Automation in 2026: what changed
A new Model Context Protocol version and Ansible Automation Platform 2.7. Red Hat Ansible for Cisco, Arista and Juniper: supplied and integrated.
What changed this year for infrastructure automation across a multi-vendor estate, and what to put in your requirement.¹
Every date comes from the vendor's or publisher's own page. Third-party reports are marked.
1. The Model Context Protocol of July 28, 2026
Its multi-round-trip request returns input_required when a tool needs confirmation. The design uses that as the stop: an AI assistant may read, and any change it proposes waits for a named person.
Fiber patched into every switch in a network rack. From ServeTheHome's film.
2. Ansible Automation Platform 2.7
AAP 2.7 became generally available on June 10, 2026. It is one of two executor options; the other is Cisco Crosswork NSO 6.7.
An engineer works from a cart in a cold aisle of a cloud provider's data center. From Synextra's film.
3. Source of truth and events
NetBox 4.7 (September 2, 2026) and Nautobot 3.2 (3.2.5, September 15, 2026) are the source-of-truth options. Events travel on Apache Kafka 4.3.1 (June 25, 2026), or on NATS with JetStream (2.15.0, September 17, 2026).
New racks in a row, cabling already in place: the detail a source of truth has to hold.
4. Infrastructure as code and metrics
OpenTofu 1.12 and Terraform 1.16 both meet the design. VictoriaMetrics and Grafana Mimir were added beside Prometheus; Mimir's license is AGPL-3.0.
Yellow and blue fiber run into a rack of switches and compute trays at Supermicro.
What this means for a buyer
Rejected by name: a vendor's controller as the source of truth, scripts run from laptops, and an AI assistant that writes on its own.
Read the full blueprint, or request a quote for Automation.