IT operations in 2025 was—no surprise—defined by AI integration into organizational processes.

Throughout the year, said Human CEO Stu Solomon, IT teams saw an expansion of automation and AI that lowered the bar for getting closer to the big “orchestration” milestone: agents and people working together at a high level.

“That’s the core of this, and that’s not necessarily new,” Solomon said. “We’ve been going down the automation orchestration route for years, but what is new is that it’s happening faster.”

Moving AI forward. We saw a lot of that over the past year. IT Brew has reported on how the increase in AI utilization and integration into systems changed the economics of the AI sector, resulting in huge deals for Nvidia, AMD, and others.

Here’s what happened with IT ops over the past 12 months.—EH

In 2025, AI was halfway there—then agentic was living on a prayer.

You can roughly split the year in half between the pre- and post-agentic AI eras. Agentic AI wasn’t invented this year, but since IT Brew attended the RSAC Conference in late April, it seems every organization is promoting its use of the technology.

NCC Group Technical Director David Brauchler told IT Brew that “agentic” was the word of the year as systems increased their complexity and capabilities. The technology is acting as a force multiplier for organizations—but questions remain about risk.

“We’re seeing a change from isolated use cases where we drag and drop AI into some broader application or system into using AI to power functional operations that we couldn’t do with traditional technologies,” Brauchler said. “That being said, you have a lot of security risks and concerns that come along with that.”

How 2025 became the “year of the AI agent.”—EH

Who said desk calendars have to be boring? Introducing the Morning Brew 2026 Daily Games Desk Calendar. It’s perfect for desks, nightstands, and kitchen counters, so give yourself (or others) the gift of entertaining coffee breaks.