Microsoft and technology leaders are increasingly turning to agentic AI to achieve measurable financial outcomes as the pressure to prove ROI mounts. Gartner has labeled 2026 an 'inflection year' for organizations to align AI projects with strategic business goals. Tech teams are already deploying agents to manage and coordinate workflows, with confidence rising for routine tasks and data workflows. According to a survey of 300 global technology experts, the ultimate promise of agents is to automate tasks and manage workflows, allowing humans and agents to work together effectively. This report ranks 101 tasks across AI, data, and cloud workflows based on respondents’ confidence in agents acting on their behalf. It also explores how technology teams view the opportunities and challenges related to agentic AI, along with the potential for the technology to enhance their careers. The findings highlight a surge in confidence for measurable tasks and growth in areas of complex judgment. Technology experts overwhelmingly believe agents help with everyday work, including streamlining processes, improving performance, and reducing repetitive tasks. Confidence is highest for processes like generating reports and boilerplate code, with clear opportunities where tasks involve multistep workflows and advanced reasoning to make decisions. Data workflows are identified as the breakthrough domain, where structure can provide a reliable foundation for decisions. This includes areas such as data quality monitoring, visualization anomaly detection, real-time data stream monitoring, and data profiling. This is where domain experts closest to the point of data generation can provide context to allow agents to act and deliver trusted outcomes.
Microsoft Azure Platform's Jeremy Winter emphasized that as agents are designed to operate within the same operational boundaries, identity systems, and governance models that teams already use, they start to behave more like the systems organizations already trust. Human oversight remains a key factor of success in deploying agentic AI. Knowing that tech teams are in a pivotal position to lead this transformation, the experts interviewed expect agent confidence to accelerate as experience with agents deepens and business environments mature.
Source: mittr
