CLOUD

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A decade or two ago, a cloud bill was straightforward. You bought a virtual CPU for 10 cents per hour, then, maybe you’d pay for storage and data-transfer services. You downloaded your monthly bill as a PDF for accounts payable to handle and went about your day.

But for all the major cloud services, the cloud menu has radically expanded in recent years, with infrastructure offerings like data analytics, workflow automation, managed Kubernetes, container orchestration, content delivery networks, and not to mention ways to build AI applications. Just to make things more complicated, many cloud services have introduced granular pricing options.

Before you know it, your organization is running a dizzying array of cloud services, all of them powering a cloud bill that’s quickly gone from PDF to WTF.

Garrett Wiesenberg, VP of solutions consulting at managed services provider Corsica Technologies, sees many organizations take a “lift and shift” on-prem approach when moving to the cloud. This can set up an organization for outsize cloud bills from the outset.

“They take a fixed cost on-prem and move it into a variable cost in the cloud, and then they get a huge bill at the end of the day because they didn’t take a look at their underlying architecture, and figure out ‘how do we optimize this for cloud spend?’” Wiesenberg said.

How to kill your “zombie infrastructure.”—BH

      

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Something like that.

Here’s the current situation: There’s a big misconception that AI could make enterprise resource planning (ERP) obsolete. PwC notes that the reality couldn’t be more different.

What actually can happen is ERP like Oracle’s model can guide organizations through complex processes while AI introduces dynamic, intuitive orchestration. In short? They can make quite the duo.

And as AI’s role advances, ERP’s role as an enterprise engine—and an active one at that—can become even more valuable.

Find out how.

SOFTWARE

Illustration: Shannon May, Photos: Adobe Stock, Unsplash

It’s all fun and games until your once-masterful coding skills erode due to too much reliance on vibe coding.

That’s a scenario many developers fear, at least. According to the 2026 Stack Overflow Developer survey, almost six in ten (59%) developers say they intentionally avoid AI at work or school. Losing job skills to AI was a top reason (17%) why some say they stay clear of the technology. (The survey is based on the responses from 30,903 developers from 169 countries.)

Skill drain. Fundamental skill atrophy has always been a risk for developers.

For example, a software engineer who goes away on a lengthy sabbatical may see their coding skills temporarily decline. However, Cassidy Williams, senior director of developer experience at GitHub, told IT Brew that AI-induced skill atrophy is different because developers are starting to do “less tasks that they would have just done on their own before.”

“As opposed to taking a vacation from work, taking a sabbatical, taking a break, you’re still doing the same tasks, but you’re doing them with help,” Williams said. “You’re doing them with a bit more of a crutch.”

Stay in coding shape.—BM

      

WORD OF THE WEEK

Model drift: For machine learning models trained on a particular set of data and expected to deliver accurate answers about real-world conditions, model drift can lead to inaccurate answers. Learn more.

CLOUD

Credit: Morning Brew, Photo: Adobe Stock

A recent federal report on the need for government agencies to prepare for a post-quantum future is the latest indication that the technology must be taken seriously.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, “Quantum Computing: Federal Actions Needed to Prepare for Emerging Cyber Threat,” was initially filed in September 2025. A public, less sensitive version was released on October 6.

Andrew Hoog, co-founder of mobile app security company NowSecure, told IT Brew that the report’s recommendations for agencies are a strong case for preparing for (and securing) commercial quantum computing.

“Very large prime numbers are what literally underpin encryption today, and if you can bring a new type of computing that allows you to factor those large prime numbers, you crack the encryption,” Hoog said.

And attackers take a “harvest now, decrypt later” approach.—EH

      

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patch notes

Francis Scialabba

Today’s top IT reads.

Stat: 56%. That’s the proportion of schools describing their cybersecurity programs as underfunded, according to a CIS and MS-ISAC report of over 400 IT and cybersecurity professionals working at K–12 organizations. (Scoop News Group)

Quote: “The covers are going to get ripped off over the next few months, and we’re going to have a bunch of PHP kind of events.”—Mark Weatherford, current head of cybersecurity policy at Nvidia, predicting new flaws similar to the ones that hit the PHP programming language in October (TechTarget)

Read: What to do when your company replaced you with AI—and then wants you back. (the Associated Press)

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