All news in category “Vendor and Hyperscaler Watch”

🖥️ Amazon Web Services (AWS) has launched Amazon EC2 I7i storage-optimized instances in the AWS Europe (Spain) region, powered by 5th-generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors and 3rd-generation AWS Nitro SSDs. Compared with prior I4i instances, I7i delivers up to 23% better compute performance, improved price performance, and up to 45 TB of NVMe storage with notable reductions in storage I/O latency and variability. Offered in eleven sizes (including bare-metal), I7i targets I/O-intensive, latency-sensitive workloads requiring very high random IOPS and real-time access to multi-TB datasets.

🔒 Microsoft has made Windows Backup for Organizations generally available, offering an enterprise-grade, opt-in solution to preserve Windows settings, user preferences, and Microsoft Store-installed apps. The capability is available after installing the September 2025 Windows Monthly Cumulative Update on Entra-joined devices and must be enabled by administrators through Intune or backup and restore policy settings. Backups are stored in Exchange Online in the tenant's selected Country/Region, are protected by encryption, and are accessible to Microsoft personnel only under strict oversight for troubleshooting or legal compliance, helping streamline migrations to Windows 11 during device setup.

🔒 Cloudflare today introduces REACT, a new incident response and advisory service from Cloudforce One designed to bridge the gap between edge defenses and in‑network remediation. REACT combines proactive advisory work—threat hunting, tabletop exercises, and readiness assessments—with emergency incident response and retainer options for guaranteed availability. As a network‑native, vendor‑agnostic service, REACT can deploy mitigations at the Cloudflare edge and coordinate investigations across on‑premise, cloud, and hybrid environments.

🚀 Amazon Web Services has made M6in and M6idn EC2 instances available in the Asia Pacific (Seoul) region. These sixth‑generation, network‑optimized instances are powered by 3rd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors and the AWS Nitro System, delivering up to 200 Gbps of network bandwidth — double comparable fifth‑generation capacity. Offered in 10 sizes including metal, they provide up to 128 vCPUs, 512 GiB memory, 100 Gbps EBS bandwidth, and up to 400K IOPS, with EFA support on select sizes and up to 7.6 TB local storage on M6idn.

🚀 AWS announced general availability of Amazon EC2 C6in instances in the Mexico (Central) Region. These sixth-generation, network-optimized instances run on 3rd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors and the AWS Nitro System, delivering up to 200 Gbps of network bandwidth and improved EBS throughput and IOPS. C6in offers up to 128 vCPUs across 10 sizes (including bare metal) and provides Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA) support on 32xlarge and metal sizes. Targeted use cases include network virtual appliances, Telco 5G UPF, data analytics, HPC, and CPU-based AI/ML workloads.

🌐 Amazon DynamoDB now allows customers to use IPv6 addresses within their Amazon VPC to access tables, streams, and DAX, including via PrivateLink Gateway and Interface endpoints. The feature simplifies network stacks, helps avoid overlapping address spaces, and supports compliance with IPv6-ready policies. It is available today across US commercial and GovCloud Regions and will roll out to remaining global Regions over the coming weeks. See the DynamoDB and DAX guides to check regional availability and connection steps.

⚠️ Microsoft is addressing an outage in its Azure Front Door CDN that is blocking access to some Microsoft 365 services and admin portals across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. The incident began around 07:40 UTC and produced delays and timeouts when connecting to the Azure and Entra portals. Engineering teams have been restarting Kubernetes instances that caused capacity loss across AFD instances and have initiated failover for the Microsoft 365 Portal while monitoring telemetry to confirm full recovery.

🚀 Google today launched Google Skills, a unified learning platform consolidating nearly 3,000 courses and labs from Google Cloud, Google DeepMind, Grow with Google and Google for Education. The rollout, timed with the release of Gemini Enterprise, integrates Gemini Code Assist into hands-on labs, introduces new skill badges, and adds gamified features and admin tools for organizations. A new GEAR sprint will target one million developers for agent development, and a partnership with Jack Henry creates a direct hiring pathway for U.S. certificate holders.

🚀 Gemini Enterprise launches a curated ecosystem of partner-built AI agents that integrate with Google Cloud to deliver validated, secure solutions for enterprise workflows. The platform supports Agent2Agent (A2A) communication and includes a Gemini-powered AI agent finder for natural language discovery and filtering by industry, use case, and validation status. A broad set of technology and consulting partners — from Box and Salesforce to ServiceNow, Workday, and Accenture — are bringing agents and services to the Google Cloud Marketplace to accelerate deployment and adoption.

🆕 Amazon SageMaker notebook instances now support Amazon Linux 2023, giving data scientists and developers access to an updated, rpm-based runtime for managed Jupyter notebooks. AL2023 is the successor to AL2, offering a predictable two-year major release cadence and five years of long-term support. Enhanced security features include SELinux and FIPS 140-3 validated cryptographic modules. New notebook instances can be launched with either AL2023 or AL2.

🚀 Amazon SageMaker notebook instances now offer Amazon Linux 2023 as a launch option alongside Amazon Linux 2. The update provides a modern rpm-based runtime with a predictable two-year release cycle and five years of long-term support. Enhanced security features include SELinux support and FIPS 140-3 validated cryptographic modules. Use AL2023 to benefit from updated packages and continued OS maintenance.

🔐 This post explains how to configure customer trust stores to accept public certificates issued through AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) and clarifies the role of Amazon Trust Services. It warns that ACM issues certificates via dynamically selected intermediates, so trusting only intermediates or pinning end-entity certificates can cause outages. The recommended action is to install five Amazon root CAs in your trust stores and to validate configuration across Windows, Amazon Linux, and Java environments.

⚠️ Microsoft is addressing an ongoing outage that is preventing users from accessing Microsoft 365 services, including Teams, Exchange Online, and the Microsoft 365 admin center. The incident is being tracked on the Service Health Dashboard and Microsoft is publishing updates on its Service Health Status page. The outage is also affecting Microsoft Entra single sign-on and Multi-Factor Authentication, with some users unable to receive MFA prompts or authenticate.

🔒 This post contrasts Amazon Cognito's two primary UI approaches—managed login and a fully custom UI—and outlines feature, security, and operational trade-offs to guide architects and developers. Managed login (offered as a modern branding editor or the Hosted UI classic) offloads hosting, scaling, and maintenance while providing OAuth2 flows, federation with social and OIDC/SAML providers, passwordless options, and CloudTrail action logging. A custom UI gives full control over UX, session management, localization, and supports custom authentication flows via Lambda triggers, but requires development, hosting, and operational responsibility under the AWS Shared Responsibility Model.

📥 Microsoft is enabling threshold-based auto-archiving by default for Exchange Online, moving the oldest items to users' archive mailboxes when primary mailbox usage approaches 90%, provided an archive is provisioned and has available space. The Managed Folder Assistant will continuously monitor mailbox sizes and archive until usage drops below the threshold. Rollout begins this month for public clouds and is scheduled for government clouds in November; users can tag items with the Never Move to Archive flag to prevent them from being archived. The change complements recent Defender for Office 365 updates that detect email bombing attacks.

🤝 VirusTotal announces simplified access and tiered pricing to keep the platform open and sustainable. The update preserves a robust, free VT Community tier for researchers and educators while introducing a dedicated Contributor Tier for engine partners that includes blindspot feeds, priority support, and early feature access. New paid tiers (VT Lite, VT Duet) target small teams and large organizations respectively, with pricing aligned to usage and contribution.

⚙️ AWS has made Amazon EC2 I7ie instances available in the South America (São Paulo) region. Designed for high-density, storage-optimized workloads, I7ie uses 5th Gen Intel Xeon processors and 3rd-generation AWS Nitro SSDs, offering up to 120 TB of local NVMe and up to twice the vCPUs and memory of the prior generation. AWS reports up to 40% better compute, up to 65% better storage performance, and lower I/O latency and variability versus I3en, with up to 100 Gbps network and 60 Gbps EBS throughput.

🚀 AWS announced general availability of the new Amazon EC2 M8a general-purpose instances powered by 5th Gen AMD EPYC processors (Turin), with a maximum frequency of 4.5 GHz and up to 30% higher performance over M7a. M8a instances deliver 45% more memory bandwidth and notable benchmark improvements—60% faster on GroovyJVM and up to 39% faster on Cassandra. They are SAP-certified, come in 12 sizes including two bare-metal options, and are available in US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), and Europe (Spain). Customers can purchase M8a via On-Demand, Spot, and Savings Plans.

🚀 AWS announced general availability of new Amazon EC2 M8a instances powered by 5th Gen AMD EPYC (Turin) processors with up to 4.5 GHz. M8a offers up to 30% higher performance, up to 19% better price-performance, and 45% more memory bandwidth vs M7a, with strong gains on JVM and Cassandra benchmarks. The family includes 12 sizes (two bare-metal), is SAP-certified, built on the AWS Nitro System, and is initially available in US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon) and Europe (Spain).

🛡️ Modern cloud work lives across email, files, chat, and a mesh of integrations, and attackers increasingly exploit trusted OAuth grants rather than compromising accounts directly. In early August the actor behind recent Salesforce intrusions used stolen Drift email tokens to access a small set of Google Workspace mailboxes; Google revoked the tokens and disabled the integration on August 9. Material Security advocates shifting from perimeter-only defenses to content-centric controls such as message-level MFA, OAuth governance, and automated containment to make stolen tokens far less damaging.