Jed Ayres ControlUp, recognized as a leader in Digital Employee Experience Management, asserts that the industry is evolving beyond mere visibility to Autonomous Endpoint Management, which integrates AI and automation for proactive issue resolution.
- The Digital Employee Experience (DEX) market is transitioning from providing insights into IT operations to platforms that recommend and automate remediation actions.
- ControlUp is spearheading this shift with ControlUp ONE and Pulse AI, leveraging real-time telemetry, AI, and automation to detect, diagnose, and resolve issues before employee impact.
- Autonomous Endpoint Management is presented as an operational necessity, enabling IT teams to manage increasing complexity efficiently and move towards self-healing digital workspaces.
Being named a Leader for the third consecutive year in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Digital Employee Experience Management Tools is a proud moment for ControlUp.
But for me, this recognition is not the finish line. It is the foundation.
Over the past three years, our team has pushed hard to keep moving, not by chasing placement in a report, but by listening closely to our customers, understanding where IT is headed, and activating one of the strongest development engines in the market to deliver meaningful innovation. I’m incredibly proud of the focus, resilience, and urgency our team has shown. We believe this recognition reflects their work, and more importantly, the outcomes our customers are achieving every day.
While we feel our current position reflects years of driving measurable outcomes across some of the world’s most complex digital work environments, it also reinforces something we believe deeply: the DEX market is quickly entering its next major chapter.
For years, Digital Employee Experience has helped IT teams answer a critical question: what is happening across my endpoints, applications, networks, and workspaces?
That visibility transformed the way IT operates. It gave teams the real-time insights needed to understand and improve employee experience. But the market is evolving quickly, and visibility alone is no longer enough.
The next question is bigger: what should be done, and how quickly can the system do it?
That is the shift from Digital Employee Experience to Autonomous Endpoint Management.
At ControlUp, this is where we are focused. We believe the future of IT operations will be defined by platforms that do more than observe the digital workplace—platforms that understand what is happening, recommend the right actions, and increasingly automate remediation before employees are impacted.
This is the direction we are driving with ControlUp ONE and Pulse AI.
By combining real-time telemetry, AI, and automation, ControlUp helps IT teams to detect, diagnose, and remediate issues in the moment. The goal is simple: fewer tools, fewer tickets, less manual troubleshooting, and better digital experiences for every employee.
The timing matters.
IT teams today are being asked to support more endpoints, more applications, more hybrid work, more cloud desktop complexity, and higher employee expectations than ever before. At the same time, they are being asked to move faster and operate more efficiently.
That’s why we believe autonomous operations are becoming an operational necessity.
Gartner¹ has noted that “by 2029, 70% of enterprises will deploy agentic AI as a part of IT infrastructure operations, compared to less than 5% in 2025.” That kind of acceleration points to a major inflection point for the industry. A generational shift.
The organizations that win will not simply have more data. They will have better systems of action.
That is what ControlUp is building toward.
We are proud to be recognized again as a Leader in DEX. Even more, we’re energized about what comes next: helping our customers move from visibility to action, from reactive support to intelligent automation, and from managing digital workspaces to making them increasingly self-healing.
Recognition is meaningful. But we feel leadership is about continuing to move the market forward.
For ControlUp, the next chapter is clear.
DEX is the foundation. Autonomous Endpoint Management is the future.
Download a complimentary copy of the 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Employee Experience Management Tools here, starting June 10, 2026.
To learn more about the ControlUp and see AEM in action, schedule a demo.
Gartner Disclaimers:
Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Digital Employee Experience (DEX) Management Tools, Dan Wilson, Stuart Downes, Robin Milton-Schonemann, June 8, 2026.
GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally, Magic Quadrant and Peer Insights is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in our research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
¹ Innovation Insight for Digital Workplace Operations Automation Platforms, Tom Cipolla, Stu Downes, 23 April 2026.
