All news in category "Vendor and Hyperscaler Watch"

AWS Transform Adds Detached Storage Assessment and TCO

🔍 AWS has expanded AWS Transform assessment to analyze on‑premises detached storage infrastructures, including SAN, NAS, file servers, object stores and virtual environments. The new capability maps existing storage to AWS targets such as Amazon S3, Amazon EBS and Amazon FSx, and delivers a comparative Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) analysis. It also provides performance and cost optimization recommendations for compute and storage workloads, noting storage can represent up to 45% of migration opportunities. The assessment is available in US East (N. Virginia) and Europe (Frankfurt).

Amazon Bedrock Simplifies Cache Management for Claude

⚡Amazon Bedrock updated prompt caching for Anthropic’s Claude models—Claude 3.5 Haiku, Claude 3.7, and Claude 4—to simplify cache management. Developers now set a single cache breakpoint at the end of a request and the system automatically reads the longest previously cached prefix, removing manual segment selection and reducing integration complexity. By excluding cache read tokens from TPM quotas, this change can free up token capacity and lower costs for multi-turn workflows. The capability is available today in all regions offering these Claude models; enable caching in your Bedrock model invocations and refer to the Bedrock Developer Guide for details.

Windows 11 KB5064081 Clarifies Task Manager CPU Metrics

🔧 Microsoft published the optional KB5064081 preview cumulative update for Windows 11 24H2, moving affected systems to build 26100.5074 and rolling out thirty-six new features and fixes. The update standardizes CPU reporting in Task Manager so the Processes tab now uses the same calculation as Performance and Users: (Δ Process CPU Time) ÷ (Δ Elapsed Time × Logical Processors), making metrics consistent and aligning them with third‑party monitors. Users who want the legacy view can enable an optional CPU Utility column in the Details tab. The release also bundles UI, File Explorer, Taskbar, Windows Hello, backup, and numerous bug fixes, while Microsoft lists two known issues (CertEnroll errors and NDI streaming lag).

Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus Adds PagerDuty

🔔 Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus now sends alerts directly to PagerDuty, removing the need for custom Lambda functions or intermediary services. The native integration simplifies authentication and improves delivery reliability for incident notifications. It is available in all AWS regions where the service is generally available and can be configured from the Alert manager tab or via the AWS CLI, SDK, or APIs. Refer to the user guide for detailed setup instructions.

Eventarc Advanced: Unified Serverless Eventing Platform

🚀 Eventarc Advanced is now generally available as a unified, serverless eventing platform that centralizes real-time filtering, transformation, management, and delivery for complex microservices environments. It extends Eventarc Standard with a Publish API and a central message bus built on Envoy, enabling per-message access control, multi-format payload handling (Avro, JSON, Protobuf), and built-in routing and observability. The platform is designed to simplify development with a single API while giving platform operators centralized governance, monitoring, and reliable delivery across hybrid and multi-cloud topologies.

Google Cloud Expands Confidential Computing with Intel TDX

🔒 Google Cloud has expanded its Intel TDX-based Confidential Computing portfolio, now offering Confidential GKE Nodes, Confidential Space, and Confidential GPUs alongside broader regional availability. Creating an Intel TDX Confidential VM is exposed directly in the GCE Create an instance flow under the Security tab, with no code changes required. The C3 machine series supports Intel TDX across additional regions and zones, and NVIDIA H100 GPUs on the A3 series enable confidential AI by combining Intel CPU protection with NVIDIA Confidential Computing on the GPU.

Google Cloud and Partners Commit to Apache Iceberg

🔁 Google Cloud and an ecosystem of partners — including Confluent, Databricks, dbt, Fivetran, Informatica, and Snowflake — reaffirm support for the open table format Apache Iceberg to power modern lakehouse architectures. The post highlights Google innovations such as BigLake and a REST Catalog API that unify metadata and enable interoperability across engines like BigQuery, Databricks, and Snowflake. The collaboration aims to reduce data silos, enable time travel and pruning, and accelerate AI-ready analytics.

Amazon SageMaker Adds Account-Agnostic Project Profiles

🔁 Amazon SageMaker introduces account-agnostic, reusable project profiles within the SageMaker Unified Studio domain, enabling domain administrators to define project templates once and reuse them across multiple AWS accounts and regions. Profiles are decoupled from specific accounts and regions and can reference a new account pool for dynamic account and region selection at project creation, driven by custom authorization policies or predefined strategies. This reduces duplication, simplifies governance, and accelerates onboarding across large-scale data and ML environments. The feature is available in all Regions where Unified Studio is supported.

Microsoft to Enforce MFA for Azure Resource Management

🔐 Starting October 1, 2025, Microsoft will enforce multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all Azure resource management actions to protect tenants from unauthorized access. The change, part of its Secure Future Initiative, will be rolled out gradually across public cloud tenants and covers Azure CLI, PowerShell, SDKs, REST APIs, IaC tools, the Azure mobile app, and automation that uses user identities. To prevent disruptions Microsoft recommends updating Azure CLI to 2.76+ and Azure PowerShell to 14.3+; global administrators may postpone enforcement until July 2026.

Amazon QuickSight Adds Native Google Sheets Connector

📢 Amazon QuickSight announces the general availability of a native Google Sheets connector. Customers can sign in with their Google account and import sheets directly into a QuickSight SPICE dataset for analysis and visualization. The connector is available across multiple AWS regions in the Americas, Europe, and Asia Pacific. This simplifies bringing spreadsheet data into QuickSight and reduces manual data movement for BI teams and analysts.

Amazon Neptune Analytics adds Stop/Start capability

⏸️ Amazon Neptune Analytics now supports a Stop/Start capability that lets organizations pause and resume graph workloads on demand. While a graph is stopped, all data and configuration are preserved and customers pay only 10% of the normal compute cost. Customers can pause and resume via the AWS Console, CLI, API, or SDKs with a single action. The feature is available in all commercial regions where Neptune Analytics is offered and aims to reduce lifecycle overhead and lower costs for periodic workloads like fraud detection, recommendation engines, and research simulations.

RDS Data API Now Supports IPv6 Dual-Stack Connectivity

🌐 RDS Data API now supports IPv6 with dual-stack (IPv4/IPv6) connectivity for Aurora databases, enabling expanded address space and simplified migration from IPv4. The capability is available in all commercial AWS regions where Data API is offered, except Canada (Central). IPv6 lets you assign contiguous IP ranges to microservices and scale beyond VPC IPv4 limits while retaining IPv4 connectivity during transition. Data API continues to pool connections and integrates with AWS AppSync GraphQL; consult the documentation for endpoint and network configuration guidance.

AWS End User Messaging Adds International Toll‑Free SMS

📣 AWS End User Messaging now supports international SMS sending from US toll-free numbers to more than 150 countries, including Canada. This lets customers use a single US toll-free number to reach supported global destinations, simplifying account and resource setup. Available in all AWS Regions where AWS End User Messaging is offered, the capability supports common use cases such as OTPs, notifications, reminders, and promotions.

Amazon QuickSight Launches in Israel and UAE Regions

📍 Amazon QuickSight is now available in the Israel (Tel Aviv) and United Arab Emirates (Dubai) AWS Regions, enabling local customers to author, share, and embed interactive analytics at scale. QuickSight is a fast, fully managed BI service that supports browser-based dashboard creation and can be shared with tens of thousands of users without provisioning infrastructure. The launch expands QuickSight to 25 regions globally, improving latency, data residency options, and compliance for regional organizations.

Cloudflare Realtime Voice AI Platform for Edge Agents

🔊 Cloudflare announced new realtime voice AI capabilities to simplify building low-latency conversational agents on its global edge. The release includes Realtime Agents, a composable runtime for orchestrating STT, LLM, and TTS pipelines at the edge, plus the ability to pipe raw WebRTC audio as PCM into Workers, WebSocket-based realtime inference in Workers AI, and Deepgram models deployed across 330+ cities. These features aim to reduce infrastructure complexity and latency for voice-enabled applications.

Cloudflare AI for WARP and Network Troubleshooting Tools

🔍 Cloudflare is introducing two AI-powered tools to simplify troubleshooting for the Cloudflare One SASE platform: the new WARP diagnostic analyzer in the Zero Trust dashboard and a DEX MCP server for Digital Experience Monitoring. Both features are available to all Cloudflare One customers by default and convert diagnostic logs into clear, actionable insights. The WARP analyzer highlights events, device details, and exports JSON for deeper analysis, while the DEX MCP server enables natural-language queries and custom analytics without heavy SIEM integration.

Amazon Verified Permissions Adds Four New AWS Regions

🔒 Amazon Verified Permissions is now available in Asia Pacific (Taipei), Asia Pacific (Thailand), Asia Pacific (Malaysia), and Mexico (Central), expanding regional coverage to 35 AWS Regions. The managed service provides scalable, fine-grained authorization using the open-source Cedar policy language, enabling applications to enforce permissions as policies rather than embedding them in code. Developers and administrators can define role-, attribute-, and context-aware access controls for APIs and application resources, simplifying authorization and improving governance.

Amazon EMR Adds Spark FGAC and Glue Data Catalog Views

🔒 Amazon EMR on EC2 now supports Apache Spark native fine-grained access control (FGAC) through AWS Lake Formation and adds support for AWS Glue Data Catalog views. These capabilities let administrators define and enforce granular Lake Formation policies once and apply them consistently to Spark jobs and interactive sessions, reducing administrative overhead and security risk. Access checks support named resource grants, data filters, and tag-based controls and are logged in AWS CloudTrail for auditing.

Amazon EMR S3A Connector: Faster S3 Access for Analytics

🚀 Amazon Web Services announced the Amazon EMR S3A connector, an AWS-optimized S3 interface for Apache Hadoop, Spark, and Hive on EMR. It extends open-source S3A with AWS-specific enhancements including MagicCommitter V2, improved credentials resolution, accelerated prefix listing, and Spark fine-grained access control. The connector is pre-configured in EMR release 7.10 and later and is available in all Regions where EMR runs.

AWS HealthOmics Adds Third-Party Container Registry Support

🧬 AWS HealthOmics now supports third-party container registries through Amazon ECR pull-through cache and a new container URI remapping capability, easing access to tools hosted on Docker Hub, GitHub, Quay, GitLab, Azure, and other registries. The pull-through cache automatically retrieves and caches images while URI remapping translates third-party references to private ECR URIs using customer-defined mapping rules. These capabilities remove the need for manual image migration or workflow edits and are available in all regions where AWS HealthOmics is offered, helping bioinformatics teams accelerate workflow development and execution.