By Kamil Hurriparsad, Networking Architecture Executive at Cisco South Africa

AI is rapidly becoming the primary driver of growth and innovation, transforming industries and reshaping value creation. Yet despite ambitious plans, many companies aren't fully prepared to harness its potential. Cisco's recent AI Readiness Index shows that in South Africa, only 18% of companies are fully ready for AI compared to 13% worldwide - a level that has barely shifted for three years. While 93% of organisations intend to deploy AI agents and 44% expect them to work alongside employees within a year, less than a third believe their current IT infrastructure can support modern AI workloads.

This readiness gap carries real consequences for any business hoping to lead in an AI-driven economy.

AI starts with a secure, intelligent network. To scale AI capabilities with confidence, organisations to rethink and redesign the foundation of their digital infrastructure. Below are three reasons why modernisation is essential for success in the AI era, and what IT leaders should prioritise next.

1. AI Demands More Than Compute Power

While much of the industry conversation focuses on computing power, data, and models, real-time agentic AI is exposing a fundamental constraint: traditional networks were not built for the scale and speed these systems require.

AI is inherently network-bound. Always-on models demand exponentially greater bandwidth, low-latency connections and resilient infrastructure across core, cloud and edge. Even slight delays in sensitive workloads – whether automated trading or advanced automation in logistics – can erode trust and undermine performance.

This pressure is already visible in South Africa, where 31% of organisations say their networks cannot scale for AI complexity or data volume and less than a fifth describe their networks as flexible.

To unlock AI’s full potential, businesses need purpose-built “AI superhighways” capable of supporting distributed workloads at scale. Without this foundational investment, even the most sophisticated AI initiatives risk falling short.

2. The Secure Network: From Backbone to Engine Room

The network has traditionally been viewed as the backbone quietly enabling the flow of data. In the AI era, it becomes the engine room of digital operations.

AI value - from automated workflows to predictive insights and intelligent customer experiences – depends on secure, real-time access to vast volumes of machine-data. This is accelerating IT-OT integration, expanding IoT adoption, and increasing the complexity of environments that must be monitored and secured on premises and even in the cloud.

Today’s network must be far more than transport. It must unify management and troubleshooting, provide end-to-end visibility, act as the first line of defence for identity and security, and orchestrate resources with predictive intelligence.

The contrast between prepared and unprepared organisations is stark. Cisco’s findings show that two thirds of the most AI-ready organisations integrate AI into their security and identity systems, and 75% can secure and manage AI agents at scale. South Africa lags across these areas, underscoring the need for secure, unified platforms that anchor AI operations.

3. Building a Resilient, Secure Foundation

As AI data flows grow more sensitive, the demands for security, compliance and resilience increase. A modern network is now the architectural linchpin for managing these risks.

Leaders already recognise this with 95% saying a resilient network is critical to their operations. In addition, 77% have experienced major outages caused by congestion, misconfiguration or cyberattacks.

Legacy architectures cannot deliver the performance, visibility and scalability required in AI-powered environments. The consequence is a growing form of AI infrastructure debt - a structural gap that constrains innovation and increases exposure to cyber risk.

Future-facing infrastructure also needs to be post quantum secure, and this requires security that is built into the foundation rather than bolted on. This begins at the silicon level, where next-generation chipsets and architectures are designed to support post quantum cryptography from the start.

In South Africa, 64% of organisations struggle to centralise data, only 23% report adequate GPU capacity, and just two in five can detect or prevent AI-specific threats.

These indicators highlight the urgent need for a secure, resilient network foundation.

The Path Forward: Building Secure AI-Ready Networks

Closing the readiness gap requires strategic, sustained network modernisation. Cisco’s AI-ready secure platform is designed to support organisations in this shift by unifying management, securing data flows, and providing real-time insights that enable better decisions.

In the near future, AI agents will deliver precise network insights, automate actions and enable proactive, self-healing defences. Cisco’s AI Canvas, for example, offers a generative, collaborative interface that integrates real-time telemetry to support both human teams and automated agents.

What should IT leaders be doing

IT leaders can take three immediate steps:

1.      Assess current network capabilities against the requirements of AI-driven workloads.

2.      Re-evaluate the role of the network in a security landscape increasingly defined by agentic AI.

3.      Invest strategically in automation, advanced security, assurance, and real-time analytics - the tools that enhance resilience, accelerate response, and reduce operational complexity.

Pacesetter organisations illustrate the impact of this discipline. They are four times more likely to move AI pilots into production and 50% more likely to see measurable value precisely because they treat AI as a system-level capability supported by a resilient network foundation.

Shaping the Future Together

The urgency is clear. Modernising business networks is no longer a technical upgrade. It is a strategic necessity for unlocking the full potential of AI. South Africa has a unique opportunity to accelerate its AI maturity by strengthening the digital foundations that innovation relies on.

Now is the time to invest, innovate and build secure, AI-ready networks that will support the next generation of business and the next generation of talent.