and at scale increasingly look for platforms that combine prebuilt intelligence with deep customization. Gluware is designed for exactly that mission. With multi-vendor support, enterprise grade orchestration, advanced configuration and lifecycle capabilities, and now a powerful AI copilot through Gluware Titan, organizations can evolve toward autonomous operations without starting from scratch.
To learn more about Gluware Titan and AI powered network automation, visit:
https://gluware.com/gluware-ai/
