All news in category “Vendor and Hyperscaler Watch”

🚀 AWS Lambda has raised the per-process file descriptor limit from 1,024 to 4,096 for functions running on Lambda Managed Instances (LMI). This 4x increase supports I/O-intensive and high-concurrency workloads by allowing larger connection pools and more simultaneous open files and sockets. The capability is available in all Regions where LMI is generally available and helps customers use managed EC2 instances with built-in routing, load-balancing, and auto-scaling without additional operational overhead.

🎯 AWS AppConfig now supports enhanced targeting controls for feature flag and configuration rollouts, enabling customers to bind values to specific segments or individual users during gradual deployments. The capability makes feature flags “sticky” by using customer-provided entity identifiers together with the AppConfig Agent, preserving targeted behavior as updates progress. This feature is available in all AWS Regions, including AWS GovCloud (US).

🚀 Manhattan Associates modernized its Manhattan Active SaaS platform by migrating from legacy Oracle and DB2 to Google Cloud databases. Cloud SQL and BigQuery now power core transactions and real-time analytics, enabling over a billion API calls per day with average responses under 150 ms. Containerized microservices on GKE, Pub/Sub streaming, and managed observability deliver automated failover, cross-region recovery, and faster feature delivery. The shift reduced manual scaling and licensing overhead while boosting operational agility and resilience.

🚚 FM Logistic used AlphaEvolve on Google Cloud to tackle large-scale warehouse routing by applying evolutionary code generation powered by Gemini models. Starting from an existing stepwise routing baseline, the agent generated, scored, and iterated thousands of candidate algorithms against a representative dataset to minimize average travel distance per pick while avoiding operational failures. The adapted routing logic delivered a 10.4% efficiency improvement and reduced annual warehouse travel by more than 15,000 km.

🔔 Google Cloud announced integrations and product updates to simplify running Red Hat OpenShift on its platform, including Google Cloud Cluster Services for OpenShift, a guided console cluster-creation experience, and the general availability of OpenShift Virtualization on OpenShift Dedicated. The updates emphasize cost optimization via custom machine types, Hyperdisk, and Axion processors, joint engineering with Red Hat, and configuration validation through Workload Manager to help migrate and modernize clusters. Supported integrations and middleware plugins aim to preserve OpenShift-native architecture while enabling selective adoption of managed Google services.

🔁 The AWS Advanced JDBC Wrapper now supports automated JDBC query caching using Valkey, including integration with Amazon ElastiCache for Valkey. Developers can add the wrapper dependency, enable the query cache plugin, configure database and cache endpoints, and mark which queries to cache via annotations or hints. Supported databases include Aurora and RDS for PostgreSQL, MySQL, and MariaDB. Caching result sets reduces database reads, lowers read latency, and can cut costs while improving application resilience.

🚀 Amazon Web Services has launched EC2 R8gd instances with up to 11.4 TB of local NVMe SSD storage, powered by Graviton4 processors. These instances deliver up to 30% better compute performance versus Graviton3 and show improvements for I/O-intensive databases and real-time analytics workloads. Offered in 12 sizes with up to 50 Gbps network and 40 Gbps EBS bandwidth, select sizes include Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA) and support adjustable bandwidth weighting for greater deployment flexibility.

🚀 Amazon Web Services has made M8a general-purpose Amazon EC2 instances available in the AWS Europe (Ireland) region starting today. Powered by 5th Gen AMD EPYC (Turin) processors with up to 4.5 GHz, these instances deliver up to 30% higher performance and up to 19% better price-performance versus M7a. They provide 45% more memory bandwidth, are SAP-certified, and come in 12 sizes including two bare-metal options. Built on sixth-generation AWS Nitro Cards, M8a targets latency-sensitive and high-throughput workloads and can be purchased via On-Demand, Savings Plans, or Spot instances.

🚀 Amazon EC2 M8a instances are now available in AWS GovCloud (US-West). Powered by 5th Gen AMD EPYC processors (Turin) with up to 4.5 GHz, M8a delivers up to 30% higher performance and up to 19% better price-performance versus M7a, plus 45% more memory bandwidth for latency-sensitive workloads. The family includes 12 sizes, two bare-metal options, and is SAP-certified. Instances can be purchased via Savings Plans, On-Demand, or Spot.

🤖 WhatsApp is rolling out several usability and AI-driven features, including a Writing Help reply assistant that uses Private Processing, and photo touch-up powered by Meta AI. The update also enables two accounts on iOS, a chat history transfer from iOS to Android, and a utility to locate and remove large media. Meta has also expanded anti-scam protections and introduced parent-managed accounts and a lockdown security mode for high-risk users.

🔧 Cloudflare engineers traced repeated 30-minute Atlantis restarts to Kubernetes recursively changing file ownership on a large PersistentVolume. The default pod securityContext behavior (fsGroup combined with fsGroupChangePolicy: Always) caused kubelet to run an expensive recursive chgrp across millions of files, creating a mounting bottleneck. By validating that file group ownership would remain stable and setting fsGroupChangePolicy: OnRootMismatch, restarts dropped to ~30 seconds. That single-line change recovered roughly 50 engineering hours per month (about 600 hours per year).

🔍 Databricks has previewed Lakewatch, an agentic SIEM designed to extend the lakehouse into security analytics and offer a lower-cost alternative to traditional SIEMs. The vendor says it will charge for compute rather than data ingestion or storage, claiming up to an 80% reduction in total cost of ownership while retaining years of hot data. Analysts acknowledge the ingestion-cost problem and note potential savings for organizations that retain large volumes, but warn that costs can shift to compute and processing if usage is uncontrolled. Databricks bolstered its security credibility with acquisitions such as Antimatter and SiftD.ai, indicating a broader security roadmap.

🔒 AWS updated its Storage Gateway Terraform modules to deploy gateways on Amazon Linux 2023, improving security, reliability, and IaC consistency. The modules support all gateway types—Amazon S3 File Gateway, Tape Gateway, and Volume Gateway—in both Amazon EC2 and VMware environments. EC2 deployments now enforce IMDSv2 by default to mitigate credential theft and SSRF, and support optional Elastic IP association and simplified Active Directory integration. The update also prevents unexpected gateway replacements during routine Terraform operations.

🛡️ GitHub is integrating AI-based scanning into Code Security to extend vulnerability detection beyond CodeQL, targeting ecosystems like Shell/Bash, Dockerfiles, Terraform, PHP and more. The hybrid model preserves CodeQL for deep semantic analysis while using AI to increase coverage in areas hard for traditional static analysis. Findings and suggested fixes appear directly in pull requests, and a public preview is expected in early Q2 2026.

📦 AWS introduces the Agent Plugin for AWS Serverless, which integrates AI coding assistants like Kiro, Claude Code, and Cursor to simplify building, deploying, troubleshooting, and managing serverless applications. The plugin packages reusable agent skills, sub-agents, hooks, and MCP servers to provide contextual guidance across the development lifecycle. It supports Lambda integrations with common event sources, IaC workflows via SAM and CDK, long‑running stateful patterns with durable functions, and API design with API Gateway. Skills are distributed in the open Agent Skills format and are available in AI tooling that supports agent plugins or skills.

🔔 AWS Batch now reports the AMI status for Batch-provided default Amazon Machine Images when you describe a compute environment, indicating LATEST or UPDATE_AVAILABLE. It also publishes AWS Health Planned Lifecycle Events to provide advance notification of scheduled changes such as AMI deprecations and other lifecycle activities. Both capabilities are available today in all Regions where AWS Batch runs and can be integrated with Amazon EventBridge to automate monitoring and remediation.

🔗 AWS announced remote connection from Cursor IDE to SageMaker Unified Studio via the AWS Toolkit extension. This integration lets data scientists, ML engineers, and developers use their local Cursor setup — including AI-powered code completion, natural language editing, and multi-file editing — while leveraging SageMaker's scalable compute and data. Authentication is handled securely through AWS IAM via the Toolkit, preserving custom Cursor settings and enterprise-grade security.

🔒 Amazon now enables Bedrock AgentCore to apply Chrome Enterprise policies to AgentCore Browser and to accept custom root Certificate Authority (CA) certificates for both AgentCore Browser and Code Interpreter. Administrators can leverage 100+ configurable browser policies — such as URL restrictions, disabling password managers, download controls, and kiosk-mode restrictions — to enforce compliance for AI agents. Custom root CA support permits secure TLS connections to internal services and corporate proxies that use enterprise-signed certificates, helping agents operate within strict security environments.

⚙️ AWS Batch now supports quota management with job preemption for SageMaker Training, enabling prioritized GPU allocation and automatic preemption of lower-priority workloads. You can create up to 20 quota shares per job queue and choose resource-sharing strategies, with both cross-share and in-share preemption modes to restore or reallocate borrowed capacity. Capacity utilization is visible at queue, quota share, and job levels, and you can update job priorities after submission and set preemption retry limits. The feature integrates with the SageMaker Python SDK via the aws_batch module and is available in all AWS Regions where AWS Batch is offered; AWS provides an example notebook and user-guide documentation for implementation guidance.

🔐 Amazon Route 53 Profiles now supports granular AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) permissions. Administrators can create IAM policies that restrict users to specific operations—associate, disassociate, or update—on resource types such as private hosted zones, Resolver rules, and DNS Firewall rule groups. Permissions may be scoped by resource ARN, hosted zone name, Resolver rule domain name, DNS Firewall rule group priority range, or specific VPC associations to enable precise delegation.