All news in category “Vendor and Hyperscaler Watch”

🚀 Amazon Redshift RG instances, powered by AWS Graviton processors, are now available in AWS GovCloud (US-West) and (US-East). RG instances deliver up to 2.4x better performance than prior RA3 instances and offer ~30% lower price per vCPU while running Redshift’s vectorized data lake query engine for Apache Iceberg and Parquet. Available sizes are rg.xlarge and rg.4xlarge, and RA3 clusters can upgrade via Snapshot & Restore, Elastic Resize, or Classic Resize. Flexible pricing includes On-Demand and 1-/3-year Reserved Instances with multiple payment options.

🧭 This Google Cloud blog summarizes findings from a survey of over 1,400 IT leaders showing a widening gap between AI ambitions and existing infrastructure. It explains why agentic AI stresses legacy systems and highlights needs for fluid compute, unified data layers, hybrid deployments, and energy-efficient co-designed silicon like TPU 8t. The post also promotes Google Cloud’s AI Hypercomputer and governance solutions such as Agent Gateway.

🧭 This guide explains how to build, register, and commercialize AI agents as Agents-as-a-Service (AaaS) for deployment in the Gemini Enterprise app and Google Cloud Marketplace. It details required artifacts like the A2A Agent Card, authentication options including OAuth and Dynamic Client Registration (DCR), and the integration points for procurement, billing, and entitlement management. The article also outlines the seller journey, testing, and the end-to-end procurement and registration lifecycle across Billing Administrator, Discovery Engine Administrator, and end-user roles.

🔐 Azure announces public preview of external key management for Managed HSM, enabling customers to keep key material on HSMs they own and operate outside Microsoft infrastructure. The feature connects Azure cryptographic operations to external HSMs via a dedicated API endpoint while keeping keys from ever residing in Azure. It targets scenarios with strict regulatory or contractual data-sovereignty requirements and shifts more operational responsibility to customers.

🛡️ Cloud Router's BGP route policies give administrators programmatic control to filter, modify, and propagate routes using CEL expressions. Customers now use these policies to enforce strict route filtering, implement traffic steering via MED and AS-PATH prepending, and achieve stateful traffic symmetry through BGP community tagging. Policy named sets simplify managing large lists of prefixes and communities across multiple routers.

🚀 Amazon RDS for Oracle now supports Oracle Database 26ai, Oracle's Long Term Support release, with integration to Amazon Bedrock providing access to foundation models such as Anthropic Claude, Amazon Nova, and Meta Llama. Oracle Database 26ai enables Select AI for generating and running SQL from natural language prompts and supports in-database RAG via Oracle AI Vector Search, avoiding the need for a separate vector store. The release also offers JSON Relational Duality Views and SQL Property Graphs and is available in Enterprise Edition across commercial and GovCloud regions.

🚀 Amazon S3 Express One Zone is now available in the AWS Europe (Frankfurt) Region. The storage class provides high-performance, single-Availability Zone storage designed for consistent single-digit millisecond access for frequently accessed and latency-sensitive workloads. S3 Express One Zone offers up to 10x faster access and request costs up to 80% lower than S3 Standard, supporting use cases like machine learning training, interactive analytics, and key-value caching in AI search engines.

🔐 Cloudflare announced it has joined the UK government's Cyber Resilience Pledge as a founding signatory, aligning with the pledge’s pillars of democratized security, leadership accountability, and radical transparency. The post highlights rising cyber threats — including massive DDoS volumes and AI-driven attack vectors — and describes how Cloudflare's global network, zero trust controls, and free protections support resilience across the UK economy. Cloudflare emphasizes supply-chain assurance, board-level governance, and international certifications to meet the pledge's aims.

🔔 Amazon EKS Auto Mode now reduces management fees for GPU and accelerated instance types, effective July 1, 2026. G-series Auto Mode fees drop 35%, while P-series and AWS Trainium fees drop 60%, applied automatically to existing clusters. EKS Auto Mode includes accelerator-focused features like parallel image pulling and accelerator-aware node repair to speed startup and improve reliability for ML and rendering workloads. The pricing change applies in all Regions where EKS Auto Mode is available and mirrors identical reductions for ECS Managed Instances.

🛡️ Microsoft will enable the Windows settings backup and restore tool by default on Microsoft Entra-joined and Entra hybrid-joined enterprise devices when they upgrade to Windows 11 version 26H2. The feature, introduced as opt-in at Ignite 2024 and GA in August 2025, previously required admins to turn it on after installing the September 2025 cumulative update. Default-on applies only to eligible devices outside DMA-regulated regions and not in sovereign cloud environments, and explicit admin policies via Intune or Group Policy still take precedence. Restore remains disabled by default and requires explicit admin configuration.

🛡️ The role of the CISO is evolving from a technical operator into a broad, enterprise-level executive responsible for cyber resilience, regulatory compliance, AI governance and business risk. As cyber risk becomes business risk, organizations are expanding security leadership—adding deputy CISOs and specialized teams—while keeping centralized accountability. The author argues the CISO should report independently (e.g., to the CEO, COO or CRO) and that AI increases the need for clear human accountability.

🛠️ AWS Systems Manager now connects to Azure Virtual Machines without manual agent installs or per-node advanced tier fees. Create a Cloud Connector to deploy the SSM Agent at scale so Azure VMs appear alongside EC2 in a unified console. Manage them with Session Manager, Automation, Run Command, State Manager, Patch Manager, and Inventory from a single workflow. Advanced Instances Tier is removed; pay-as-you-go for non-EC2 session and command usage begins Sept 30, 2026.

🛠️ Microsoft is testing the new Cloud Rebuild recovery option in Windows 11 Insider Experimental Preview Build 26300.8772, enabling a full OS reinstall from the cloud when devices become inoperable. The feature downloads the target Windows image and device drivers from Windows Update, restoring functionality without USB media or a custom image. Insiders can initiate the process from WinRE under Troubleshoot > Recovery and must confirm a data-loss warning before the rebuild proceeds.

🔍 Insignary Clarity delivers binary-first analysis that inspects what is actually built, shipped, and deployed to produce accurate SBOMs and identify open-source components that never appear in manifests. The platform generates AIBOMs, performs reachability analysis to prioritize exploitable vulnerabilities, and provides continuous alerts by monitoring stored SBOMs against updated CVE sources. Insignary is cited across multiple Gartner reports and positioned to help organizations meet evolving global regulatory requirements for binary-verified SBOMs.

🚀 Amazon SageMaker Unified Studio can now connect to existing Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow (MWAA) environments, enabling teams to manage Airflow workflows from within their Studio projects. To add a connection, open the Workflows tool, choose "Add connection," and supply the Airflow configuration referencing your domain and project. Once connected, project members can sync, trigger, and monitor workflows; environments running Apache Airflow 3+ also gain the visual drag-and-drop authoring experience.

🔍 Today, AWS Security Hub introduces impact analysis for exposure findings, enabling security teams to see the downstream resources an attacker could reach if an exposure is exploited. The feature maps privilege escalation paths by analyzing effective IAM permissions and displays potential attack paths in a graph. A new Impact Assessment tab prioritizes chains of compromise and shows the permissions at each step, while severity scores are adjusted to reflect downstream reach.

🚀 Amazon SageMaker HyperPod now supports Disaggregated Prefill and Decode (DPD), which splits LLM inference into separate prefill and decode GPU pools and transfers KV cache over EFA using GPU-Direct RDMA. This reduces contention between long-context prefill and per-token decode, enabling more consistent per-token latency, higher goodput under strict latency SLOs, and independent scaling of prefill and decode. DPD is enabled via a pdSpec in the existing InferenceEndpointConfig and works with HyperPod's KV cache offloading and intelligent routing on EFA-capable instances.

🔧 Amazon Cognito now lets customers increase or decrease provisioned API rate limits on demand. Previously adjustments required Service Quotas requests and manual review; the new self-service model enables immediate changes via the Amazon Cognito console or new limit provisioning API operations. Rate limit changes take effect instantly and are available for adjustable API categories in all Regions where Cognito is offered. Pricing and setup guidance are provided in the Cognito pricing page and developer guide.

🔧 Amazon SageMaker Studio now offers direct, one‑click integration with Hugging Face so users can open a fully configured Studio environment with a selected model preloaded. Previously, users had to navigate console menus, configure IAM and serverless settings, and request GPU quotas; the new flow automates environment creation and permission configuration. New customers receive a Studio environment on sign‑up; verified customers gain default GPU access and visible quota information within Studio.

🔐 You can now use declarative policies to enable VPC Encryption Controls in monitor or enforce mode across all VPCs in your environment. This capability lets security teams centrally define and apply consistent encryption-in-transit settings for an account, organization, or specific organizational unit. The feature provides centralized visibility into Encryption Controls status for all accounts and VPCs and is available in all AWS regions that support VPC Encryption Controls. There is no additional charge to use declarative policies in AWS Organizations.