For Asia’s CIOs, 2026 signals the dawn of the Agentic Era—where AI shifts from chatbots to autonomous co-workers. Yet consumer ease with LLMs hides enterprise realities: compute demand straining grids, legacy networks choking progress, and “vibe hacking” agents undermining trust. 

By 2027, reasoning models like Claude Mythos will force CIOs to govern agentic swarms, rewriting IAM and latency for a new digital order.

In this PodChats for FutureCIO, Jeetu Patel, president and chief product officer, Cisco, answers critical technology questions CIOs and Heads of Technology must grapple as quickly as they can.

Risk and security

1.       With AI agents “vibe hacking” executive styles, how do we defend enterprises when traditional security fails—and who’s accountable when autonomous agents act without human oversight? 

2.       Southeast Asia prioritizes data sovereignty. How can CIOs keep AI fast and efficient without illegally moving sensitive data across borders?

Infrastructure reality

3.       AI agents generate 100x more network traffic than humans. With hybrid AI adoption surging, how do we prevent a digital congestion collapse in 2026?

4.       Power grids are strained, yet data centres must act as one. Should CIOs embrace complex distributed clusters or invest in smaller, localized GPU pools?

Readiness for 2027

5.       Agent-to-agent commerce is coming. As consumers and partners start using AI agents to interact with businesses, how can enterprises ensure their backends are "machine-readable" and they don't become invisible in this new agent-driven economy?

6.       With AI shifting from automation to orchestration, how should ROI be measured—cost savings, or agility and revenue creation?

7.       Scaling agentic systems makes old monitoring tools obsolete. Should CIOs rebuild telemetry and observability stacks from scratch to manage high-speed interactions?
The challenge of industrializing AI is about moving from isolated pilots to "AI factories". With plans to scale agentic systems, old monitoring tools are obsolete. Should CIOs in the region be planning to rebuild their telemetry and observability stacks from scratch this year to manage these complex, high-speed interactions?

8.       Our topic is The digital traffic jam of 2026. What is your suggestion/suggestions for CIOs and even board as they look to embed AI in the way of work?