ControlUp CEO Jed Ayres defines autonomous IT as AI finding a problem's cause, taking an authorized action, and verifying the problem is gone, not just running a script.
ControlUp says its agents can take 30 to 50 percent of help desk tickets out immediately, letting first-line technicians handle work once sent to costlier second and third-level staff.
Ayres cites a Gartner forecast of 50 percent higher endpoint prices by 2030 and argues the clearest business case starts with fewer tickets and lower support costs.
ControlUp bets AI agents can finally end IT firefighting
ControlUp argues that IT operations are shifting from dashboards and ticket handoffs to AI agents that diagnose, fix and verify endpoint problems. Its bet rests on deep telemetry and connectors into the tools customers already own. Trust comes gradually through guardrails, and the payoff is fewer tickets and cheaper support without layoffs.
Takeaways
Autonomous IT means verified fixes, not scripts. Jed Ayres defines it as the whole life cycle. AI reads monitoring data to find the cause, takes an authorized action, then confirms the problem is gone. He predicts big movement within four or five quarters, ending decades of repeated tickets and manual work.
Specialist agents turn multi-day handoffs into minutes. ControlUp builds skilled agents that act as subject-matter experts for Intune, networking, security, storage and vSphere. They read a ticket, consult each other, and either comment or solve the problem, replacing slow transfers between teams.
Connectors and company context beat tool replacement. Gadi Feldman says ControlUp will not replace the 20 to 30 tools a typical customer runs. It has 87 integrations feeding a real-time data lake. Agents also need a knowledge base of procedures and priorities, including who the VIPs are, like a new hire.
Trust in agents is earned in stages. Agents run in containerized environments that limit what they can read and write. A human approval loop can be set per agent. Feldman advises customers to begin with analysis and recommendations before allowing agents to act.
Ticket reduction is the clearest business case. Ayres says ControlUp can remove 30 to 50 percent of help desk tickets immediately. First-line technicians then handle work that used to go to costlier second and third-level staff. He frames this as freeing people from triage rather than cutting jobs.
Telemetry depth is the competitive advantage. ControlUp collects about 10,000 metrics every three seconds across millions of endpoints. At CHRISTUS Health, Pulse AI insights traced failing dictation to an audio driver on 900 devices, so drivers were updated estate-wide instead of fixed one by one.
Performance data can extend device life. Citing Gartner's forecast that endpoint prices will rise 50 percent by 2030, Ayres says some organizations now retire devices based on performance rather than warranty age, saving millions. A strong case also counts employee time lost waiting on IT.
How to take the first step
Run ControlUp's seven day challenge, where the company puts agents to work on your environment and reports ticket reduction and software and hardware savings within a week.
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On this episode 3
Show 1
Start by mapping which AI agents, MCP connections and models end users already run across the fleet, as Gadi Feldman recommends.