All news in category "Vendor and Hyperscaler Watch"

BigQuery AI Functions: Reimagining SQL for the AI Era

🤖 BigQuery is introducing managed AI functions in public preview — AI.IF, AI.CLASSIFY, and AI.SCORE — that let analysts apply generative AI directly inside SQL queries. These functions enable semantic filtering and joins, label-based classification of text and images, and natural-language ranking, while BigQuery applies prompt, query-plan, and endpoint optimizations to reduce LLM calls and control cost. They complement existing Gemini inference functions and remove much of the need for complex prompt tuning or separate model selection, making AI-driven analytics more accessible within familiar SQL workflows.

Emerging Threats Center in Google Security Operations

🛡️ The Emerging Threats Center in Google Security Operations uses the Gemini detection‑engineering agent to turn frontline intelligence from Mandiant, VirusTotal, and Google into actionable detections. It generates high‑fidelity synthetic events, evaluates existing rule coverage, and drafts candidate detection rules for analyst review. The capability surfaces campaign‑based IOC and detection matches across 12 months of telemetry to help teams rapidly determine exposure and validate their defensive posture.

Fortinet Earns Gartner Customers’ Choice for SSE — 3rd Year

🏆 Fortinet has been named a Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice for Security Service Edge (SSE) for the third consecutive year and is the only cybersecurity vendor to receive this recognition in the SSE market. Based on 195 verified end-user reviews as of August 2025, Fortinet achieved a 4.9/5 overall rating, 90% five-star reviews and 100% willingness to recommend. FortiSASE is highlighted for delivering unified, AI-powered cloud security backed by 170+ POPs, a single unified agent and deployment flexibility that aims to reduce operational overhead. Fortinet frames the recognition as validation of customer trust and its focus on simplifying secure hybrid work.

Amazon Connect Cases Adds Conditional Field Visibility

🔧 Amazon Connect Cases now supports conditional field visibility and dependent field options to streamline case layouts and reduce data-entry errors. Administrators can show fields only when relevant (for example, display a Return Reason field for return cases) and restrict choice lists based on other selections (e.g., limit Issue Type to hardware options when Issue Category is Hardware). The feature is available in multiple AWS regions.

Amazon CloudWatch Adds Network Load Balancer Access Logs

🔍 Amazon CloudWatch Logs now ingests Network Load Balancer (NLB) access logs as vended logs, enabling direct analysis within CloudWatch. You can run CloudWatch Logs Insights queries, create metric filters, and use Live Tail for real‑time traffic review to accelerate troubleshooting. NLB access logs are configurable from the NLB integrations tab, AWS CLI, or SDKs, and can also be delivered to Amazon Data Firehose or S3 with optional Apache Parquet conversion. Delivery to CloudWatch and Firehose is billed as vended logs; S3 delivery is free while Parquet conversion carries a per‑GB charge.

AWS Security Incident Response: Communication Preferences

🔔 AWS announced customizable communication preferences for Security Incident Response, letting teams select notification types such as case changes, membership updates, and organizational announcements. The update replaces a one-size-fits-all model so individuals receive only relevant updates and reduces notification noise. Settings include smart defaults and can be adjusted as roles evolve. The feature is available to all Security Incident Response customers at no additional cost via the console.

Amazon DCV Adds Support for EC2 Mac Apple silicon instances

🖥️ AWS announced Amazon DCV support for EC2 Mac instances powered by Apple silicon, enabling high-performance remote desktop access to macOS workloads in the cloud. Users can connect from Windows, Linux, macOS, or web clients and benefit from 4K resolution, multi-monitor support, and smooth 60 FPS streaming. Productivity features include time zone redirection and audio output, and the offering is available in all Regions that provide EC2 Mac instances.

AWS Site-to-Site VPN supports 5 Gbps bandwidth per tunnel

🔒 AWS Site-to-Site VPN now supports configurable tunnel bandwidth up to 5 Gbps, a 4x increase over the previous 1.25 Gbps limit. The update reduces the need to deploy complex protocols such as ECMP to aggregate tunnels, simplifying high-throughput hybrid connectivity for migrations, analytics, and disaster recovery. The capability is available in most commercial and GovCloud (US) Regions with a few regional exceptions.

Amazon S3 Tables Gain Amazon CloudWatch Metrics Now

📊 Amazon CloudWatch metrics are now available for S3 Tables, providing visibility into storage, maintenance, and request activity. Metrics include daily storage and object counts, compaction bytes/objects processed, and minute‑level request measurements for operations, data transfer, errors, and latency. You can access these metrics via the CloudWatch console, AWS CLI, or CloudWatch API at the bucket, namespace, and individual table level; they are available in all Regions where S3 Tables is offered.

Architecture of Remote Bindings for Local Worker Development

🚀 Cloudflare has made remote bindings generally available, letting local Workers connect to live resources such as R2 buckets, D1 and KV namespaces without deploying. Developers can enable a binding with "remote: true" in Wrangler v4.37.0 and use existing Wrangler OAuth credentials to access production data. The local workerd runtime proxies JS API calls to remote service bindings (including JSRPC via Cap’n Web websockets), and tooling like the Vite plugin and vitest-pool-workers can use utilities such as startRemoteProxySession to join remote sessions.

Google Announces Private AI Compute for Cloud Privacy

🔒 Google on Tuesday introduced Private AI Compute, a cloud privacy capability that aims to deliver on-device-level assurances while harnessing the scale of Gemini models. The service uses Trillium TPUs and Titanium Intelligence Enclaves (TIE) and relies on an AMD-based Trusted Execution Environment to encrypt and isolate memory on trusted nodes. Workloads are mutually attested, cryptographically validated, and ephemeral so inputs and inferences are discarded after each session, with Google stating data remains private to the user — 'not even Google.' An external assessment by NCC Group flagged a low-risk timing side channel in the IP-blinding relay and three attestation implementation issues that Google is mitigating.

AWS Adds CUR 2.0 Detail for EC2 Capacity Reservations

🔍 AWS has extended the Cost and Usage Report (CUR 2.0) to surface hourly, resource-level billing information for capacity reservations including EC2 On-Demand Capacity Reservation (ODCR) and EC2 Capacity Blocks for ML. CUR 2.0 now tags capacity-related line items as Reserved, Used, or Unused, enabling precise coverage and utilization calculations. The enhancement helps identify idle reservations and attribute reservation costs to resource owners for cost optimization.

Amazon Managed Prometheus Collector Adds MSK Support

📈 The Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus collector now supports discovery and scraping of Prometheus metrics from Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (MSK) clusters without deploying agents. The agentless collector can target metrics exposed via the JMX exporter and the Node exporter, covering host-level, JVM-level, and broker-specific telemetry. This simplifies open monitoring for MSK, improves availability and scalability, and is available in all commercial regions where the service is offered.

Amazon EC2 F2 FPGA Instances Expand to Four Regions

🚀 Starting today, Amazon EC2 F2 instances — the second-generation FPGA-powered instances featuring an FPGA with 16 GB of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) — are available in four additional regions: Europe (Frankfurt), Asia Pacific (Tokyo and Seoul), and Canada (Central). F2 delivers substantial hardware upgrades over F1, including up to 192 vCPUs, 2 TB system memory, 7.6 TiB SSD, and 100 Gbps networking. These instances target genomics, multimedia processing, big data, and network acceleration workloads and can be purchased On-Demand or via Savings Plans.

AWS Builder Center launches Spaces for builder collaboration

💬 The AWS Builder Center introduces Spaces, a community collaboration feature that lets builders create and join topic-focused groups to share knowledge and collaborate on AWS solutions. Spaces supports three visibility modes — Public, Private, and Invite-Only — with membership controls, approval workflows, and invite capabilities. Members can post text and images, comment, react, and search discussions, while owners and admins self-moderate content. The feature includes moderation tools and multi-language support across 16 languages to keep conversations focused and accessible.

Windows 11 23H2 Home and Pro Reach End of Support Now

⚠️ Microsoft confirmed that Windows 11, version 23H2 Home and Pro editions reached end of servicing on November 11, 2025; the November 2025 monthly security update is the last patch for those SKUs. Devices running those editions will no longer receive monthly security or preview updates protecting against the latest threats. Users are advised to upgrade to Windows 11, version 25H2, available to eligible devices via Settings > Windows Update.

AWS PCS Adds Slurm CLI Filter Plugin Support for HPC

🛠️ AWS Parallel Computing Service (PCS) now supports Slurm CLI Filter plugins, letting administrators extend and modify how Slurm evaluates and schedules HPC jobs without changing Slurm source code. With CLI Filter plugins, you can enforce custom submission policies — validate required flags, reject submissions missing attributes, or adjust job parameters at submission. This capability is available in all Regions where PCS is offered.

Lightricks Scales Video Diffusion Training with JAX

🚀 Lightricks rewrote its training stack in JAX to scale high-performance video diffusion models on TPUs after hitting limits with PyTorch/XLA. The migration enabled reliable sharding, fixed FlashAttention and data-loading issues, and delivered linear scaling across small and large TPU pods. These improvements translated to ~40% more training steps per day, faster iteration, and doubled team productivity. Their stack leverages Flax, Optax, Orbax, and the MaxText blueprint for robust, testable, and efficient large-scale training.

How BigQuery Brought Vector Search to Analytics at Scale

🔍 In early 2024 Google introduced native vector search in BigQuery, embedding semantic search directly into the data warehouse to remove the need for separate vector databases. Users can create indexes with a simple CREATE VECTOR INDEX statement and run semantic queries via the VECTOR_SEARCH function or through Python integrations like LangChain. BigQuery provides serverless scaling, asynchronous index refreshes, model rebuilds with no downtime, partitioned indexes, and ScaNN-based TreeAH for improved price/performance, while retaining row- and column-level security and a pay-as-you-go pricing model.

Fortinet Wins Red Dot Award for FortiGate Rugged Series

🏆Fortinet’s FortiGate Rugged series (FGR-50G-5G and FGR-70G-5G) earned the Red Dot Product Design Award for its fanless industrial design, integrated 5G, and purpose-built ASIC performance. Engineered for OT and critical infrastructure, the appliances combine thermal resilience, shock and moisture protection, and low-latency security functions including next-generation firewalling, SD-WAN, VPN, and AI-driven threat detection. The recognition underscores Fortinet’s focus on precision engineering and durable, field-ready security.