Amid the imperative of digital transformation and the enterprise adoption of multicloud, network agility and flexibility are prized. The right network-automation tools can help, contributing to agile operations while enabling the portability of applications and data between on-premises datacenters and clouds. With the rise of cloud operating models and multicloud environments, there's no question that network professionals are compelled to forgo manual processes, inherently inefficient and error prone, in deference to automated processes that are more efficient and verifiable. IDC foresees network-automation tools evolving in lockstep with cloud-driven requirements to enable efficient and relevant connectivity of network service/functions within multicloud environments. Given the nature of multicloud, automation tools should work across a range of cloud services from different cloud service providers.