All news in category "Vendor and Hyperscaler Watch"

Amazon EC2 I8ge Instances: Graviton4 Storage Optimized

🚀 Amazon Web Services announced general availability of Amazon EC2 I8ge instances, storage-optimized instances powered by AWS Graviton4 processors. They deliver up to 60% better compute and up to 55% better real-time storage performance per TB compared with previous Graviton2/Im4gn generations. I8ge offers up to 120 TB local NVMe instance storage, 1,536 GiB memory, sizes up to 48xlarge plus two metal options, and up to 300 Gbps networking, making them suitable for real-time databases, analytics, search, and streaming workloads. Instances are available in US East (Ohio), US East (N. Virginia), and US West (Oregon).

AWS IAM: New VPC Endpoint Condition Keys for Perimeter

🔐 AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) introduces three global condition keys — aws:VpceAccount, aws:VpceOrgPaths, and aws:VpceOrgID — to enforce that requests to resources or identities originate via VPC endpoints. These keys provide account-, organization-path-, and organization-level granularity, automatically scaling as endpoints are added or removed. Use them in new or existing SCPs, RCPs, resource-based, and identity-based policies. They are supported for selected services in commercial Regions where AWS PrivateLink is available.

Amazon SageMaker Lakehouse Adds Tag-Based Access Control

🏷️ Amazon SageMaker lakehouse now supports tag-based access control (TBAC) across federated catalogs, extending capability beyond the default AWS Glue Data Catalog to Amazon S3 Tables, Amazon Redshift, and federated sources such as DynamoDB, PostgreSQL, and SQL Server. TBAC lets administrators group resources with tags, grant access based on those tags, and rely on tag inheritance so new tables automatically receive fine-grained controls. Administrators can create and apply tags via the AWS Lake Formation console and grant tag-based permissions to principals; tagged resources are then usable through Amazon Athena, Amazon Redshift, Amazon EMR, and SageMaker Unified Studio. The feature is available in all commercial AWS Regions via the Console, AWS CLI, and SDKs, with supporting Lake Formation Tags documentation and a blog post.

AWS Adds VPC Endpoint Organization-Based Policy Keys

🔐 AWS introduced three new global IAM condition keys—aws:VpceAccount, aws:VpceOrgPaths, and aws:VpceOrgID—to simplify network-origin access controls across multiple accounts and OUs. These keys let administrators restrict resource access based on the account, organizational unit path, or organization that owns the VPC endpoint used for a request, reducing the need to enumerate VPC or VPC endpoint IDs. Example use cases include S3 bucket policies and centrally applied RCPs or SCPs to enforce corporate network perimeters and intra-organization segmentation; adoption depends on service support and testing prior to production rollout.

Amazon Q Developer adds MCP admin control in AWS Console

🔒 Administrators can now manage the Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers used by Amazon Q Developer clients from the AWS console. Admins can enable or disable MCP functionality across their organization; when disabled, users cannot add MCP servers and previously defined servers are not initialized. Q Developer enforces admin settings at session start and every 24 hours. The control covers the CLI and IDE plugins (VSCode, JetBrains, Visual Studio, Eclipse).

AWS HealthOmics Adds Nextflow Task-Level Timeout Support

🕒 AWS HealthOmics now supports the Nextflow time directive, enabling task-level timeout controls to limit runtime for specific Nextflow tasks. Customers can automatically cancel tasks that exceed defined durations to prevent wasted compute and downstream delays. AWS HealthOmics is HIPAA-eligible, and this capability is available in all regions where the service operates.

Amazon EBS Adds Snapshot Copy Support for Local Zones

🔁 Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) now supports snapshot copy for AWS Local Zones, enabling point-in-time local snapshots to be copied to the parent Region or another Local Zone. The feature is generally available and accessible via the AWS Console, CLI, and SDKs. This capability helps customers meet disaster recovery, data migration, and compliance requirements by storing snapshots in Amazon S3 within the chosen Region or Local Zone.

Google provides ChromeOS workarounds for ClassLink/Clever

⚠️ Google is investigating authentication failures that prevent sign-ins to Clever and ClassLink on affected ChromeOS devices running build 16328.55.0 with Chrome 139.0.7258.137. The problem can disrupt Single Sign‑On and some 2‑Step Verification flows, blocking access to educational platforms. As temporary mitigations, administrators can roll back devices to ChromeOS M138 via the Google Admin console or change LoginAuthenticationBehavior to use the default GAIA authentication flow while Google validates a fix.

Microsoft Word to Auto-Save New Documents to Cloud

📝 Microsoft is testing a change that will enable autosave and save new documents to OneDrive by default in Word for Windows, delivered first to Microsoft 365 Insiders in the Beta Channel with Version 2509 (Build 19221.20000) or later. Microsoft says the feature will come to Excel and PowerPoint for Windows later this year. Users can choose a local folder instead or toggle the behavior off via the Save page in Word options. Microsoft lists several known issues being addressed during testing.

AWS IoT ExpressLink Technical Specification v1.3 Released

🔧 AWS IoT ExpressLink technical specification v1.3 introduces expanded Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) capabilities and a new set of I/O control commands that enable host processors to manage module pins. The BLE enhancements make it easier for devices to advertise presence and capabilities and to pair securely within a local Personal Area Network (PAN). The I/O control commands allow an ExpressLink-powered module to act as a flexible digital and analog I/O expander. AWS Partners including Espressif and u‑blox have adopted the update for their Wi‑Fi and BLE qualified modules.

Amazon EC2 U7i-12TB High Memory Instances in Seoul

🚀 Amazon EC2 High Memory U7i instances (u7i-12tb.224xlarge) with 12TiB of DDR5 memory are now available in the AWS Asia Pacific (Seoul) Region. Powered by custom fourth-generation Intel Xeon Scalable (Sapphire Rapids) processors, the U7i-12tb offers 896 vCPUs, ENA Express support, and up to 100 Gbps for both EBS and network throughput. These instances are designed for mission-critical in-memory databases and large transactional workloads such as SAP HANA, Oracle, and SQL Server, enabling faster data loading, backups, and higher transaction processing throughput.

Google Cloud: Monthly AI product and security update

🔔 This month Google Cloud expanded its AI stack across models, tooling, and security. Highlights include Gemini 2.5 Flash with native image generation and SynthID watermarking on Vertex AI, new Veo video models, the Gemini CLI, and a global Anthropic Claude endpoint. Google also published 101 gen‑AI blueprints, developer guidance for choosing tools, and security advances for agents and AI workloads.

What's New in Google Data Cloud: August Product Roundup

🔔 This Google Cloud roundup summarizes recent product milestones, GA launches, previews, and integrations across the data analytics, BI, and database portfolio. It highlights updates to BigQuery, Firestore, Cloud SQL, AlloyDB, and adjacent services aimed at easing ingestion, migration, and AI-driven operations. Notable items include MongoDB-compatible Firestore GA, PSC networking improvements for Database Migration Service, and a redesigned BigQuery data ingestion experience. The post also emphasizes resilience and DR enhancements such as immutable backups and Near Zero Downtime maintenance.

Container-Optimized Compute Delivers Fast Autopilot Scaling

🚀 GKE Autopilot now runs on a container-optimized compute platform that rethinks autoscaling to deliver near-real-time capacity. The platform uses dynamically resizable VMs and a pool of pre-provisioned compute so nodes can be resized or allocated without disrupting workloads. Customers on GKE Autopilot 1.32+ get faster pod scheduling, improved HPA responsiveness, and support for in-place pod resize out of the box. Google recommends the general purpose compute class for small, gradually scaling services.

Cloud CISO Perspectives: Fighting Cyber-Enabled Fraud

🔒 David Stone and Marina Kaganovich from Google Cloud’s Office of the CISO warn that cyber-enabled fraud (CEF) is scaling rapidly and presents severe financial and reputational risk. The post cites FBI data — $13.7 billion in losses in 2024 — and highlights common tactics such as phishing, ransomware, account takeover, and business email compromise. It urges CISOs and boards to shift from siloed defenses to a proactive, enterprise-wide posture using frameworks like FS-ISAC’s Cyber Fraud Prevention Framework and Google Cloud detection and protection capabilities.

Amazon Connect Adds Generative Text-to-Speech Voices

🔊 Amazon Connect now provides generative text-to-speech voices—20 generative-enhanced voices across English, French, Spanish, German, and Italian. Use them for welcome messages, policy announcements, or dynamic conversational AI, configurable in the drag-and-drop flow designer via the “Set Voice” block or through public APIs. Available in US East (N. Virginia), Europe (Frankfurt), and US West (Oregon). Pricing options include unlimited AI or individual per-use pricing.

AWS launches M8i and M8i-flex EC2 instances, Xeon 6

🚀 AWS has made the new M8i and M8i-flex EC2 instances generally available, powered by custom Intel Xeon 6 processors exclusive to AWS. The instances offer up to 15% better price-performance and 2.5x the memory bandwidth versus previous Intel-based generations, and AWS reports up to 20% higher performance compared with M7i and M7i-flex with larger gains for specific workloads. Initial availability includes US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), and Europe (Spain).

Amazon OpenSearch Serverless Adds ABAC and RCP Support

🔐 Amazon announced that OpenSearch Serverless now supports attribute-based authorization (ABAC) for Data Plane APIs, enabling identity policies in AWS IAM to control data read and write operations on collections. The release also introduces resource control policy (RCP), a new AWS Organizations–managed policy type that enforces organization-wide preventative controls centrally. Customers should check regional availability and consult the documentation for implementation guidance.

Make Websites Conversational with NLWeb and AutoRAG

🤖 Cloudflare offers a one-click path to conversational search by combining Microsoft’s NLWeb open standard with Cloudflare’s managed retrieval engine, AutoRAG. The integration crawls and indexes site content into R2 and a managed vector store, serves embeddings and inference via Workers AI, and exposes both a user-facing /ask endpoint and an agent-focused /mcp endpoint. Publishers get continuous re-indexing, controlled agent access, and observability through an AI Gateway, removing much of the infrastructure burden for conversational experiences.

Cloudflare Launches AI Crawl Control with 402 Support

🛡️Cloudflare has rebranded its AI Audit beta as AI Crawl Control and moved the tool to general availability, giving publishers more granular ways to manage AI crawlers. Paid customers can now block specific bots and return customizable HTTP 402 Payment Required responses containing contact or licensing instructions. The feature aims to replace the binary allow-or-block choice with a channel for negotiation and potential monetization, while pay-per-crawl remains in beta.