All news in category “Vendor and Hyperscaler Watch”

🔧 The AWS IoT Core rules-SQL now supports a SET clause to define and reuse variables across SQL statements, simplifying complex queries and ensuring consistent content when values are referenced multiple times. A new get_or_default() function returns fallback values when encountering data encoding or external dependency failures so rules continue executing. These capabilities reduce SQL complexity and improve reliability across regions.

🔐 Aurora DSQL now provides Python, Node.js, and JDBC Connectors that transparently handle IAM token generation for standard PostgreSQL drivers. The connectors integrate with psycopg/psycopg2, node-postgres, Postgres.js, and the PostgreSQL JDBC driver and support common pooling libraries such as HikariCP and built-in pooling in Node.js and Python. By automatically generating IAM tokens via the AWS SDK for each connection, they remove the need for custom token code or manual token provisioning, reducing reliance on static database passwords while preserving existing driver features and workflows.

🆕 Amazon EMR 7.12 now supports the Apache Iceberg v3 table format (Iceberg 1.10) and includes Apache Spark 3.5.6. This update reduces storage and pipeline costs by marking deleted rows instead of rewriting files, while adding automatic row-level history for stronger governance and change-data capture. It also introduces table-level encryption and integrates with AWS Lake Formation. Apache Trino 476 is included, and EMR 7.12 is available in all Regions that support EMR.

🔐 AWS WAF now supports Web Bot Auth, providing cryptographic verification for automated agents and crawlers that access web applications. The capability uses signed HTTP messages and a public key directory defined by active IETF drafts to authenticate bot identities. AWS WAF will automatically allow verified WBA bots by default, refining previous behavior where the AI category blocked unverified bots. This change helps operators distinguish trusted automated traffic from potentially harmful automation.

🔔 Amazon Connect now enables monitoring of contacts queued for callback, allowing supervisors and integrations to search queued callbacks and view details such as customer phone numbers and queued duration in the Connect UI and via APIs. Teams can proactively route contacts nearing promised callback windows to available agents and clear customers who have already been served to avoid duplicative work. This capability is available in all regions where Amazon Connect is offered.

🔔 Amazon Web Services has raised the maximum storage limit for Aurora DSQL database clusters to 256 TiB, doubling the prior 128 TiB cap. This update enables customers to store and manage much larger datasets within a single cluster, simplifying data management for large-scale applications. Storage continues to auto-scale and customers pay only for used capacity; default clusters remain limited to 10 TiB and higher limits require a Service Quotas request.

📣 Second-generation AWS Outposts racks are now supported in the AWS Asia Pacific (Tokyo) Region. Organizations in and outside Japan can order Outposts racks connected to this region to optimize latency and meet data residency requirements while running low-latency workloads on-premises. Outposts extends AWS infrastructure, services, APIs, and tools into customer data centers or colocation spaces and connects back to a home Region for centralized management.

📧 Amazon Connect Email now lets agents send follow-up replies to existing email contacts, enabling them to add information or continue assistance without opening a new thread. The feature preserves full conversation history so agents retain context and deliver consistent support. It is available in multiple AWS regions including US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), Europe (Frankfurt, London), Canada (Central), several Asia Pacific locations, and Africa (Cape Town). Refer to documentation and pricing to get started.

💸 AWS has announced general availability of Flexible Cost Allocation (FCA) for AWS Transit Gateway, enabling organizations to distribute data processing and transfer charges more flexibly across accounts. FCA lets you assign usage to the source, destination, or the central Transit Gateway account and supports attachment-level or per-flow granularity. It also supports middle-box appliances such as AWS Network Firewall, allowing costs to be attributed to original source or destination owners. You can enable FCA via the AWS Management Console, CLI, or SDK with no additional charge.

🔒 Microsoft has been recognized as a Leader in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Access Management for the ninth consecutive year. The post highlights Microsoft Entra as a unified IAM and CIAM solution that consolidates controls, telemetry, and administration while integrating generative AI in the Entra admin center to streamline workflows and threat response. Microsoft calls out rising threats—nation-state actors and organized cybercrime using generative AI—and stresses that multifactor authentication and agent identity controls are essential to protect both human and non-human identities.

📈 Google announces it was named a Leader in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud Database Management Systems for the sixth consecutive year and positioned furthest in vision. The post presents the company's AI-native Data Cloud—a unified stack integrating BigQuery, Spanner, AlloyDB, Looker, and Dataplex—to support agentic AI. Google highlights embedded specialized agents, developer tooling (Data Agents API, ADK, Gemini CLI) and Agent Analytics in BigQuery to accelerate AI-driven applications while asserting cost and governance benefits on a single, open platform.

🔬 Google Cloud outlines an agentic AI framework to accelerate life sciences R&D by orchestrating specialized, fine-tunable models into modular workflows. It describes four agents—MedGemma for deep literature and data synthesis, TxGemma for in-silico preclinical prediction, Gemini 2.5 Pro as the cognitive orchestrator, and AlphaFold-2 plus docking tools for molecular design. The architecture maps data flows, tooling, and cloud services (Vertex AI, HPC, search) to move from target discovery through iterative Design→Dock→Predict→Refine cycles toward lab-ready lead nomination while preserving version control and compliance.

🤖 BigQuery AI consolidates BigQuery’s built-in ML, generative AI functions, vector search, and agent tools into a unified platform. It enables users to apply generative models and embeddings directly via SQL, perform semantic vector search, and run end-to-end ML workflows without moving data. Role-specific data agents and assistive features like a data canvas and code completion accelerate work for engineers, data scientists, and business users.

🚀 Google Cloud engineers demonstrated an experimental GKE cluster running 130,000 nodes to validate extreme scalability for AI/ML workloads. The test sustained control-plane throughput near 1,000 operations per second, supported over one million datastore objects, and achieved a baseline of 130,000 Pods launching in 3 minutes 40 seconds. The project combined API-server caching KEPs, a Spanner-backed key-value storage backend, and job-level orchestration via Kueue to enable predictable admission, rapid preemption, and efficient utilization at massive scale.

🚀 The Gemini CLI now includes Looker and Looker Conversational Analytics extensions, enabling direct terminal access to Looker data and dashboards. These additions let users ask complex questions, generate reports, and create dashboards without leaving the command line. Installation requires the Gemini CLI (npm), the two extensions, and configuration of Looker API credentials and optional Google Cloud settings. The update aims to streamline workflows and make data exploration more accessible from everyday development environments.

🚀 Vertex AI Studio now centers developer workflows around Gemini and introduces agents-as-tools to streamline prompt engineering and app creation. The Studio adds three core agent commands — /Prompt, /Evaluate, and /Build — to refine prompts, assess outputs with custom autoraters, and generate working code. Team features include cross-account prompt sharing, version history, and notes. Onboarding is simplified with one-click API keys, an /Ask helper, express mode, and loginless model trials.

🔧 Amazon Athena now lets you control Data Processing Unit (DPU) allocation for queries running on Capacity Reservations at the workgroup or per-query level. You can set explicit DPU values so small queries consume less capacity while critical jobs receive guaranteed resources. The Athena console and API now report per-query DPU usage, improving visibility into consumption and supporting capacity planning. These controls reduce over-provisioning, manage concurrency, and improve predictability for business-critical workloads in supported AWS Regions.

🔍 AWS Security Incident Response now offers an agentic AI investigative capability that automatically gathers, correlates, and summarizes evidence across AWS data sources. The investigative agent assesses new cases, asks submitters clarifying questions for missing indicators or timeframes, and collects logs from AWS CloudTrail, AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), Amazon EC2, and AWS Cost Explorer. Findings are presented as clear, actionable summaries, and the feature is enabled automatically at no extra cost in supported Regions.

🧭 AWS announced the Address Form Solution Builder for Amazon Location Service, a no-code tool that creates customizable address forms with predictive suggestions, autofill for fields like postal code, and an integrated map view. Developers can generate a ready-to-use application in minutes and download a developer package in React JavaScript, React TypeScript, or standalone HTML/JavaScript. The builder aims to speed address entry, reduce errors, and improve delivery and fraud outcomes for enterprise applications.

🚀 The AWS Transfer Family Terraform module now supports provisioning Transfer Family servers with a custom identity provider (IdP), enabling integration with existing authentication systems and centralized access control. This update automates deployment of SFTP, FTPS, FTP, AS2 and browser-based endpoints using Terraform, removing repeated manual configuration. The module is built on the open source Custom IdP solution and includes an Amazon Cognito example to help teams get started quickly.