All news in category “Vendor and Hyperscaler Watch”

🚀 Amazon Web Services has launched EC2 Im4gn instances in the Asia Pacific (Mumbai) region. Built on the AWS Nitro System and powered by AWS Graviton2 processors, Im4gn provides up to 30 TB of 2nd Generation Nitro SSD instance storage and up to 100 Gbps networking. These instances are optimized for I/O-intensive workloads—relational and NoSQL databases, search engines, and data analytics—and support Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA) for high inter-node communication. Users can provision Im4gn via the AWS Management Console, AWS CLI, or AWS SDKs.

🧾 AWS Marketplace has expanded pricing dimension capabilities, raising the per-listing limit from 24 to 200 dimensions for both contract and usage-based pricing. Sellers can immediately use newly added SaaS usage dimensions in public offers, enabling instant access to newly launched features. AWS also removed the 90-day price update restriction for dimensions that have no active subscriptions, and these updates are available in all supported AWS Regions.

🔔 AWS has announced the general availability of AWS Service Quotas automatic quota management, a capability that monitors quota usage and notifies customers before they exhaust allocated limits. Customers can configure preferred notification channels such as email, SMS, or Slack via the Service Quotas console or API. Notifications are also surfaced in AWS Health, and related AWS CloudTrail events can be subscribed to for automation. This capability is available at no additional cost in all AWS commercial regions.

⚙️ Amazon Redshift Serverless now offers a reduced minimum base capacity of 8 Redshift Processing Units (RPUs) in the AWS Asia Pacific (Seoul) and Canada (Central) regions. Each RPU provides 16 GB of memory and billing remains per-second for RPU-hours; the prior minimum was 32 RPUs. Capacity can be adjusted in 8-RPU increments, making Redshift Serverless more cost-effective and flexible for small production, test, and development workloads.

🔎 Microsoft’s Incident Response (IR) team emphasizes calm, clarity, and rapid action when customers encounter major breaches. Adrian Hill explains how IR establishes trust within the first 30 seconds and coordinates with other vendors and stakeholders to stabilize compromised environments. Field discoveries are fed back into Microsoft Threat Intelligence, enabling new detections and product protections. Follow-up recovery, containment, and strategic guidance turn response into lasting partnership.

🚀 Azure AI Foundry now integrates new OpenAI models—GPT-image-1-mini, GPT-realtime-mini, and GPT-audio-mini—alongside safety upgrades to GPT-5. The rollout, with most customers able to get started on October 7, 2025, targets efficient, low-latency multimodal workloads for developers and enterprises. Microsoft also highlighted the open-source Microsoft Agent Framework, multi-agent workflows, unified observability, Voice Live API GA, and Responsible AI enhancements to accelerate production-grade agentic solutions.

🔧 Microsoft is investigating a bug that prevents the Copilot pane and other WebView2-dependent features from launching when multiple Office applications (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, OneNote, Publisher, Access) run concurrently. The issue occurs when one app initializes a WebView2 instance and a second app attempts to start another; closing the first app allows the pane to open normally. The Office team is working on a resolution and will provide updates when available.

🚀 AWS announced that Amazon EKS and EKS Distro now support Kubernetes version 1.34. Starting today, you can create new clusters or upgrade existing clusters via the EKS console, eksctl, or infrastructure-as-code tools, with EKS Distro images available in ECR Public Gallery and GitHub. Kubernetes 1.34 introduces projected service account tokens for kubelet image credential providers, Pod-level resource requests and limits for simpler multi-container resource management, and Dynamic Resource Allocation prioritized alternatives to improve device scheduling and workload placement. AWS recommends using EKS Cluster Insights and consulting EKS version lifecycle guidance before upgrading.

🛡️ AWS Incident Detection and Response is now available in the AWS GovCloud (US-West) and GovCloud (US-East) Regions for eligible AWS Enterprise Support customers. The service provides proactive incident engagement and collaborative access to AWS expertise to detect issues earlier and reduce impact. Customers work with AWS to develop customized runbooks and response plans for each onboarded workload. The capability is intended to lower failure risk and accelerate recovery for critical workloads operating in GovCloud.

💡 Google Cloud presents practical strategies to lower Compute Engine and block storage costs during migration and modernization. The article recommends adopting latest-generation VMs and specialized instance families, right-sizing or using custom machine types, and tuning storage with Hyperdisk and storage pools to align capacity and performance. It also emphasizes financial levers—committed use discounts, Spot VMs, autoscaling, and recommender-driven actions—to reduce spend while preserving performance.

🚀 AWS announced general availability of C8i and C8i-flex compute-optimized EC2 instances powered by custom Intel Xeon 6 processors exclusive to AWS. The new families deliver up to 15% better price-performance and 2.5x more memory bandwidth versus prior Intel-based instances, and up to 20% higher CPU performance compared with C7i. AWS cites up to 60% faster performance for NGINX, ~40% for deep-learning recommendation models, and ~35% for Memcached. C8i-flex covers common sizes (large–16xlarge) for cost-efficient use; C8i provides 13 sizes including two bare-metal options and a new 96xlarge. Instances are initially available in N. Virginia, Ohio, Oregon, and Spain and can be purchased via Savings Plans, On-Demand, or Spot.

🔗 Amazon Connect now exposes new APIs within Amazon Connect Cases that let developers link related cases, attach custom related items, and search across those relationships programmatically. Agents get consolidated context to resolve issues faster and coordinate responses. Typical uses include airlines grouping flight-related tickets and retailers attaching order or shipment records to refund cases. The capability is available in multiple AWS regions.

🔐 Google Cloud’s Vertex AI now supports secure self-deployment of proprietary third-party models directly into customer VPCs via the Model Garden. Customers can discover, license, and deploy closed-source and restricted-license models from partners such as AI21 Labs, Mistral AI, Qodo and others, with one-click provisioning and managed inference. Deployments adhere to VPC-SC controls, selectable regions, autoscaling, and pay-as-you-go billing. This central catalog brings Google, open, and partner models together for enterprise-grade control and compliance.

📞 Amazon Connect now lets supervisors and managers customize how service level is calculated directly from the analytics dashboards. Administrators can define time thresholds that determine when a contact meets service level and choose which outcomes to include, such as counting callbacks, excluding contacts transferred out while waiting, or omitting short abandons via a configurable threshold. The feature is accessible in the metric configuration section and is available in all AWS regions where Amazon Connect is offered.

🔒 A secure enterprise browser provides a practical, cost-efficient Zero Trust approach to managing contractor access, reducing reliance on complex VPNs and broad network privileges. By isolating sessions and enforcing granular policies per user and resource, organizations can grant contractors only the access required for their role. This reduces attack surface, simplifies administration, and lowers operational costs while supporting both short-term and long-term engagements.

🛡️ Kaspersky developed a machine-learning model to detect DLL hijacking, a technique where attackers replace or sideload dynamic-link libraries so legitimate processes execute malicious code. The model inspects metadata such as file paths, renaming, size, structure and digital signatures, trained on internal analysis and anonymized KSN telemetry. Implemented in the Kaspersky Unified Monitoring and Analysis Platform, it flags suspicious loads and cross-checks cloud reputation to reduce false positives and support retrospective hunting.

🚀 AWS has announced the general availability of new Amazon EC2 C8i and C8i-flex compute-optimized instances powered by custom Intel Xeon 6 processors available only on AWS. AWS cites up to 15% better price-performance and 2.5x more memory bandwidth versus prior Intel-based instances, and up to 20% higher performance compared with C7i families, with specific gains as high as 60% for NGINX, 40% for deep learning recommendation models, and 35% for Memcached. C8i-flex targets common sizes from large to 16xlarge for workloads that don’t fully use all vCPUs, while C8i offers 13 sizes including two bare-metal options and a new 96xlarge for the largest scale. These instances are available in US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), and Europe (Spain) and can be purchased via Savings Plans, On-Demand, or Spot.

🔍 A leaked Geekbench entry allegedly from an unreleased iPad shows an Apple M5 chip delivering a 4,133 single‑core score and 15,437 multi‑core score, with the processor reported at 4.42 GHz and paired with 12GB of RAM and likely 256/512GB storage. In early comparisons, Apple's per‑core performance edges out Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite 2 in single‑thread tests, while the Snapdragon's higher core count gives it a clear multi‑core lead. The results highlight Apple's continued CPU design strength but should be treated as an unverified leak until independently confirmed.

🔍An alleged Apple M5 benchmark for an iPad Pro has surfaced on Geekbench, reporting a single-core score of 4,133 and a multi-core score of 15,437 for a variant clocked at about 4.42 GHz. The listing shows 12 GB of RAM, likely paired with 256 GB or 512 GB of storage. Early comparisons place the M5 narrowly ahead in single-thread tests versus Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite 2 but behind in multi-core throughput, underscoring Apple's strong per-core design.

🚀 OpenAI has introduced a new opt-in program, Codex Alpha, offering developers early access to updated Codex models and features ahead of DevDay 2025. The rollout currently exposes several gpt-5 variants (gpt-5-codex low/medium/high, gpt-5 minimal, and gpt-5 low/medium/high) tailored for coding and varied reasoning depths. The author could opt in but did not yet gain access to newer models; broader availability is expected at the October 6 event. Codex operates in Terminal, IDE, and web environments to assist with full application development rather than only snippets.