All news in category "Vendor and Hyperscaler Watch"

Action1 vs WSUS: A Modern Approach to Patch Management

⚙️ This sponsored comparison contrasts Action1, a cloud-native patch management platform, with Microsoft's legacy WSUS. It examines installation, ongoing maintenance, patch coverage, remote delivery, automation, troubleshooting, and reporting. The piece argues that Action1 reduces infrastructure overhead, patches third-party apps, and supports remote endpoints without VPN. It concludes that Action1 better fits modern, hybrid environments and audit-driven compliance needs.

Running Node.js HTTP Servers on Cloudflare Workers Globally

🚀 Cloudflare has added support for the node:http client and server APIs in Workers, enabling developers to deploy existing Node.js HTTP applications at the edge with minimal code changes. This change makes frameworks like Express and Koa runnable on Workers with zero cold starts, automatic scaling, and reduced latency for global users. The client APIs are implemented on top of Workers' native fetch(), and server integration uses an internal bridge that registers listen(port) rather than binding TCP sockets. Some Node-specific features remain limited or unsupported (the Agent is effectively a no-op; trailers, early hints, 1xx responses, and TLS-specific options are not available).

Amazon SageMaker Unified Studio Adds Custom Blueprints

🔧 AWS announced general availability of Custom Blueprints in Amazon SageMaker Unified Studio, enabling customers to supply their own managed IAM policies when creating project roles. Teams can replace or augment the default service-managed policies and use custom AWS CloudFormation templates to define infrastructure and parameters for resources such as Amazon EMR on EC2, AWS Glue Data Catalog, and Amazon Redshift. Sample templates are available in the SageMaker documentation, and the capability is offered in all AWS Commercial Regions where the next-generation SageMaker is available.

Amazon Keyspaces supports now(), uuid(), and Duration types

🔧 Amazon Keyspaces (for Apache Cassandra) now supports the now() and uuid() functions in SELECT clauses, extending prior support in WHERE, INSERT, and UPDATE. It also introduces a native Duration data type to represent elapsed time between timestamps, removing the need to store intervals as strings or bytes. These updates improve Apache Cassandra compatibility and simplify time-based operations and identifier generation across AWS Commercial and GovCloud regions.

Amazon CloudFront Adds IPv6 Origin Connectivity Support

🌐 Amazon CloudFront now supports IPv6 connectivity to origin servers, enabling end-to-end IPv6 content delivery for web applications. Customers can configure custom origins as IPv4-only (default), IPv6-only, or dual-stack; in dual-stack mode CloudFront will automatically balance requests across IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. IPv6 origin support is available in all supported AWS Commercial Regions and excludes Amazon S3 and VPC origins. This capability can improve performance for native IPv6 users and reduce pressure from IPv4 address exhaustion for origin infrastructure.

Amazon Neptune Analytics Now Supported in NetworkX

🚀 NetworkX now supports Amazon Neptune Analytics as a graph store, enabling developers to use familiar NetworkX APIs while transparently offloading heavy graph-algorithm workloads to Neptune’s scalable analytics engine. The integration provides Zero-ETL data handling, automatic provisioning and teardown for a serverless-like experience, and preserves existing Python workflows without refactoring code.

Horizon: Accelerating AAOS Development with Google Cloud

🚗 Horizon is an open-source, cloud-native software factory developed by Google and Accenture to standardize platform development for Android Automotive OS (AAOS) and related embedded vehicle software. It promotes a virtual-first workflow using high-fidelity cloud devices, VHAL, virtio, and scalable Cuttlefish instances to enable elastic testing and rapid developer feedback. Innovations such as the Android Build File System (ABFS), containerized reproducible builds, and integrated code tooling have produced 10x–50x faster feedback in early deployments, reducing build times and supporting high-frequency, higher-quality releases.

Improved AI Assistance in Amazon SageMaker Unified Studio

🤖 Amazon Web Services announced enhancements to the Amazon Q Developer chat experience within SageMaker Unified Studio Jupyter notebooks and added a command-line interface for use in notebooks and the Code Editor. By integrating with Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, the assistant becomes aware of project resources—data, compute, and code—and provides personalized, context-aware help. These updates aim to speed tasks like code refactoring, file edits, and troubleshooting while preserving transparency around assistant actions. The capabilities are available at no additional cost via the Amazon Q Developer Free Tier where SageMaker Unified Studio is offered; customers can enable Amazon Q Developer Pro for expanded functionality.

Microsoft Enforces MFA for Azure Portal Sign-ins Globally

🔐 Microsoft has completed a global rollout enforcing multifactor authentication (MFA) for Azure Portal sign-ins across 100% of tenants as of March 2025. The rollout follows an initial enforcement announcement in May 2024 and prior warnings to Entra global admins to enable MFA to avoid access disruptions. Microsoft says this step strengthens account defenses and will be followed by mandatory MFA for Azure CLI, PowerShell, SDKs, and APIs in October 2025. The company cites internal research showing MFA dramatically reduces account takeover risk.

AWS MediaConvert Adds Time-Addressable Media Store

🎬 AWS Elemental MediaConvert now integrates with Time-Addressable Media Store (TAMS), enabling customers to reference and extract precise, time-bound media segments as inputs to encoding workflows. The integration requires customers to operate their own TAMS servers—MediaConvert does not host or manage TAMS—and supports quick-turnaround use cases like live-event highlight clipping, near-real-time social publishing, and archive repurposing. This capability is aimed at media operations teams modernizing archives, automating editorial workflows, and connecting broadcast infrastructure and CMS directly into high-performance encoding pipelines.

Amazon CloudFront Adds Post-Quantum and TLS1.3 Policy

🔐 Amazon CloudFront now supports hybrid post-quantum key establishment across all existing TLS security policies for client-to-edge connections, enabling quantum-resistant key exchange without customer configuration. CloudFront also introduces a new TLS1.3_2025 policy that enforces TLS 1.3 only. Both features are enabled by default at all edge locations and incur no additional charges. These updates help organizations strengthen long-term in-transit protection and simplify compliance planning.

Amazon RDS Proxy Adds IPv6 Support for Connections

🌐 Amazon RDS Proxy now supports IPv6 addresses for pooling and sharing database connections, while continuing to offer existing IPv4 endpoints for backwards compatibility. Customers may specify proxy target connections using either IPv4 or IPv6. The change reduces the need to manage overlapping VPC address spaces and helps mobile, IoT, and modern serverless applications that open many database connections. By pooling connections, RDS Proxy improves database efficiency and application scalability.

Amazon GuardDuty Adds Custom Entity Lists for Domains

🛡️ AWS announced general availability of Amazon GuardDuty custom threat detection using entity lists, extending support beyond IP-only lists to include malicious domains and IP addresses. GuardDuty introduces a new finding type, Impact:EC2/MaliciousDomainRequest.Custom, triggered when activity related to a listed domain is observed. Entity lists also allow suppression of alerts from trusted sources and simplify cross-region permission management, avoiding IAM policy size limits. The feature is available in all GuardDuty Regions except China and GovCloud (US).

Amazon GuardDuty Adds Custom Entity Lists for Detection

🛡️ AWS announced general availability of Amazon GuardDuty custom threat detection using entity lists, expanding support beyond legacy IP-only lists to include domains and mixed IP/domain lists. The service adds a new finding type, Impact:EC2/MaliciousDomainRequest.Custom, when activity involves a listed domain. Entity lists can also be used to suppress alerts from trusted sources, and they simplify permissions and cross-region management. The capability is available in all Regions where GuardDuty runs, excluding China and GovCloud (US).

Tata Steel Enhances Monitoring with Google Cloud MDE

🏭 Tata Steel implemented a unified manufacturing data foundation on Google Cloud, centralizing OT and IT sources into a Manufacturing Data Engine built on BigQuery. The multi-path ingestion architecture leverages partners such as Litmus and ClearBlade to collect real-time PLC telemetry, while SAP, APIs, and in-house sensors feed batch and staging pipelines. The design emphasizes secure upstaging, partitioned storage with archival to Cloud Storage, and enables predictive maintenance, environmental KPI reporting, and reduced human presence in hazardous areas.

Gemini Cloud Assist for Dataproc: Troubleshoot Apache Spark

🛠️ Gemini Cloud Assist Investigations is now in public preview to help troubleshoot Dataproc and Serverless for Apache Spark workloads by automatically analyzing driver and executor logs, Spark UI metrics, configurations, and cross-product telemetry. Accessible from the Google Cloud console and via API, it produces prioritized summaries and clear remediation steps. The tool is tailored to data engineers, data scientists, SREs, and managers to reduce investigation time and accelerate fixes.

Google Cloud Expands Coverage for Compute Flex CUDs

🔔 Google Cloud has expanded its Compute Flexible Committed Use Discounts (Flex CUDs) to cover additional VM families and serverless offerings, delivering broader savings and greater deployment flexibility. The update adds enhanced discounts for memory‑optimized M1–M4 instances and HPC‑optimized H3 and H4D families, and extends coverage to Cloud Run request-based billing and Cloud Functions. A new spend-based billing model applies discounts directly to eligible usage rather than issuing credits, and introduces changes to the Billing UI, Cloud Billing export to BigQuery schema, and Cloud Commerce Consumer Procurement APIs. Customers can opt in immediately; those who do not will be auto-transitioned to the new model on January 21, 2026, while new Billing Accounts created on or after July 15, 2025 will default to the updated model.

Azure Phase 2: Mandatory MFA for Resource Management

🔒 Microsoft is starting Phase 2 of mandatory multi-factor authentication for Azure resource management operations on October 1, 2025. Enforcement at the Azure Resource Manager layer will be applied gradually via Azure Policy, requiring users to complete MFA before performing management actions. Workload identities (managed identities and service principals) are not affected. Administrators should enable MFA, test policy in audit mode, and ensure Azure CLI 2.76 and Azure PowerShell 14.3 or later are in use for best compatibility.

AWS Config Tracks Resource Tags for IAM Policies Globally

🔍 AWS Config now records resource tags for IAM policy resource types, enabling you to capture tag values and track their changes directly in your Config recorder. You can scope both Config-managed and custom rule evaluations by tag and use Config aggregators to selectively collect IAM policies across accounts. This capability is available in all supported AWS Regions at no additional cost.

Aurora PostgreSQL Limitless Now Supports PostgreSQL 16.9

🚀 Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL Limitless Database now supports PostgreSQL 16.9 compatibility. This release delivers PostgreSQL community bug fixes and performance improvements along with Aurora-specific additions, including support for the hstore and auto_explain extensions. The serverless, distributed engine transparently scales compute and queries across multiple Aurora Serverless instances while preserving single-database transactional consistency, distributed query planning, and transaction management. Available across multiple AWS regions; review the documentation and pricing for details.