Agentic AI transforms ITOps with proactive automation and unified multicloud control

[HPE_Experts]

Agentic AI with HPE GreenLake cloud enables proactive, autonomous IT management across hybrid clouds, optimizing cost, security, agility, and sustainability.

IT leaders today face an uphill battle: hybrid infrastructures, fluctuating workloads, rising security risks, and a constant stream of change requests. The result? Teams spend most of their time reacting to problems instead of driving the business forward.

Traditional automation and monitoring tools help, but they don’t solve the bigger issue—operations still depend on people to detect, decide, and act. The real opportunity lies in shifting from reactive firefighting to proactive, intelligent operations.

That’s where agentic AI comes in. Unlike conventional systems that wait for instructions, Agentic AI sets objectives, adapts in real time, and takes corrective action before issues disrupt the business. Paired with HPE GreenLake cloud, it gives organizations centralized control, seamless integration, and real-time monitoring across hybrid and multicloud environments. It’s built to simplify operations while empowering businesses to:

• Optimize costs
• Enable artificial intelligence (AI)-powered operations
• Avoid vendor lock-in and unutilized software costs
• Improve security and governance
• Drive revenue
• Enhance operational agility
• Advance sustainable IT

 What is agentic AI?

Agentic AI represents a new generation of AI. Instead of following rigid scripts or static rules, it operates with intent. It doesn’t just carry out instructions—it defines goals and adapts to achieve them.

Here’s what makes it different:

• It can set objectives, like maintaining system health or improving security
• It continuously monitors its environment
• It makes real-time decisions based on what it observes
• It learns over time, becoming smarter and more effective with every interaction

In IT operations, this means going well beyond basic automation. These agents can fix issues before they escalate, optimize resources, and even anticipate problems—without waiting for a human to step in.

 Why does HPE GreenLake makes this possible?

For agentic AI to deliver, it needs more than just algorithms. It requires a platform that brings together visibility, context, and control. That’s what HPE GreenLake provides.

HPE GreenLake acts as a single control hub across the cloud, on-premises, and on the edge. It captures telemetry, orchestrates infrastructure, enforces policy, and connects with security and compliance systems. Beyond that, HPE provides RAG patterns and AI copilot capabilities that can integrate operational knowledge (e.g., incident history, runbooks, and documentation) to inform automated decisions.

In short, HPE GreenLake provides the data, tools, and safeguards that agentic AI depends on to operate intelligently and safely at scale.

Agentic AI works best when paired with a structured advisory program that consolidates fragmented tools and governance. HPE Cloud Platform Services – Unified Cloud Management provides a clear, unified view across both cloud and on‑prem environments. These programs help teams interpret usage data, deploy orchestration tools such as HPE Morpheus Enterprise Software, and plan future IT operations.

Using this approach, organizations can lower migration risk, integrate legacy systems more smoothly, and build the operational maturity needed to manage and support autonomous IT agents.

What does this look like in real life?

Here are a few examples of how agentic AI is already making an impact:

1. Solving problems before they escalate
An agent can detect rising application latency, analyze the underlying infrastructure, and recommend or trigger policy-based adjustments—such as storage changes or service restarts—without requiring a manual ticket.

2. Preventing data breaches in real time
The system can detect unusual login behavior across locations and correlate it with historical incident patterns. It flags the activity as high-risk, generates an incident report, and, based on defined policies, can quarantine the affected system to contain the risk.

3. Automating security patches
When a new vulnerability is identified, the agent can scan for exposed systems, prioritize them based on risk and utilization, and orchestrate patch deployment during approved maintenance windows—integrated through HPE GreenLake automation workflows.

4. Maintaining infrastructure consistency
It detects drift between the live environment and infrastructure-as-code templates, then automatically realigns them in compliance with policy.

5. Optimizing resources ahead of demand
By analyzing long-term usage trends, the system can predict upcoming traffic spikes and recommend or trigger workload redistribution in advance—helping prevent performance issues while minimizing resource waste.

Built-in guardrail

Trust is critical when handing over decisions to AI. HPE GreenLake provides the structure to help ensure trust is earned through transparency and control:

• Clear policies define what agents can and cannot do
• Role-based access controls (RBAC) keep supervision at the right level
• Audit trails document every action for accountability
• Approval workflows let teams oversee sensitive changes

This approach helps organizations start small, stay in control, and expand automation at their own pace.

What we’ve learned so far

Organizations experimenting with agentic capabilities in HPE GreenLake deployments are already surfacing valuable practices:

• Start small and build trust: Begin with simple, bounded tasks, such as log cleanup or patch recommendations
• Leverage telemetry: Use the rich operational data HPE GreenLake already provides to guide AI decisions
• Train with your history: Past incidents and workflows help agents align with how your organization works
• Standardize with templates: Keep responses predictable and compliant with automation playbooks
• Expand gradually with governance: As AI matures, broaden its role under the guardrails of policy, RBAC, and audit

Taken together, these practices show how organizations can steadily build trust while capturing real value from agentic automation.

Bridging automation and accountability: The role of FinOps

As AI-driven operations grow, organizations must match technical progress with cost transparency and financial accountability. FinOps advisory from HPE helps them do that.

It brings IT and finance teams into alignment—people, processes, and tools—so automation doesn’t create financial blind spots. The service sets clear cost models and embeds financial guardrails into orchestration workflows. That creates a foundation for intelligent automation that stays aligned with both spend and business goals.

For example, when agentic AI automatically reallocates resources or adjusts workloads to boost performance, FinOps policies help ensure those changes still fit budget limits and business priorities. This combination of automation and accountability helps CIOs and CFOs modernize operations while keeping financial discipline front and center.

Where is it all headed?

This isn’t about replacing IT teams—it’s about elevating them. Agentic AI allows teams to move beyond constant firefighting and instead focus on strategy, innovation, and customer value. With HPE GreenLake as the foundation, organizations can harness AI-driven operations confidently, without losing control, security, or compliance.

As infrastructures continue to grow in scale and complexity, this kind of intelligent automation won’t just be helpful—it will be essential.

Final thoughts

Operating IT today means dealing with relentless change, rising complexity, and persistent risk. Agentic AI offers a way forward—shifting operations from reactive to proactive. HPE has a broader ecosystem powered by agentic AI and comprehensive services for an end-to-end transformation journey. We offer a range of advisory services for business, financial, and technical requirement discovery. We bring clarity to existing environments and analyze and assess all layers of the current infrastructure from a technical point of view.

We design and build multicloud management architecture leveraging HPE Morpheus Enterprise Software.

By combining adaptive, goal-driven AI with the visibility and governance of HPE GreenLake and Advisory & Professional Services, organizations can prevent problems before they surface, strengthen security, and optimize resources ahead of demand.

Learn more 

HPE Cloud Platform Services – Unified Cloud Management.

HPE AI Services

hpe.com/us/en/services/consulting/cloud.html 

By Author

Vernon Rauch
Principal Business Consultant