Case Study

How a Global Data & Credit Services Company is Building a Foundation for AI-Driven Network Operations

Routine tasks now complete in minutes instead of hours, compliance reporting time fell 95%+, and the same governed orchestration layer is the foundation for the agentic operations on its roadmap.

Challenge

Siloed tools, vendor-specific scripts, and manual workflows created operational bottlenecks. Without a unified orchestration layer, there was nowhere for AI to act.

Solution

Itential unified multi-domain workflows into repeatable, governed execution – giving the team a foundation where AI agents can operate safely, predictably, and at scale.

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Why Itential

Vendor-agnostic orchestration, enterprise RBAC, lifecycle management, and FlowAI’s agentic capabilities gave the team a single platform for both today’s automation and tomorrow’s AI operations.

The Challenge

When Fragmented Automation Leaves No Safe Place for AI to Act

One of the world’s multinational consumer credit reporting agencies operates a sprawling multi-vendor network spanning cloud and on-premises environments. Over years of growth, the team built automation capabilities – but they built them in fragments. Security automation ran in one tool. Load balancer management lived in another. On-premises and cloud teams operated independently, each owning their own slice of the network.

There was no unifying orchestration layer beneath it all. And that wasn’t just an efficiency problem, it was an AI readiness problem. Without a governed, vendor-agnostic execution foundation, there was no safe way for AI agents to reason about and act on the infrastructure. AI without orchestration is intent without action. For this team, closing that gap meant solving the fragmentation problem first.

Four Fault Lines Beneath the Fragmentation

Each of these gaps blocked the path to scaled automation – and made it impossible to safely introduce AI on top.

A Fragmented Automation Landscape

Specialized tools for specific vendors and functions worked in isolation – nothing above them coordinated across them. End-to-end service delivery required human handoffs at every domain boundary, and every new vendor added another disconnected layer.

Vendor Lock-In as Strategic Risk

Tooling tightly coupled to specific vendors made reusable automation logic impossible. A workflow built for Cisco didn’t translate to Juniper. Without an abstraction layer, there was no path toward the normalized infrastructure state agentic operations require.

Complex Workflows Resisted Automation

Business-critical, multi-step processes were too variable for deterministic automation – exactly where AI reasoning helps. But AI agents need a governed execution layer to call. Without that foundation, the AI capability had nowhere to land.

Self-Service Needed Governance

Federated self-service requires role-based access control at the service and gateway level, not just on inventory. Existing tooling couldn’t provide it – and governance is also what makes it safe for AI agents to act on behalf of humans.

We have F5 specialists, cloud specialists, on-premises specialists – and no way to connect them. Everything operates in its own silo.

Infrastructure Operations Leader

Global Data & Credit Services Company

The team didn’t need another point tool. They needed a platform that could unify their automation landscape today and serve as the governed execution layer for AI operations tomorrow.

Why Itential

Why They Chose Itential

After evaluating alternatives – including expanding their existing Ansible footprint and continuing with vendor-specific tools – the team selected Itential as their orchestration foundation. Ansible excelled at configuration management but couldn’t deliver the multi-domain orchestration or workflow logic required for their most complex use cases. Vendor-specific tools provided no path toward a unified, AI-ready operating model.

What the team needed wasn’t another point tool. They needed a platform that could unify their automation landscape today and serve as the governed execution layer for AI operations tomorrow. The Itential Platform was the only platform that addressed both.

An Orchestration Foundation Built for Both Humans & AI Agents

Seven capabilities sat at the center of the decision – the foundational three that made Itential the platform, plus four more that determined whether it would actually land in production.

Explore the Platform

An Orchestration Foundation That Makes AI Action Safe

AI agents can only act responsibly when they have a governed, deterministic execution layer beneath them. Itential provides exactly that – well-defined, auditable workflow execution that AI can invoke reliably, with policy enforcement and access controls built in. This wasn’t just an automation requirement. It was the prerequisite for agentic operations.

Vendor-Agnostic Abstraction Across the Entire Stack

Itential treats every technology as an equal citizen through a common API layer. Build once, execute anywhere. This abstraction is also foundational for AI: agents need normalized data models and consistent interfaces to reason across a heterogeneous environment without being hard-coded to specific platforms.

FlowAI: Agentic Reasoning Paired with Deterministic Execution

For workflows too complex and variable to automate deterministically, Itential’s FlowAI framework introduces FlowAgents – intelligent, task-oriented agents that reason through goals and execute safely through Itential’s governed workflows. The agentic and deterministic layers work together, not in opposition.

Enterprise-Grade RBAC & Governance – for Humans & Agents

Role-based access control at the service and gateway level was a baseline requirement. Itential met it – enabling self-service for federated teams and providing the governance layer that controls what AI agents can access and what they can do. The same controls that protect human-initiated workflows protect agent-initiated ones.

Stateful Lifecycle Management

Full visibility into configuration state over time – before, after, and why – with a complete audit trail for compliance. It also provides the infrastructure state context that AI agents need to make informed decisions: an agent that can’t see current state can’t reason about what to change.

Reuse Without Rip-&-Replace

The organization had years of investment in Ansible playbooks and Python scripts. Itential orchestrates those existing assets rather than replacing them – and makes them callable by FlowAgents. Prior automation investments become building blocks for agentic workflows, not liabilities to be retired.

Professional Services & Enablement

Structured enablement programs and professional services capacity gave the team confidence in adoption across the organization – reducing the skills risk that comes with any new platform, and accelerating time to production for both automation and AI use cases.

The Solution

Standardizing Execution & Laying the Groundwork for Agentic Operations

With Itential as the orchestration foundation, the organization is building workflows that run across current and future environments without being rebuilt for each one. The architecture solves the immediate fragmentation problem and creates the governed execution layer that AI agents need to operate safely on production infrastructure.

Multi-Domain Service Provisioning

End-to-end provisioning workflows coordinate changes across network, security, load balancing, and cloud layers – eliminating specialist handoffs for standard service requests and compressing delivery from days to hours.

Lifecycle Management & Audit

Configuration state is tracked continuously. Before-and-after comparisons, full change history, and on-demand audit evidence replace hours of manual data gathering – and provide AI agents with the context they need to reason accurately about current conditions.

Self-Service Operational Execution

Approved workflows are made available to federated teams with role-based access controls – reducing escalation volume and enabling teams to resolve issues independently. The same governance framework controls what agents can initiate on behalf of those teams.

Compliance Validation & Pre/Post Checks

Automated pre- and post-change validation reduces configuration error rates and catches drift before it causes incidents – replacing manual checks with deterministic workflow logic that AI agents can incorporate into their execution paths.

Agentic Workflows for Complex, Variable Processes

For workflows too dynamic to automate deterministically, FlowAgents reason through goals and execute through Itential’s governed workflows – handling variability that would otherwise require human judgment, while maintaining full visibility and audit capability.

Itential is the vendor agnostic abstraction layer. Everything is just an API. Everything looks the same, regardless of what’s underneath – and that’s exactly the foundation you need before AI can act on your infrastructure.

Infrastructure Automation Lead

Global Data & Credit Services Company

The Outcome

What Governed Orchestration & Agentic Operations Delivers

Moving from fragmented, vendor-specific tooling to governed, multi-domain orchestration produces outcomes that compound as automation coverage expands and AI capabilities are layered on top.

90%

Time Savings on Routine Network Tasks

Configuration changes, VLAN provisioning, compliance reporting, and device management complete in minutes instead of hours – freeing engineering capacity for higher-value initiatives, including AI use cases that require human expertise.

95%+

Reduction in Compliance Reporting Time

Lifecycle management and configuration tracking automate evidence collection – and the same state visibility gives AI agents the accurate context they need to make safe, informed decisions.

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Improved Ticket Close Rates

Self-service execution across federated teams reduces escalation volume to centralized specialists – without adding headcount. The same governance framework also governs what AI agents can initiate on their behalf.

5+

Domains Unified

Cloud, on-premises, security, load balancers, and more — coordinated through one platform.

1

Federated Self-Service Catalog

Teams resolve standard requests without waiting on centralized specialists.

AI-Ready Foundation for FlowAgents

With governed, vendor-agnostic orchestration as the execution layer, the organization is positioned to deploy FlowAgents on their highest-complexity workflows – with the audit trail and policy controls enterprise AI operations require.