All news in category "Vendor and Hyperscaler Watch"

AWS EBS gp3 volumes scale to 64 TiB, 80k IOPS, 2,000 MiB/s

🔧 Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) gp3 volumes now support up to 64 TiB, 80,000 IOPS, and 2,000 MiB/s throughput — raising previous limits of 16 TiB, 16,000 IOPS, and 1,000 MiB/s. This change simplifies storage architectures by allowing consolidation of striped volumes into a single gp3 volume, reducing operational complexity for storage-intensive and containerized workloads that struggle with multi-volume striping. Pricing remains based on storage plus any additional provisioned IOPS and throughput; the new limits are available in all AWS Commercial and GovCloud (US) regions.

AWS WAF Bot, Fraud & DDoS Rule Group Expands Regions

🔒 AWS WAF's Targeted Bot Control, Fraud, and DDoS Prevention Rule Group are now available in Asia Pacific (Taipei), Asia Pacific (Bangkok), and Mexico (Central). These managed rule groups deliver detection and mitigations for sophisticated bots, application-layer DDoS, and account-takeover attacks at the web edge. Customers can deploy them to improve application resilience, reduce fraudulent activity, and limit resource consumption during attack campaigns.

Cloudflare Uses Massive Data to Boost Global Network

⚡ Cloudflare is leveraging telemetry from its vast Free Plan and global edge to refine congestion control and improve routing across its network. By combining passive connection logs, Real User Measurement (RUM) and cross-network models, the team evaluates multiple algorithms beyond classic loss-based and BBR approaches. A migration to a Rust-based stack enables faster experimentation and parameter tuning; early QUIC tests show up to 10% performance gains. Cloudflare plans staged rollouts through 2026 and offers enterprise early access.

Cloudflare Uses Global Performance Data to Reduce Congestion

🔍 Cloudflare explains how it leverages the world’s largest performance dataset, combining passive transport logs with Real User Measurement (RUM), to refine congestion control across its global network. Using a new Rust-based stack and experimentation framework, the company evaluates multiple algorithms (including BBR) to predict user experience from passive signals and validate with RUM. Early tests on free-tier QUIC traffic show roughly 10% average improvement versus the prior baseline, with staged rollouts and an early-access program planned for enterprises.

Amazon MSK Expands Express Brokers to 8 Additional Regions

🚀 Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK) now supports Express brokers in eight additional AWS Regions: AWS GovCloud (US-West), AWS GovCloud (US-East), Jakarta, Melbourne, Osaka, Zurich, Tel Aviv, and Hong Kong. Express brokers are a Provisioned broker type that deliver up to 3x more throughput per broker, scale up to 20x faster, and reduce recovery time by 90% versus standard Apache Kafka brokers. They arrive pre-configured with Kafka best practices, support all Kafka APIs, and maintain low-latency performance so existing client applications require no changes.

AgentCore Supports VPC, PrivateLink, CloudFormation

🔒 Amazon Web Services announced that Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Runtime, AgentCore Browser, and AgentCore Code Interpreter now support VPC connectivity, AWS PrivateLink, CloudFormation, and resource tagging. These additions let developers deploy AI agents that access private resources such as databases and internal APIs without internet exposure. CloudFormation integration enables infrastructure-as-code provisioning, while tagging provides cost allocation and access-control organization. AgentCore is in preview in US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), Asia Pacific (Sydney), and Europe (Frankfurt).

CSA launches SaaS Security Capability Framework (SSCF)

🔒 The Cloud Security Alliance has published the SaaS Security Capability Framework (SSCF), a standardized set of customer-facing security controls designed to reduce long-standing gaps in third-party risk management. SSCF defines minimum technical capabilities across six domains — including identity and access, data lifecycle, logging, and incident management — that vendors should expose under the Shared Responsibility Model. The framework is intended to add transparency and consistency to SaaS security, complementing business-focused standards such as ISO 27001, and aims to evolve into practical implementation guidance, auditing criteria, and a certification scheme.

AWS Research and Engineering Studio 2025.09 Update

🧪 Research and Engineering Studio (RES) 2025.09 on AWS delivers fractional GPU support, simplified AMI handling, and greater deployment flexibility for research and engineering teams. The update adds support for Amazon EC2 g6f instances to enable GPU fractionalization, Systems Manager Parameter Alias support for AMI IDs to streamline image management, and optional integration with existing Amazon Cognito user pools to simplify authentication during deployment. Administrators can now customize CIDR ranges in the CloudFormation external resources template, and regional availability expands to Asia Pacific (Osaka), Asia Pacific (Jakarta), Middle East (UAE), and South America (São Paulo).

Amazon EC2 I7i Instances Now in Milan and N. California

🚀 Amazon EC2 I7i instances are now available in AWS Europe (Milan) and AWS US West (N. California). Powered by 5th Gen Intel Xeon processors with a 3.2 GHz all-core turbo and 3rd-generation AWS Nitro SSDs, I7i delivers up to 23% better compute and more than 10% improved price-performance versus I4i. Storage scales to 45 TB of NVMe with up to 50% better real-time storage performance, up to 50% lower storage I/O latency, and up to 60% lower latency variability, and includes a torn write prevention feature supporting up to 16 KB block sizes. The family offers eleven sizes — nine virtual sizes up to 48xlarge plus two bare metal options — with up to 100 Gbps networking and 60 Gbps EBS bandwidth.

Amazon Redshift Concurrency Scaling Adds More Regions

🚀 Amazon Redshift Concurrency Scaling is now available in ten additional AWS regions, including Africa (Cape Town), several Asia Pacific locations, Europe (Milan), Middle East (Bahrain), Mexico (Central) and AWS GovCloud (US‑West). The feature elastically adds query processing capacity in seconds to maintain fast performance for thousands of concurrent users and hundreds of simultaneous queries. Customers with an active Redshift cluster earn up to one hour of free Concurrency Scaling credits and can control allocation, set cluster limits, and monitor usage through Amazon CloudWatch; enable it by setting the Concurrency Scaling Mode to Auto in the AWS Management Console.

Searce Accelerates Enterprise Migrations to Google Cloud

🚀 Searce, a Google Cloud Premier partner, has completed over 1,000 migrations and highlights measurable gains in reliability, cost, and performance for enterprise customers. Using GKE, GKE Autopilot, GKE Gateway Controller and Google Cloud platform services, Searce reports improvements such as 25% better reliability, 50% lower TCO, and up to 30% performance gains, with significant reductions in downtime during migrations.

When to Consider XDR: Addressing EDR Limitations & Response

🔒 Many small and mid-sized businesses adopted EDR to address growing threats, but alert overload and limited context can overwhelm security teams. Kaspersky Next XDR Optimum groups related alerts, enables bulk responses, and lets operators block compromised users in Active Directory directly from alert cards. It also integrates a cloud sandbox for file analysis and embeds targeted security awareness training assignable from the alert. For teams struggling with volume or lacking context, migrating from EDR to XDR can improve containment and reduce response time without major redeployment.

Microsoft Marketplace: Unified Cloud and AI Solutions

🚀 The reimagined Microsoft Marketplace is a unified destination to find, try, buy and deploy cloud solutions, AI apps and agents, combining Azure Marketplace and Microsoft AppSource. It lists tens of thousands of offerings and more than 3,000 AI apps and agents with rapid provisioning into Microsoft environments using Model Context Protocol (MCP). Integrations with CSPs and channel partners support private offers, a resale-enabled preview and governance for enterprise deployment.

AWS Network Firewall Enhances Application-Layer Controls

🔐 AWS released enhanced default application-layer rules for AWS Network Firewall to better handle TLS client hellos and HTTP requests that are split across multiple packets. The update adds new default stateful actions — drop and alert established — enabling security teams to enforce controls without complex custom rules while supporting modern TLS implementations and large HTTP requests. Detailed logging preserves visibility. Available in all supported AWS Regions.

Cloudflare Developer Platform: Bigger, Faster, More Powerful

🚀 Cloudflare announced a broad set of developer platform upgrades designed to remove friction and scale modern workloads. Highlights include expanded Node.js API support, AI Search now supporting multiple model providers, and larger Container and Workers Build sizes. GA releases such as Remote Bindings, R2 Infrequent Access, Media Transformations, and Playwright-backed Browser Rendering aim to speed development and reduce costs.

AWS Expands EC2 C8gn Graviton4 Instances to Regions

🚀 Amazon expanded availability of EC2 C8gn instances—powered by Graviton4—to Europe (Frankfurt, Stockholm) and Asia Pacific (Singapore), in addition to existing US Regions. C8gn delivers up to 30% better compute vs Graviton3-based C7gn, includes 6th-generation Nitro Cards, and offers up to 600 Gbps network bandwidth. Instances scale to 48xlarge with up to 384 GiB memory and 60 Gbps EBS bandwidth, and select sizes support Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA) for lower-latency clusters optimized for network-intensive workloads.

R2 SQL Deep Dive: Serverless Queries over R2 Data Platform

⚡ R2 SQL is Cloudflare’s serverless query engine that runs SQL directly against Iceberg tables stored in R2, eliminating the need for Spark or Trino clusters. The Query Planner uses R2 Data Catalog metadata and multi-level stats to prune manifests, files, and Parquet row groups so only necessary bytes are read. Execution is distributed across Cloudflare’s network using Workers and query workers running Apache DataFusion, with results serialized via Apache Arrow. An ordered, streaming planning pipeline enables early termination for ORDER BY ... LIMIT queries; R2 SQL is currently available in open beta.

Cloudflare Data Platform: R2 Pipelines, Catalog, SQL

🧭 Cloudflare announced the Cloudflare Data Platform, combining Cloudflare Pipelines, R2 Data Catalog, and R2 SQL to ingest, store, and query analytical tables directly on R2 object storage. Built on Apache Iceberg and open standards, the platform emphasizes engine interoperability and Cloudflare’s zero-cost egress. Pipelines offers exactly-once ingestion and SQL transforms today; stateful processing is planned. The products are open betas with usage-based pricing signals ahead of GA.

Research and Engineering Studio on AWS 2025.09 Release

🚀 Research and Engineering Studio (RES) on AWS 2025.09 introduces fractional GPU support, simplified AMI management, and broader deployment flexibility to help teams run graphics‑intensive and compute workloads more efficiently. The release adds Amazon EC2 g6f support for GPU fractionalization and Systems Manager Parameter Alias support for AMI IDs. Integration with Amazon Cognito user pools and customizable CIDR ranges in the CloudFormation template streamline authentication and network planning, while regional expansion improves accessibility.

Enabling AI Sovereignty Through Choice and Openness Globally

🌐 Cloudflare argues that AI sovereignty should mean choice: the ability for nations to control data, select models, and deploy applications without vendor lock-in. Through its distributed edge network and serverless Workers AI, Cloudflare promotes accessible, low-cost deployment and inference close to users. The company hosts regional open-source models—India’s IndicTrans2, Japan’s PLaMo-Embedding-1B, and Singapore’s SEA-LION v4-27B—and offers an AI Gateway to connect diverse models. Open standards, interoperability, and pay-as-you-go economics are presented as central to resilient national AI strategies.