All news in category "Vendor and Hyperscaler Watch"

BigQuery's Data Engineering Agent: Automating Pipelines

🔧 The preview of the Data Engineering Agent in BigQuery introduces a Gemini-powered assistant that automates pipeline development, maintenance, and migrations. The agent converts natural-language requirements into SQL, enforces engineering best practices, and supports custom instructions and UDFs to reflect organizational logic. Integrated with Dataplex, it uses governance metadata to improve table descriptions, data quality assertions, and PII-aware handling, and it also generates documentation and troubleshooting guidance. The feature is available in preview via BigQuery Pipelines and the Dataform UI.

Amazon Cognito simplifies Machine-to-Machine pricing

🔔 AWS has simplified pricing for Amazon Cognito machine-to-machine (M2M) authentication by removing the M2M app client price dimension. Customers will now be charged only for successful M2M token requests per month instead of both registered app clients and token requests. The change is effective immediately across all supported Cognito regions and is automatic, requiring no customer action. This reduces the cost to build and scale M2M integrations.

How Scientists Can Use Gemini Enterprise for AI Workflows

🔬 Google Cloud presents how researchers can accelerate scientific workflows by combining Gemini Enterprise with integrated HPC infrastructure. It showcases AI agents—like the Deep Research agent for literature synthesis and the Idea Generation agent for proposing and ranking hypotheses—alongside developer tooling such as Gemini Code Assist and Gemini CLI for code, debugging, and workflow automation. The platform pairs these capabilities with purpose-built VMs (H4D, A4, A4X) and Google Cloud Managed Lustre to scale simulations and analysis.

Microsoft Signing Transparency: Verifiable Code Signing

🔒 Microsoft has announced the preview of Signing Transparency, a cloud-managed service that records every software signature in an append-only ledger protected by confidential computing. The service verifies and countersigns COSE envelopes, issues cryptographic receipts tied to a Merkle-tree inclusion proof, and keeps signing keys in a secure enclave. Organizations and auditors can independently verify releases, detect tampering, and retain receipts for compliance and incident response.

Google Cloud Cost Anomaly Detection Now Generally Available

🔔 Google Cloud has made Cost Anomaly Detection generally available to provide an automatic safety net for unexpected cloud spend. Alerts are enabled by default for all projects and delivered to Billing Administrators, with preferences managed in the billing console and direct links to an Anomaly dashboard that shows suspected root causes. The GA release introduces AI-generated thresholds that learn from historical spending, a percentage-deviation filter to keep alerts relevant across project sizes, and cold-start handling so new accounts receive protection immediately. The feature is free and integrates with Cloud Budgets as part of Google Cloud’s FinOps capabilities.

Ray on GKE: New AI Scheduling and Scaling Features

🚀 Google Cloud and Anyscale describe tighter integration between Ray and Kubernetes to improve distributed AI scheduling and autoscaling on GKE. The release introduces a Ray Label Selector API (Ray v2.49) to align task, actor and placement-group placement with Kubernetes labels and GKE custom compute classes, enabling targeted placement and fallback strategies for GPUs and markets. It also adds Dynamic Resource Allocation for A4X/GB200 racks, writable cgroups for Ray resource isolation on GKE v1.34+, TPU/JAX training support via a JAXTrainer in Ray v2.49, and in-place pod resizing (Kubernetes v1.33) for vertical autoscaling and higher efficiency.

Mercado Libre's Spanner-Based Platform for Scale and AI

🚀 Mercado Libre leverages Spanner as the core of a developer-facing platform, exposing consistent, globally-scalable transactions through its internal gateway, Fury. Fury abstracts distributed database complexity and serves both relational and key-value workloads. Integration with BigQuery via Data Boost and Change Streams enables near-real-time analytics and reverse ETL to operational systems.

Ray on TPUs with GKE: Native, Lower-Friction Integration

🚀 Google Cloud and Anyscale have enhanced the Ray experience on Cloud TPUs with GKE to reduce setup complexity and improve performance. The new ray.util.tpu library and a SlicePlacementGroup with a label_selector API automatically reserve co-located TPU slices and preserve SPMD topology to avoid resource fragmentation. Ray Train and Ray Serve gain expanded TPU support including alpha JAX training, while TPU metrics and libtpu logs appear in the Ray Dashboard for faster troubleshooting and migration between GPUs and TPUs.

Month of VT Search: Unlimited GUI Searches in November

🔍 This November VirusTotal is offering uncapped GUI searches for all Enterprise customers, allowing manual queries through the web interface without consuming quota. Take this opportunity to experiment with VirusTotal Intelligence search modifiers to pivot across hashes, domains, IPs, and URLs, hunt for related samples, and uncover campaign infrastructure. API interactions will continue to consume quota, while daily shared queries and community tips — tagged #MonthOfVTSearch — will help users explore advanced search techniques.

AWS Config Adds 52 New Resource Types Across Key Services

🔔 AWS Config now supports 52 additional AWS resource types across services including Amazon EC2, Amazon Bedrock, and Amazon SageMaker. With recording for all resource types enabled, AWS Config will automatically begin tracking these additions and they are available to Config rules and aggregators. You can monitor the new types in all Regions where supported, expanding discovery, assessment, audit, and remediation coverage.

CloudWatch Agent Adds NVMe Local Volume Performance Metrics

📈 The Amazon CloudWatch agent can now collect detailed performance metrics for NVMe local volumes attached to EC2 instances, including queue depths, I/O sizes, and device utilization. These metrics mirror the detailed statistics available for EBS volumes, enabling a consistent monitoring experience across storage types. You can create CloudWatch dashboards, set alarms, and analyze trends for NVMe-based instance store volumes, and the capability is available for all local NVMe volumes on Nitro-based EC2 instances in AWS Commercial and AWS GovCloud (US) Regions.

Kaspersky Launches Kaspersky for Linux for Home Users

🛡️ Kaspersky has introduced Kaspersky for Linux, extending its award-winning home security lineup to 64-bit Linux desktops and laptops. The product adapts the vendor's enterprise-grade Linux solution for home users and combines real-time monitoring, behavior-based detection, removable-media scanning, anti-phishing, online payment protection, and anti-cryptojacking. Distributed as DEB and RPM packages, installation requires a My Kaspersky account and a 30-day trial is available; subscription tier does not change Linux feature availability while GDPR readiness is pending.

Mountpoint S3 CSI Driver Adds Observability Metrics

📈 You can now monitor Mountpoint operations in observability tools such as Amazon CloudWatch, Prometheus, and Grafana. Mountpoint emits near real-time metrics (request count, request latency, and error types) over the OpenTelemetry Protocol (OTLP), so you can use the CloudWatch agent or an OpenTelemetry collector to publish metrics and build dashboards. Configure Mountpoint at mount time to stream per-EC2-instance metrics for proactive monitoring and faster troubleshooting.

Amazon Kinesis Data Streams: On-demand Advantage Launch

🚀 Amazon Kinesis Data Streams introduces On‑demand Advantage, letting customers warm on‑demand streams to absorb instant throughput spikes up to 10 GB or 10 million events per second without over‑provisioning. The mode removes the fixed per‑stream charge and offers a simpler usage pricing model with data ingest at $0.032/GB and retrieval at $0.016/GB in US East (N. Virginia). Extended retention costs fall by 77%, and Enhanced fan‑out retrievals are priced the same as shared throughput, making high fan‑out scenarios more economical. On‑demand Advantage requires a minimum billed aggregate of 25 MB/s for both ingest and retrieval at the discounted rates and is available in all AWS regions, including GovCloud (US) and China.

Google Confirms AI Search Will Include Ads, Evolving Format

📣Google says its ad business will remain central as it integrates advertising into AI-powered search experiences. Google currently offers AI Overviews and a more capable AI Mode, and has begun limited experiments placing ads within those results. Executives say ads won't disappear but may appear differently and become more personalized based on user data. Tests and further plans are expected to continue into next year.

Windows 11 Build 26220.7051 Adds Ask Copilot and More

🗞️ Windows 11 Build 26220.7051 is rolling out to Insiders and introduces three headline features: a taskbar-based Ask Copilot, a new full-screen Xbox experience for handhelds, and Bluetooth Shared audio. Ask Copilot lets users search the internet, local files, and AI using text or voice and can be enabled via Settings > Personalization > Taskbar > Ask Copilot. The new full-screen experience (FSE) aims to prioritize gaming on compatible handheld devices and can be set under Settings > Gaming > Full screen experience. Additionally, Windows now supports sharing audio to two Bluetooth devices and improves ARM PC performance by expanding x64 emulation support.

Windows 11 Build 26220.7051 Adds Ask Copilot Taskbar

🖥️ Windows 11 Build 26220.7051 introduces a taskbar-based Ask Copilot, allowing testers to query the web, local files, and AI using text or voice. The feature is optional and can be enabled under Settings > Personalization > Taskbar; Microsoft says it may eventually replace the existing Windows Search UI. The update also rolls out a full-screen Xbox handheld experience, a Bluetooth LE-based "Shared audio" preview to stream audio to two devices, and improved x64 emulation support to boost ARM PC performance.

Amazon Route 53 Resolver Adds AWS PrivateLink Support

🔒 Amazon Route 53 Resolver now supports AWS PrivateLink, allowing customers to access and manage Resolver and its associated features privately over the Amazon network rather than the public internet. This private access covers Resolver endpoints, Route 53 Resolver DNS Firewall, Resolver Query Logging, and Resolver for AWS Outposts, with create, delete, edit and list operations handled via PrivateLink. Route 53 Resolver continues to respond recursively for public records, VPC-specific DNS names, and private hosted zones and remains available by default in all VPCs. The capability can be used in regions where Resolver and its features are offered, including AWS GovCloud (US) Regions.

Windows 11 Trials Shared Bluetooth Audio on AI PCs

🔊 Microsoft is testing a new Shared audio feature in Windows 11 that uses Bluetooth LE Audio broadcast technology to stream audio to two Bluetooth devices simultaneously on eligible Copilot+ PCs. The option appears as Shared audio (preview) in Quick Settings in Windows 11 Build 26220.7051 (KB5067115). Initially it is limited to select Surface models with Qualcomm Snapdragon X and a few upcoming Samsung and Surface AI PCs, and requires compatible accessories such as Galaxy Buds2 Pro.

Amazon GameLift Streams Adds AWS Health Lifecycle Alerts

🔔 Amazon GameLift Streams is integrated with AWS Health to send automated lifecycle notifications about aging stream groups. Accounts receive reminders on days 45 and 150 warning that adding new applications will be restricted after day 180, with a final re-creation reminder on day 335 before expiration at day 365. The feature is available in all AWS Regions at no additional cost, and expiration details are visible in the console or via the GetStreamGroup ExpiresAt field.