AI agents drive up telemetry costs, complicate network observability
AI agents are driving up telemetry costs and complicating network management as enterprises struggle to monitor the technology and control unexpected expenses, according to new research from Cisco Splunk .
AI agents are driving up telemetry costs and complicating network management as enterprises struggle to monitor the technology and control unexpected expenses, according to new research from Cisco Splunk .
The short version
- The company’s State of Observability 2026 report found that 57% of organizations have observability costs that exceed the cost of the infrastructure being monitored.
- Another 60% said unexpected billing spikes create more operational strain than consistently high costs, and 55% cannot accurately control their AI expenses.
- Cisco Splunk surveyed 2,050 IT operations and engineering professionals across 10 countries to understand how AI agents are affecting observability practices and costs .
What happened
“A production agent emits 4-5x more data as telemetry,” said Kamal Hathi, senior vice president and general manager of Splunk at Cisco, in an interview with Network World. Beyond traditional application traces, agents generate telemetry about workflows, tool calls, retrieved context, model interactions, and authentication.
Why it matters
As agents interact with other agents, the volume of telemetry generated during multi-agent sessions can increase exponentially, Hathi explained.
Summary by Nerd News Network. Read the full article at Network World via the links above and below.