All news in category “Vendor and Hyperscaler Watch”

🔍 Google Cloud outlines an AI-accelerated, iterative approach to mainframe modernization that avoids risky "big bang" migrations. The strategy combines Gemini-based code reasoning with mainframe-specific tools across four pillars: assessment, modernization, de-risking, and data migration. Key capabilities include the Mainframe Assessment Tool for dependency mapping and business rule extraction, agentic modernization workflows for rewrite or deterministic modernization, Dual Run for live validation, and a Mainframe Connector for data migration.

🔍 Google Cloud announces general availability of Cortex Framework v7, designed to convert SAP transactional data into AI-ready, semantically rich data products deployed in BigQuery and registered in Knowledge Catalog. The release introduces purpose-built accelerators for SAP ERP and SAP Business Data Cloud, modular Dataform-powered deployments, and incremental, cost‑efficient processing to scale without extra infrastructure. New agent skills include an agentic data product builder to automate custom data product creation and preserve separation between vendor-delivered content and customer customizations.

🧭 Data Commons on Spanner Graph general availability and a preview of the Data Commons Platform simplify linking private enterprise data with Google's extensive public knowledge graphs. The platform consolidates standardized public datasets from over 100 providers into a unified graph with >400 billion observations and leverages Spanner Graph for native GQL support, incremental updates, and consistent snapshots. Organizations can deploy private instances to federate private and public knowledge graphs while retaining data isolation and enabling natural language query workflows.

🔍 Security teams need intelligence that identifies what matters, when it matters, and what to do next. Unit 42 Threat Intelligence integrates proprietary research into the Cortex platform and offers analyst-driven services to deliver contextual, actionable insights. By correlating global visibility with each customer’s environment, it converts signals into prioritized detections, hunts and response actions. This approach addresses accelerated adversary behavior amplified by AI and shortens defenders’ reaction window.

🛠️ AWS announced general availability of offline source transformation in AWS Transform for full-stack Windows modernization, allowing customers to convert Microsoft SQL Server schemas and stored procedures to Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL without a live database connection. The service accepts uploaded SQL Server DDL files, assesses complexity, generates transformation plans, converts storage and code objects, and deploys converted schemas. It also offers workflows to update .NET applications for PostgreSQL compatibility, validate equivalence, iterate in the console or an IDE via the MCP server, and populate test data for end-to-end validation. This capability is available in US East (N. Virginia).

🛡️ AWS WAF now supports two new partner-managed rule groups from Miggo Security available via AWS Marketplace: Miggo Rules for AWS WAF – High Emerging Application Threats and Miggo Rules for AWS WAF – AI/ML Application Protection. These rule groups provide continuously updated protection against actively exploited vulnerabilities, public proof-of-concept exploits, and items listed in the CISA KEV catalog without custom rule maintenance. Subscriptions can be added directly to a web ACL in the AWS WAF console with no extra configuration; Miggo manages versioning and pricing in AWS Marketplace.

🛡️ The Cybercrime Bounty program from Crime Stoppers International and Fortinet has launched its first live bounty, Operation Silent Vector I, to identify individuals behind the INC ransomware group. The program combines anonymous reporting, threat validation by FortiGuard Labs, and established escalation to law enforcement, with potential financial rewards for actionable tips.

🆕 Amazon Elastic Container Registry (Amazon ECR) now supports image layers up to 200 GB for images pushed via Docker push. This removes the need to split large assets across multiple layers or rely on external storage for many workloads, simplifying packaging for use cases such as embedding large language models, genomics datasets, or bulky binary dependencies. Note that uploads via the AWS SDK or CLI (UploadLayerPartAPI) remain capped at 50 GB, and the feature is available in most AWS Regions except Bahrain and UAE.

🔔 AWS Config now supports 15 additional AWS resource types across services such as Amazon Bedrock, Amazon OpenSearch Serverless, and Amazon SageMaker. If recording for all resource types is enabled, AWS Config will automatically track these new additions. The new types are also available for use with Config rules and Config aggregators, improving discovery, assessment, audit, and remediation coverage across Regions where the resources exist.

🔍 Frost & Sullivan evaluated 30+ vendors and benchmarked 15 that meet strict ERMM platform criteria; only five achieved Visionary Leader status, including Check Point Exposure Management. The report required native integration of attack surface management, threat intelligence, and digital risk protection, plus both outside-in and inside-out visibility. Frost credits Check Point’s correlated intelligence, telemetry, and targeted acquisitions for strong innovation and growth scores.

🔒 Zero Networks has introduced Least Agency Enforcement, a network-layer capability to implement OWASP’s emerging Least Agency principle for enterprise AI. Built on the company’s identity-based micro-segmentation platform, it restricts which systems AI agents can contact, what resources they can access, and when human approval is required. The feature uses automated policy generation and just-in-time MFA to block lateral movement and sensitive actions even after an agent authenticates.

🧾 Cloudflare announced a new Billable Usage API for self-serve accounts that returns usage and cost by product and charge period in a machine-consumable format. The single endpoint covers usage-based products like Workers, R2, D1, Workers AI, Vectorize, Images, and Stream, with daily updates today and more real-time data planned. The response aligns with the FinOps Open Cost and Usage Specification (FOCUS) naming and integrates natively with Vantage for cost reporting, budgets, and alerts.

🧩 Cloudflare has extended Workers RPC to enable direct cross-language calls between JavaScript and Python Workers. Using Pyodide’s FFI and a custom type-conversion layer, objects, functions, keyword arguments and callbacks translate seamlessly across the boundary. The workers-runtime-sdk provides native Python wrappers for Web API objects, and no extra dependencies are required to call Python from JS or vice versa. Examples include calling Python packages like Pygments from JavaScript using simple Service bindings.

🔧 Cloudflare describes techniques to serve demanding long-context models like Moonshot's Kimi and Z.ai's GLM efficiently by reducing memory use and protecting shared caches. They run experiments with SGLang and separate prefill and decode phases. Key optimizations are FP8 KV-cache quantization, INT4 weight compression for decode, and KV cache integrity checks to prevent cross-request corruption, all while preserving model accuracy.

🛠️ Cloudflare announces private beta support for inbound TCP connections and expanded gRPC capabilities on Workers. The update adds a connect() handler to accept raw sockets, routing via Durable Objects and Containers, and a Spectrum integration to expose TCP applications. Developers can deploy bidirectional gRPC servers in any language, use gRPC-web translation for Workers, and leverage Cloudflare’s global network for low-latency, real-time voice and AI applications.

🛡️ Google is developing a Chrome security feature to block policy-installed extensions from hijacking the New Tab page or changing the default search engine on unmanaged consumer devices. The change, spotted in Chromium Gerrit, would enable a feature flag by default to prevent extensions forced by local policies from overriding the New Tab or search settings. Chrome would cancel such installations, record the extension ID as blocked, and avoid repeated download attempts, while allowing administrators an escape hatch policy when needed.

🔗 Amazon SageMaker Unified Studio now supports Teradata Vantage as a data source, enabling users to query and analyze enterprise data warehouse assets alongside other data in a single governed environment. This integration lets you combine Teradata data with sources such as Amazon Redshift, Amazon S3, and relational databases to correlate analytical and operational workloads. Data engineers and analysts can query Teradata data in the data explorer, use the query editor and notebooks, or include it in visual ETL jobs without leaving the studio.

🔒 This new guidance helps covered entities and business associates implement and evidence compliance with the HIPAA Security Rule Technical Safeguards (45 CFR §164.312) when building healthcare workloads on AWS. It explains the five standards and nine implementation specifications for access control, audit controls, integrity, authentication, and transmission security. The document also addresses proposed 2025 NPRM changes—such as mandatory encryption, MFA, and new network and configuration controls—and recommends treating all specifications as required for new workloads.

🚀 Starting today, Amazon Aurora DSQL supports multi-Region clusters in four additional AWS Regions: Europe (Stockholm), Europe (Spain), Asia Pacific (Mumbai), and Asia Pacific (Singapore). Aurora DSQL is a serverless, distributed SQL database offering active-active high availability and multi-Region strong consistency. Each multi-Region cluster exposes writable endpoints in both peered Regions and provides a single logical database that stays available if one Region becomes unavailable.

🔔 Google Cloud summarizes recent AI infrastructure launches, enhancements, and resources across compute, storage, networking, orchestration, and developer tooling. Highlights include GA releases for Managed Lustre and C4N VMs, scaling improvements for GKE Dataplane V2, new cooperative time-slicing for llm-d, and open-sourced AI supply-chain tooling in k8s-aibom. The post also links to technical blueprints, how-to guides, benchmarks, and customer stories illustrating performance and optimization techniques.