Agentic AI by VAST Data

Agentic AI: Autonomous Agents for Complex Workflows

Today’s leading enterprises are rapidly expanding their Generative AI initiatives to also encompass Agentic development. But what exactly is Agentic AI? How do its “agents” differ from other AI models? And what new capabilities does this innovative technology unlock? Read on to learn the ins and outs of Agentic AI, and discover how top organizations are deploying it to get ahead.

See Agentic AI In Action
Introduction
What is Agentic AI?
How Agentic AI Works
Why Now is the Time for Agentic AI
Overcoming Agentic AI Obstacles
What to Look For in an Agentic AI Solution
Why VAST Data for Agentic AI?
Introduction

The search for greater impact in enterprise AI

For the past 20+ years, artificial intelligence and its early predecessor technologies have been helping organizations get things done. From machine learning algorithms that personalize customer experiences, to newer Generative AI models that write entire reports, the prospects for AI technology have grown more intriguing with each passing year.

Recently, the excitement of Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT have unleashed a powerful new capability on the world. With a wide breadth of knowledge and the ability to perform multi-step reasoning, they can respond to a surprising variety of prompts. However, one problem remains.  They have no agency.  Generative LLMs respond only when prompted, rather than continuously ingesting new data, like humans do with our senses, or continuously working in service of a goal.

Agentic AI: Introduction
What is Agentic AI?

Agentic AI is a form of artificial intelligence that can autonomously make the decisions and perform the tasks necessary to achieve a specified set of goals — just as a human agent would.

Agentic AI systems rely on extensive model training to produce skilled AI agents that can understand context, reason, make decisions, and take action. Once given clear goals or objectives, these agents operate independently — applying their reasoning capabilities and decision-making to achieve those goals autonomously.

In this sense, AI agents can be thought of as smart, virtual employees performing jobs to move the business forward. These jobs can be short-term, such as booking a trip, or long-term, such as managing an organization’s ad spend.

Agentic AI vs. Large Language Models (LLMs)

Large Language Models (LLMs) power today's generative AI applications, where each interaction is a singular event. For example, a user inputs a prompt, the LLM outputs a response, and any additional action requires another prompt from the user.

Agentic AI, on the other hand, is designed for complex, multi-step sequences of actions. Agentic systems build upon LLMs by adding autonomy and planning capabilities. While both use the same underlying models, an AI agent's architecture allows it to understand context, determine the series of steps (or "tool use") needed to achieve a desired outcome, and execute those actions autonomously—without requiring constant human prompts—until the goal is reached.

AI Agents in Action

How Agentic AI Enables Enterprises

The Core Components of an AI Agent

AI agents are defined by their ability to understand, reason, and act. To achieve these functions without human oversight, AI agents require a few core components: an Input (or Trigger) to receive and process information (e.g., text, voice, video, or prompts), a reference knowledge base to compare new information against learned rules and data, a decision-making engine to determine the best course of action, and software integrations to carry out the decisions made.

Why Agentic AI Matters for the Enterprise

Agentic AI tools are fundamentally reshaping the enterprise operating model by delivering unique and tangible benefits beyond simple automation. Agentic AI delivers ultra-productivity and augmentation, enabling agents to act as constant, personal assistants for human workers, handling complex, multi-step tasks to boost decision support and output. Agents can facilitate personalized, support-adjacent experiences, moving beyond standard customer service by proactively managing accounts and optimizing core business processes. Leading organizations are harnessing this technology to greatly boost worker productivity , enhance fraud detection, and build self-optimizing systems

How Agentic AI Works

Training a Team of Autonomous AI Agents

In a nutshell, here’s how the Agentic AI development process turns widely-distributed data into highly-capable agents.

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Core Intelligence

AI agents are trained using an advanced reasoning architecture, giving them the ability to make smart decisions and equipping them with a “brain” of memories and context that persists across tasks.

Overcoming Agentic AI Obstacles

Agentic AI is Driving New Requirements for Data & Computing

Agentic AI requires a fundamentally different approach to data infrastructure. AI agents need unified access to diverse data sources, the ability to process large volumes of information, and seamless integration with existing systems. Traditional enterprise infrastructures weren't designed for these agents and lack the integrated capabilities required, from vectorization and database services to event-driven processing and orchestration.

High-Performance AI Storage

All of the data sources for AI model training need to be unified and easily accessible from one place. Additionally, the data storage system must be highly-scalable to accommodate the expanding knowledge base of agent memories and rules.

Real-Time Data Processing

AI agents act proactively and in real-time. This complex level of operation and decision-making requires fast, AI-native data processing pipelines that can serve data in the right format, minimize movement by bringing compute to data,  and event-driven processing.

AI Resource Orchestration

An Agentic AI infrastructure must be equipped with services to accurately orchestrate the communication between agents and systems, as well as conduct efficient resource provisioning and monitor overall process governance and security.

High-Performance AI Storage

All of the data sources for AI model training need to be unified and easily accessible from one place. Additionally, the data storage system must be highly-scalable to accommodate the expanding knowledge base of agent memories and rules.

Real-Time Data Processing

AI agents act proactively and in real-time. This complex level of operation and decision-making requires fast, AI-native data processing pipelines that can serve data in the right format, minimize movement by bringing compute to data,  and event-driven processing.

AI Resource Orchestration

An Agentic AI infrastructure must be equipped with services to accurately orchestrate the communication between agents and systems, as well as conduct efficient resource provisioning and monitor overall process governance and security.

Why Now is the Time for Agentic AI

Enterprises Need to Do More with Less

The Agentic AI Revolution

From autonomously managing complex financial accounts to proactively optimizing global supply chains, Agentic AI is poised to deliver a unique wave of value. The time to embrace this shift is now, as the capacity for self-guided action and reasoning makes this the most impactful technology of the accelerating AI era. Agentic AI will have an incredibly positive impact on organizations and society at large. Whether driven by the need to move forward or cut back, these are the shifts shaping the rise of Agentic AI today:

Today’s enterprises face constant pressure to improve operations and accelerate innovation. Yet as they grow and innovate, their data management needs explode — adding complexity, strain, and expense to the running of legacy data infrastructures. Given the simultaneous pressure for cost reduction, these ballooning infrastructure costs are rarely accepted without strong resistance.

Computational costs are now low enough to support the development of AI agents that can approximate or even exceed average human intelligence. Moving beyond robotic process automation (RPA) into truly intelligent, adaptive systems, the promise of Agentic AI knows no bounds. For enterprises, the jump in productivity and decision-making can yield huge leaps in market competitiveness and positioning.

Introducing VAST AI OS

The VAST AI Operating System: Powering the Future of Agentic AI

The VAST Data AI Operating System (VAST AI OS) is the first true Operating System for AI, engineered from the ground up to simplify the entire AI data pipeline — consolidating data storage, database, and AI compute into a coherent, unified layer. It eliminates the need to piece together a patchwork of disparate tools never designed for the scale of AI, providing a singular OS that manages everything from raw data to intelligent action in one place. This is the next inevitable step in computing’s evolution, built for the age of AI agents and beyond.

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Introducing VAST AI OS
What to Look For in an Agentic AI Solution

Building the Foundation for Intelligent Agents

Discover What Matters Most

Unified Vector Database & Storage Services

A single platform with built-in storage, vector database, and metadata indexing capabilities reduces architectural complexity, streamlines tech stack costs, and eliminates data movement for greater speed.

Real-Time Performance

For rapid agent perception and decision-making, an Agentic AI development solution must provide low-latency, high-throughput data access and automated GPU optimization features.

Exabyte-Scale & Linear Scalability

Support for independent, linear scaling to exabytes of data within a single global namespace will ensure your AI infrastructure can grow alongside your increasing number of agent deployments.

Enterprise-Grade Reliability & Security

To protect critical agent data and enable continuous operations, an enterprise AI solution must feature multi-tenancy along with robust data protection, quality of service (QoS), and zero trust security measures.

Simplified Management

Agentic AI tools must also be easy to use. An intuitive, unified management interface reduces operational overhead, improves internal alignment, and keeps teams focused on agent development.

Agentic Services Layer

A middleware layer of pre-built apps for data migration, pipeline creation, and agent orchestration allows you to go from raw infrastructure to AI deployments without building integrations from scratch.

Proven Ecosystem Partnerships

Partnerships with established vendor ecosystems such as NVIDIA and Cisco reduce implementation risk via battle-tested configurations and reference architectures, and accelerate time-to-value.

Rich Observability

AI decision processes must be monitored and logged.  This observability aids agent improvement flywheels while also being necessary for regulatory and governance oversight.

When evaluating options to support your AI agent development, it’s important to look for these critical capabilities for a truly future-proof Agentic AI solution.

Discover What Matters Most

Unified Vector Database & Storage Services

A single platform with built-in storage, vector database, and metadata indexing capabilities reduces architectural complexity, streamlines tech stack costs, and eliminates data movement for greater speed.

Real-Time Performance

For rapid agent perception and decision-making, an Agentic AI development solution must provide low-latency, high-throughput data access and automated GPU optimization features.

Exabyte-Scale & Linear Scalability

Support for independent, linear scaling to exabytes of data within a single global namespace will ensure your AI infrastructure can grow alongside your increasing number of agent deployments.

Enterprise-Grade Reliability & Security

To protect critical agent data and enable continuous operations, an enterprise AI solution must feature multi-tenancy along with robust data protection, quality of service (QoS), and zero trust security measures.

Simplified Management

Agentic AI tools must also be easy to use. An intuitive, unified management interface reduces operational overhead, improves internal alignment, and keeps teams focused on agent development.

Agentic Services Layer

A middleware layer of pre-built apps for data migration, pipeline creation, and agent orchestration allows you to go from raw infrastructure to AI deployments without building integrations from scratch.

Proven Ecosystem Partnerships

Partnerships with established vendor ecosystems such as NVIDIA and Cisco reduce implementation risk via battle-tested configurations and reference architectures, and accelerate time-to-value.

Rich Observability

AI decision processes must be monitored and logged.  This observability aids agent improvement flywheels while also being necessary for regulatory and governance oversight.

Why VAST Data for Agentic AI?

The Operating System for the Agentic Era

VAST Data is uniquely positioned to power the next generation of Agentic AI. The VAST AI OS — backed by our revolutionary DASE architecture — provides the foundational infrastructure required for intelligent, autonomous agents to thrive.

Unmatched Performance for Agentic Workloads

The VAST AI OS, backed by DASE architecture, delivers fast, all-flash performance optimized for GPU-intensive AI workloads. This can allow agents to have instant access to the data they need for real-time perception, reasoning, and action, maximizing their efficiency and effectiveness.

  • Single-tier, all-flash infrastructure

  • NVIDIA GPU Direct integration

  • NFSoRDMA and GPU-optimized

  • Massively parallel architecture

  • Maximize GPU utilization for agent training and inference

  • Acceleration for query engines and knowledge bases

Unmatched Performance for Agentic Workloads

Enterprise-Grade Reliability & Security

VAST's AI OS provides the core foundation for mission-critical Agentic AI, unifying essential security, compliance, and reliability into a single platform. This platform ensures confident deployment of autonomous AI workflows through zero trust security, fine-grained access controls that allow agents to access only authorized data, and unified governance across both raw and vector data.

  • Atomic data security and Fine-grained access control for agents (ACLs)

  • Multi-tenant with QoS and secure isolation

  • Multi-protocol: Unified NFS, SMB, S3, and GPU-optimized access

  • AI-ready compliance and auditability

  • Enterprise reliability and ease of use (including online upgrades and expansions)

Enterprise-Grade Reliability & Security

Exabyte-Scale for Agent Growth

With VAST's compounding data efficiencies and DASE architecture, it's now feasible to make any volume of data AI-ready, on-prem or in the cloud. This provides the scalable data foundation upon which AI agents can learn and act.

  • Speed, performance, and scalability

  • Similarity-based data reduction

  • All data is AI-ready on affordable flash

  • Transactional and analytical database services

  • Integrated metadata indexing

Exabyte-Scale for Agent Growth

Real-Time Agent Intelligence

VAST InsightEngine eliminates traditional AI bottlenecks by vectorizing enterprise data in real-time and enabling immediate inference. Agents gain continuous access to the freshest data through integrated vector search and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), optimizing accuracy and responsiveness without delays.

  • Real-time data vectorization and processing

  • Event-driven inference automation

  • NVIDIA NIM integration for instant semantic processing

  • AI-native vector search at trillion-scale embeddings

  • Eliminates batch processing delays

Real-Time Agent Intelligence

Simplifying Agent Orchestration

AgentEngine automates entire AI workflows through event-driven triggers, eliminating manual intervention. As data is ingested, agents immediately begin processing — enabling automated fraud detection, real-time cybersecurity response, predictive maintenance, and intelligent content workflows.

  • Automated data pipeline orchestration

  • Event-driven AI triggers and functions

  • Unified governance across AI workflows

  • Consolidated raw and vector storage

Simplifying Agent Orchestration

Innovate Freely with Agentic AI

Bring your Agentic AI projects to life with an operating system designed specifically to support them. VAST’s solution puts you in the right position to maximize your autonomous AI success — creating smarter, faster, more accurate agents.

Schedule a demo with our team today, or experience the VAST AI OS for yourself in VAST Labs.