All news in category “Vendor and Hyperscaler Watch”

🔐 Amazon Quick now supports document-level access controls for Google Drive knowledge bases, allowing organizations to retain native Google Drive permissions when indexing content. Quick combines indexed ACL replication for fast pre-retrieval filtering with a second layer of real-time permission checks against Google Drive at query time to prevent stale or mis-mapped access. When a user queries, Quick verifies their current Drive permissions before generating a response, ensuring answers reflect live access rights. This capability respects individual file and folder permissions and is available in all AWS Regions where Amazon Quick is offered. To enable it, create or update a Google Drive knowledge base in the Amazon Quick console and configure document-level access controls in the integration settings.

🔒 The new Aurora DSQL Connector for PHP (PDO_PGSQL) simplifies building PHP applications on Aurora DSQL by automating IAM token generation, SSL configuration, and connection pooling. It removes the need for static user-managed passwords while maintaining full compatibility with existing PDO_PGSQL features. The connector also offers opt-in optimistic concurrency control (OCC) retries with exponential backoff and supports custom IAM credential providers and AWS profiles to streamline credential management and client retry logic.

🔎 Amazon CloudWatch Logs Insights saved queries now accept parameters, enabling reusable query templates with placeholders for values such as log level, service name, or time interval. You can define up to 20 parameters with optional defaults and invoke parameterized queries by prefixing the saved query name with $ and supplying arguments. This reduces duplicate queries and simplifies complex analysis. Saved queries with parameters are available in all commercial AWS regions and can be created or executed via the Console, AWS CLI, AWS CDK, and AWS SDKs.

🚀 Amazon Web Services has made EC2 R8i and R8i-flex instances available in the AWS GovCloud (US‑West) Region. Powered by custom Intel Xeon 6 processors exclusive to AWS, these instances deliver up to 15% better price-performance and 2.5x more memory bandwidth compared with prior Intel-based generations. R8i offers 13 sizes including two bare-metal options and a new 96xlarge for the largest workloads, while R8i-flex provides common memory-optimized sizes from large to 16xlarge for applications that don’t fully utilize vCPUs. Both families are SAP-certified and targeted at memory-intensive databases, web services, analytics, and recommendation models.

🚀 Amazon Web Services has made EC2 M8i and M8i‑flex instances available in AWS GovCloud (US‑West). Powered by AWS‑exclusive Intel Xeon 6 processors, the instances deliver up to 15% better price‑performance and 2.5x memory bandwidth versus prior Intel‑based generations, and up to 20% higher performance than M7i variants. AWS cites workload gains of up to 30% for PostgreSQL, 60% for NGINX web workloads, and 40% for deep learning recommendation models. M8i‑flex targets common sizes for cost‑efficient general purpose use, while M8i supports large, SAP‑certified and bare‑metal options including a new 96xlarge.

🌍AWS has expanded AWS IoT Core and AWS IoT Device Management to the Israel (Tel Aviv) and Europe (Milan) Regions. This move enables local organizations to reduce latency, strengthen data residency controls, and lower cross-region transfer costs. The services support industry-standard protocols and scale to manage billions of devices. AWS IoT is now available in 27 Regions worldwide.

⚖️ This guide from Google Cloud outlines infrastructure options to manage generative AI costs without compromising performance or availability. It compares Pay-as-You-Go, Priority PayGo, Provisioned Throughput, Batch API, and Flex PayGo, explaining tiers, headers for request control, and SLAs. Practical recommendations show combining PT for baseload, Priority PayGo for spikes, and opportunistic PayGo or Batch/Flex for non‑critical work. Monitoring and cost‑sizing guidance is included.

🔁 Amazon FSx now supports copying file system backups into and out of opt-in Regions for Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, Amazon FSx for Lustre, and Amazon FSx for OpenZFS. This extends cross-Region, cross-account backup and recovery capabilities beyond Regions enabled by default, enabling broader resilience, disaster recovery, and compliance architectures. Backup copies can be managed via the Amazon FSx console, API, CLI, and across accounts in the same AWS Organization using AWS Backup.

🔒 UCR partnered with Google Public Sector to build a Secure Enclave powered by the Stellar Engine, a preconfigured cloud container that automates and enforces rigorous security postures. Backed by Google Cloud’s accredited services and a Zero Trust architecture, the environment closes unnecessary access points and maps foundational controls for NIST SP 800-171 and CMMC Level 2. The result is reduced technical overhead for researchers, restored eligibility for sensitive federal grants, and a scalable model the university plans to share with peers.

🌐 AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery (AWS DRS) now supports IPv6 for both data replication and control plane connections, enabling replication in IPv6-only or dual-stack environments. Customers can set the internet protocol to IPv6 in replication configuration to use dual-stack endpoints for agent-to-service communication and data transfer, removing the requirement for IPv4 addresses. Existing replication configurations remain on IPv4 by default, and the capability is available in Regions where AWS DRS and Amazon EC2 support IPv6.

🔗 AWS has made AWS Interconnect - multicloud generally available, providing private, resilient, high-speed connections between Amazon VPCs and other cloud providers. Google Cloud is the initial launch partner, with Microsoft Azure slated to join later in 2026. The service integrates with AWS Transit Gateway and AWS Cloud WAN to simplify scaling across VPCs and Regions, and introduces single-fee bandwidth pricing plus one free local 500 Mbps interconnect per Region starting in May.

🔌 AWS has announced general availability of AWS Interconnect - last mile, a fully managed offering that streamlines private, high-speed connections from branch offices, data centers, and remote sites to AWS in partnership with Lumen. Through the AWS Console customers can provision pre-provisioned capacity, automate BGP, VLAN and ASN configuration, and scale bandwidth from 1 Gbps to 100 Gbps while MACsec is enabled by default. The service is SLA-backed, designed for high availability, zero-downtime maintenance, and includes an open API for partner adoption.

🏆 Fortinet’s Training Institute has been honored with multiple industry awards that validate its sustained investment in cybersecurity education and certification. The institute continues to expand the NSE Certification program with role-based pathways and a global ecosystem spanning over 150 countries and 800 academic partners. Fortinet also delivers a SaaS-based Security Awareness and Training service—now offered in an education edition free to primary and secondary schools—and has pledged to train 1 million people by the end of 2026.

🚀 Cloudflare released a technical preview of a rebuilt CLI distributed as the new cf command to provide unified, consistent access across its extensive API surface. The preview demonstrates a TypeScript-based schema and code-generation pipeline that produces consistent commands, configuration, bindings, and OpenAPI output for both agents and developers. It also introduces Local Explorer, an open beta available in Wrangler and the Cloudflare Vite plugin, which mirrors Cloudflare APIs locally so you can inspect and modify KV, R2, D1, Durable Objects and Workflows during development.

🧩 Durable Object Facets let you instantiate dynamic Durable Object classes inside a supervisor Durable Object, giving each AI-generated app its own isolated SQLite-backed storage. Using the Dynamic Worker Loader API, a supervisor loads agent code, instantiates the exported DurableObject class as a facet via this.ctx.facets.get(...), and forwards requests while retaining logging, quotas, and billing controls. Facets enable near-zero-latency local storage and safe multi-tenant application patterns.

🧰 Cloudflare has declared Sandboxes and Cloudflare Containers generally available, delivering persistent, isolated development environments tailored for AI agents and human developers. Key additions include secure credential injection via an egress proxy, PTY-backed WebSocket terminals, persistent Python/JavaScript/TypeScript interpreters, filesystem event streams, background dev servers with public preview URLs, and fast disk-state snapshots. Higher instance limits and Active CPU Pricing reduce cost and improve scalability; the SDK is at version 0.8.9.

🔐 Cloudflare has added outbound Workers to its Sandboxes and Containers, providing programmable egress proxies that let sandboxed workloads connect, add observability, and perform safe authentication. Handlers such as outboundByHost and global outbound functions can inject headers, block requests, or log traffic without exposing secrets to the guest. The proxy runs locally beside the sandbox with minimal latency and integrates with platform bindings like KV and R2 for identity‑aware, dynamic controls.

🔔 Cloudflare is launching Agents Week to announce platform work aimed at scaling one-to-one AI agents across the Internet. The post argues that traditional container-based cloud models don't map well to ephemeral, per-user agents and highlights Workers and lightweight isolates as efficient primitives alongside GA container sandboxes and improved browser rendering. It also stresses integrating security, identity, payment, and open standards like MCP to make agents practical and sustainable.

🚀 OpenAI has introduced a new ChatGPT Pro subscription at $100 per month to match Anthropic's Claude pricing and to appeal to coders and enterprise users. The revised lineup now lists Plus $20 for lighter usage, Pro $100 for real projects with 5× higher limits and temporarily 10× Codex usage, and Pro $200 for heavy continuous workflows with 20× limits. All Pro tiers include access to Pro models, Codex, Deep Research, image creation, memory, and file uploads, and OpenAI notes “unlimited” GPT‑5 access remains subject to standard Terms of Use.

🚀 Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced general availability of Amazon EC2 X8i instances, next‑generation memory‑optimized VMs powered by custom Intel Xeon 6 processors available only on AWS. X8i delivers up to 43% higher performance, up to 1.5× more memory (up to 6 TB) and 3.3× greater memory bandwidth versus X2i. Offered in 14 sizes, including two bare‑metal options, they target SAP HANA, large databases, data analytics and EDA and are available in select US and European regions.