Splunk State of Observability 2026 report: Avoiding the hidden costs of AI agents

Ahmed el Saadi, Group Vice President, MEA & TRC, Splunk. Cisco recently released the Splunk State of Observability 2026: Restoring Predictability in the AI Era report, marking its sixth analysis of the observability industry. The new research, which surveyed 2,050 ITOps and engineering respondents across 10 countries, exposes a significant disconnect: the urgency to deploy AI agents is rapidly outpacing the ability to monitor them.