August 20, 2026

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It’s Thursday! It’s also National Radio Day. Celebrate by turning that rock station ultra-loud while you try to shove another server into that older-style rack.

In today’s edition:

📲 On-call and collected

🛰️ Constellation prize

🤖 H-AI expectations

—Billy Hurley, Eoin Higgins

CLOUD

Pods, interrupted

Sai Koshitha Kathari

It was after hours, and Sai Joshitha Kathari was on call—and on her own.

Kathari, a then-new hire at digital transformation company Atos Syntel, received an alert that would likely frighten any IT newbie: a production service was acting up. Several Kubernetes application pods were repeatedly failing, reducing the service’s capacity and requiring immediate troubleshooting to prevent a broader outage.

Kathari had just finished school. Her responsibilities, as a new member of Atos’s DevOps engineering team, included supporting production applications running on Red Hat OpenShift, an enterprise Kubernetes platform. Because customers required those enterprise services, Kathari and colleagues had to be on call at times, including working the night shift to handle any potential infrastructure or application problems.

Kathari recalled her first alert while speaking to IT Brew.

Staying calm on call.—BH

Sponsored By PwC

Why model strategy has become the differentiator

Executives aren’t discussing AI as a concept as much as they are the models that make them worthwhile. Yes, the conversation has officially shifted. The question is, are you up to date?

As the market evolves, discussions around models, governance, and competitive advantage become increasingly important. Want in on the convo?

PwC COO of Advisory Jenny Koehler joined Morning Brew to discuss the next frontier in model strategy, moving beyond pilots (yep, finally), and lessons from PwC’s own AI transformation.

Read on.

CLOUD

Starstruck

Ai4

Are orbital data centers the future for a conflict-ridden industry?

Ask Ezra Feilden, co-founder and CTO for startup Starcloud, and you’ll get a more nuanced—and thoughtful—answer than you might expect. Ultimately, it comes down to what makes most sense.

“It’s getting easier to deploy things in space and it’s getting harder to deploy things on the ground,” Feilden said onstage at the Ai4 conference. “There’s a point at which those two lines cross over and it becomes not only faster but more economical to be building large-scale AI infrastructure in space.”

Feilden’s company has big plans to expand the capabilities of space-based data centers. Starcloud already has one H100 in orbit—a test of one GPU for proof of concept—and if things go well, intends to launch a “constellation.”

Space cowboys.—EH

IT STRATEGY

Hiring hunger

The silhouette of an AI robot servicing an IT server rack

Francis Scialabba

When it comes to companies hiring IT talent for AI adoption and integration, a native approach might be best.

That’s according to the latest findings from jobs platform Indeed, which partnered with YouGov to survey over 1,000 job-seekers and hiring managers at organizations with 500+ employees about their need for AI-native employees.

While there’s a hunger for those who’ve deeply integrated AI into their thinking and workflows, there’s also a gap in how many potential employees actually fit that bill.

Finding those AI natives.—EH

Sponsored By Celigo

One platform, one dream. Okay, fine: Single-platform governance models may not be what dreams are made of (unless you’re really into that sort of thing), but they can make or break an important Q4. Read our latest article to see how Celigo helps brands ride out peak season in style.

patch notes

Francis Scialabba

Today’s top IT reads.

Stat: 3.7 million. That’s the number of patients whose medical records were stolen in a breach of healthcare company CareCloud. (TechCrunch)

Quote: “We’re building towards autonomy, but we’re not necessarily building in a dogmatic fashion towards full autonomy.”—Dan Summers, CEO of manufacturing startup 1872, on building a prototype factory that can automate steel fabrication (Ars Technica)

Read: Wired investigated an AI tool developed by Flock that would give police even more power to track people. (Wired)

A new frontier: PwC COO of Advisory Jenny Koehler joined Morning Brew to discuss the next frontier in model strategy, moving beyond pilots, and lessons from PwC’s own AI transformation. Give it a read.*

^{*A message from our sponsor.}

Quiz

What do you know?

Amelia Kinsinger

The week’s biggest IT stories—now in quiz form. Test yourself on the latest cybersecurity headlines, software news, and tech breakthroughs in a quick, competitive challenge built for IT pros. Challenge your coworkers and see how your score stacks up!

Ace the quiz

Jobs

CollabWORK connects you to the hidden job market through IT Brew and other trusted channels. Browse roles curated specifically for this community by clicking through to the job board.

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Written by Billy Hurley and Eoin Higgins

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