You Can't Govern What You Can't See: The Case For Agent Control Planes

InnovationYou Can't Govern What You Can't See: The Case For Agent Control PlanesByAbhijeet Mukkawar,Forbes Councils Member.for Forbes Technology CouncilCOUNCIL POSTExpertise from Forbes Councils members, operated under license. Opinions expressed are those of the author. | Membership (fee-based)Jun 12, 2026, 06:45am EDTAbhijeet Mukkawar | Enterprise Architect, Siemens Digital Industry Software. getty​When my recent article argued that agentic AI is being built for enterprises that don't exist, I focused on the gap between clean demo environments and the messy, multi-vendor IT/OT reality most organizations run. Since then, something else has become impossible to ignore: The agents are arriving faster than our ability to see them, let alone govern them.Business units are spinning up agents using various IT tools, SaaS platforms and COTS products. Meanwhile, OT vendors are adding "autonomous" features at the edge. However, many enterprise architects and leaders don't know the answers to a few basic questions: How many agents do we have? What are they allowed to touch? Who is on the hook when one makes a bad decision? How can we control what they should and shouldn't do?That is why the conversation is rapidly shifting to "How do we build an agent control plane?"Why Agents Require Their Own Control PlaneAgents don't behave like traditional software. A conventional application executes a predefined flow. An agent reasons about a goal, chooses tools and acts—often across multiple systems. As they reason and execute, they don't have a defined path. With the ongoing ease of developing agents, their number can grow from a handful to hundreds or thousands across vendors and business domains.​A decade ago, we saw identity sprawl beyond manual control. Now, we're watching "agent sprawl" outgrow the current governance framework. An agent control plane is one of the trends to solve this challenge. ​​ if (!window...