All news in category "Vendor and Hyperscaler Watch"

Amazon EC2 R8gd Instances Expand to Additional Regions

🚀 Amazon EC2 R8gd instances are now available in Europe (Ireland), Asia Pacific (Sydney, Malaysia), South America (São Paulo), and Canada (Central). Powered by AWS Graviton4, they deliver up to 30% better compute performance than Graviton3-based instances and include up to 11.4 TB of local NVMe SSD for low-latency storage. Instances offer up to 50 Gbps networking, EFA on larger sizes, and adjustable network/EBS bandwidth weighting to better optimize workloads.

Amazon EC2 M8gd Instances Expand to Additional Regions

🚀 Amazon EC2 M8gd instances with up to 11.4 TB of local NVMe SSD storage are now available in Europe (London), Asia Pacific (Sydney, Malaysia), and Canada (Central). Powered by AWS Graviton4, they deliver up to 30% better compute performance than Graviton3-based instances, up to 40% higher I/O performance for databases, and up to 20% faster real-time analytics queries. Instances come in 12 sizes, offer up to 50 Gbps networking and 40 Gbps EBS bandwidth, support EFA on large sizes, and allow ±25% adjustment of network and EBS bandwidth via EC2 instance bandwidth weighting.

Amazon Q Developer Gains Service Pricing and Estimates

🔍 Amazon Q Developer now offers integrated pricing and cost estimation, enabling developers and architects to query product attributes, regional availability, and service pricing in natural language. The assistant retrieves data from the AWS Price List APIs to provide workload cost estimates and side-by-side comparisons, so teams can evaluate cost/performance tradeoffs without manually consulting multiple pricing pages. Access the feature via the Amazon Q chat panel in the AWS Management Console.

AI-Powered Cloud Alert Investigation with FortiCNAPP

🔎 FortiCNAPP consolidates related cloud signals into composite alerts, reducing noise and prioritizing high-confidence incidents so SOC teams can focus on what matters. Its Observation Timeline sequences logins, API calls, commands, and network traffic into a single, evidence-backed storyline. An AI Alert Assistant supports natural-language queries and returns structured answers, visual relationships, and prioritized remediation steps to accelerate containment and help junior analysts act confidently.

Check Point and HackShield Empower Young Cyber Agents

🛡️ Check Point has partnered with HackShield, an award-winning cyber education platform, to deliver gamified cybersecurity learning to children aged 8–12. The collaboration will expand access to age-appropriate resources and help cultivate resilient Cyber Agents in schools, families, and communities. The initiative aligns with Check Point’s mission to build lasting cybersecurity foundations and promote safe online habits among the next generation.

Salesforce launches AI security and compliance agents

🔒 Salesforce introduced two AI agents on its Agentforce platform that monitor security activity and streamline compliance workflows for the Security Center and Privacy Center. The security agent analyzes event logs to detect anomalous behavior, accelerates investigations by assembling context and remediation plans, and can autonomously freeze or isolate suspicious accounts when authorized. The privacy agent maps metadata and policies against frameworks like GDPR and CCPA, surfaces exposures, and can reclassify or apply erasure policies to reduce compliance risk.

Amazon EC2 C7gd Instances Now in Europe (Zurich) Region

🚀 Amazon EC2 C7gd instances are now available in the Europe (Zurich) Region, offering up to 3.8 TB of local NVMe SSD block storage and DDR5 memory on the AWS Nitro System. These Graviton3-based instances deliver up to 45% improved real-time NVMe storage performance versus comparable Graviton2 instances and use up to 60% less energy for equivalent performance. They suit workloads needing high-speed, low-latency temporary storage such as scratch space, caches, and temp files, and AWS provides migration tools like the Graviton Fast Start program and Porting Advisor.

Amazon EC2 C8gd Instances: Up to 11.4 TB NVMe in Regions

⚡ Amazon EC2 C8gd instances with up to 11.4 TB of local NVMe SSD are now available in Europe (Ireland) and Asia Pacific (Sydney, Malaysia). Powered by AWS Graviton4 processors, they deliver up to 30% better performance than Graviton3 and accelerate I/O-intensive database and real-time analytics workloads. Built on the AWS Nitro System, C8gd offers 12 sizes, up to 50 Gbps network and up to 40 Gbps EBS bandwidth, with configurable bandwidth weighting (+25%) and EFA on select large sizes.

Amazon Location Service Updates Vietnam Boundaries

🗺️ Amazon Location Service updated Vietnam mapping data to reflect the nationwide administrative reorganization that took effect on July 1, 2025. The refresh consolidates provincial-level units from 63 to 34 (28 provinces and 6 centrally managed cities) and reduces commune-level units from 10,310 to 3,321 while preserving street-level address accuracy. Place names and administrative components in POI records were updated, and the revised data is automatically available to customers querying Vietnam addresses. The update supports logistics, e-commerce, and public-service use cases such as delivery zone planning, service-area management, and address validation.

Docker offers Hardened Images for SMBs and startups

🔒 Docker has opened unlimited, subscription-based access to its Hardened Images catalog starting today, offering a 30-day free trial to make near-zero CVE container images affordable for startups and SMBs. These images are built from source, signed, rootless by default, include SBOM and VEX data, and are covered by a seven-day patch SLA for newly discovered CVEs. Docker says removing nonessential components can reduce attack surface by up to 95%, and hardened variants are compatible with Alpine and Debian and can be adopted by changing a single Dockerfile line.

Startup Technical Guide: Building Production AI Agents

🤖 Google Cloud published the Startup technical guide: AI agents, a practical, operations-driven roadmap to design, build, and operate agentic systems for startups. The guide outlines three paths — build with the open-source Agent Development Kit (ADK), design no-code agents in Agentspace, or adopt managed and partner agents via Vertex AI and the Agent Garden marketplace. It details four development steps (identity, prime directive, tools, lifecycle), highlights operational rigor (AgentOps), and promotes interoperability through standards such as MCP and A2A, all aimed at safe production deployment.

Amazon RDS for Db2 Adds Native Database-Level Backups

💾 Amazon RDS for Db2 now supports native database-level backups that let customers back up individual databases within a multi-database instance. This enables selective migration of specific databases to other RDS instances or on-premises environments, and lets teams create isolated copies for development, testing, or compliance. By targeting single databases rather than full instance snapshots, customers can reduce storage costs and streamline operations. The feature is available in all Regions where Amazon RDS for Db2 is offered; see the service documentation and pricing pages for configuration and cost details.

Amazon DocumentDB Expands to New Asia Pacific and Mexico

🚀 Amazon DocumentDB (with MongoDB compatibility) is now available in AWS Asia Pacific (Osaka), Asia Pacific (Thailand), Asia Pacific (Malaysia) and Mexico (Central). The fully managed, native JSON document database supports mission‑critical MongoDB workloads and can scale to millions of requests per second with up to 15 low‑latency read replicas and automatic storage up to 128 TiB. With Serverless, capacity scales automatically in fine increments and AWS cites up to 90% cost savings versus peak provisioning. Amazon DocumentDB also integrates with AWS DMS, CloudWatch, CloudTrail, Lambda and AWS Backup, and clusters can be created via the Console, CLI or SDK.

VPC Lattice Enables Configurable IPs for Resource Gateways

🔧 Amazon Web Services announced that Amazon VPC Lattice now lets you configure the number of IPv4 addresses assigned to resource gateway ENIs. The selected IPv4 count is immutable after creation and directly affects network address translation capacity and the maximum concurrent IPv4 connections to backend resources. By default VPC Lattice assigns 16 IPv4 addresses per ENI; for IPv6 it always assigns a /80 CIDR per ENI. This capability is available at no additional cost in all Regions where VPC Lattice is offered.

AWS Releases Whitepaper: Security Overview of EKS Auto Mode

🛡️ AWS has published a new whitepaper titled Security Overview of Amazon EKS Auto Mode that explains the service’s architecture, core security principles, and built-in protections. The guidance highlights a new approach to node management that leverages Amazon EC2 managed instances to let customers delegate operational control to AWS. Intended for cloud architects, security professionals, and Kubernetes practitioners, the document helps teams understand how EKS Auto Mode reduces infrastructure complexity while maintaining secure operations.

Microsoft SFI Patterns and Practices: New Security Guides

🔐 Microsoft published a second installment of the Secure Future Initiative (SFI) patterns and practices, delivering six practical, practitioner-built guides that address network isolation, tenant hardening, Entra ID app security, Zero Trust for source code access, software supply chain protection, and centralized log collection. Each article outlines the problem, Microsoft’s internal solution, actionable customer guidance, and trade-offs to help teams apply scalable controls across complex, multi-cloud environments.

Google Cloud KMS Adds Quantum-Safe Key Encapsulation

🔐 Google Cloud Key Management Service (Cloud KMS) now offers preview support for post-quantum Key Encapsulation Mechanisms (KEMs), enabling customers to begin migrating to quantum-resistant key exchange. Cloud KMS supports ML-KEM-768, ML-KEM-1024, and the hybrid X-Wing (X25519+ML-KEM-768) option. The preview aims to mitigate "Harvest Now, Decrypt Later" risks and provide HPKE-compatible integrations via Tink and BoringCrypto. Developers are advised to adopt hybrid deployments and plan for larger key and ciphertext sizes that affect bandwidth and storage.

Microsoft Blocks More Ways to Bypass Windows 11 MSA

🔒 Microsoft is removing further methods that allow creating local accounts and bypassing the Microsoft account requirement during Windows 11 setup. The change appears in Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.6772 (KB5065797) on the Dev Channel and is expected to reach production releases. Microsoft said it will remove known mechanisms in the OOBE experience because they can skip critical setup screens and leave a device not fully configured. Going forward, OOBE will require internet access and a Microsoft account to complete setup.

AWS Marketplace Adds Japan Consumption Tax Support for CPPOs

🧾 Starting today, AWS Marketplace expands Japan consumption tax (JCT) support to Channel Partner Private Offers (CPPOs), improving tax handling for Japan ISVs and Channel Partners. AWS Japan will collect the 10% JCT on the first leg between ISVs and Channel Partners, issue a tax qualified invoice (TQI) to Channel Partners, and disburse the JCT to ISVs. AWS Japan will continue to collect the 10% JCT and issue a TQI on the second leg to buyers, unifying compliance for transactions via the AWS Japan Marketplace Operator.

AWS Marketplace Adds EUR, GBP, AUD, JPY for Private Offers

🌍 AWS Marketplace now supports usage-based private offers priced in four additional local currencies—EUR, GBP, AUD, and JPY. Sellers and Channel Partners can create private offers and receive disbursements in the offer currency for consumption-based and contract pricing, simplifying cash flow and reducing foreign-exchange exposure. For Channel Partner Private Offers, the seller, partner, and buyer must transact in the same currency; public offers remain in USD only.