All news in category "Vendor and Hyperscaler Watch"

AWS Transfer Family Adds Terraform SFTP Connector Support

🚀 The AWS Transfer Family Terraform module now supports provisioning SFTP connectors to transfer files between Amazon S3 and remote SFTP servers. Announced 2025-08-27, the addition builds on existing Terraform support for SFTP server endpoints and enables programmatic provisioning of connectors, dependencies, and customizations in a single IaC deployment. The module includes end-to-end examples to automate transfers on schedules or event triggers, reducing manual configuration and improving repeatability, security, and scale.

AWS Network Firewall adds ReceivedBytes metric in CloudWatch

🔍 AWS has added the new ReceivedBytes metric for AWS Network Firewall to Amazon CloudWatch, giving customers per-firewall visibility into total incoming bytes inspected. The metric differentiates counts for the stateless and stateful engines, enabling more granular analysis of processing and performance. Available in all Regions where Network Firewall is supported, the data can be integrated into existing monitoring, alerting, and optimization workflows to support capacity planning and cost reduction.

SageMaker HyperPod Supports Customer-Managed KMS for EBS

🔐 Amazon SageMaker HyperPod now supports customer-managed AWS KMS keys (CMKs) to encrypt EBS volumes, giving enterprises direct control over encryption for root and secondary storage. This enables integration with existing key management and compliance workflows and uses a grants-based approach for secure cross-account access. Customers can specify CMKs via the CreateCluster and UpdateCluster APIs for clusters in continuous provisioning mode. The capability is available in all Regions where HyperPod runs.

Amazon EC2 C7i Instances Now Available in Osaka Region

🚀 Amazon EC2 C7i instances powered by custom 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors are now available in the Asia Pacific (Osaka) Region. C7i delivers up to 15% better performance versus comparable x86-based Intel processors and up to 15% improved price-performance over C6i. Instances scale to 48xlarge and provide two bare-metal sizes with Intel accelerators, support Intel AMX, and allow up to 128 EBS volumes to better handle compute-intensive workloads.

SageMaker HyperPod Supports EBS CSI Driver for Storage

🔧 Amazon SageMaker HyperPod now supports the Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) Container Storage Interface (CSI) driver, enabling dynamic provisioning and lifecycle management of persistent EBS volumes for machine learning workloads on HyperPod EKS clusters. Through standard Kubernetes persistent volume claims and storage classes, teams can create, attach, resize, snapshot, and encrypt volumes (including customer-managed KMS keys), and volumes persist across pod restarts and node replacements. Install the EBS CSI driver as an EKS add-on to get started; the capability is available in all regions where HyperPod EKS clusters are supported.

Storage Insights datasets optimize Cloud Storage spend

📊 Storage Insights datasets put object and bucket metadata into a BigQuery-linked dataset that refreshes automatically, enabling detailed analysis of storage spend, distribution, lifecycle and Autoclass usage. Administrators can run SQL queries or use Gemini Cloud Assist for natural-language insights, then feed outputs into serverless batch operations to relocate, transition or delete data at scale. The feature supports organization-, folder-, project- or bucket-scoped datasets with daily updates and up to 90-day retention for operational and FinOps workflows.

Palo Alto Networks Named Leader in HMF Magic Quadrant

🔐 Palo Alto Networks has been named a Leader in the inaugural 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Hybrid Mesh Firewall, recognized for both Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute. The announcement highlights the Strata Network Security Platform, which unifies hardware, virtual, container, cloud-native and FWaaS deployments under a single, cloud-based management plane. Powered by Precision AI®, the platform delivers consistent policy, automation and real-time threat prevention across hybrid environments.

AWS SageMaker Adds P5.4xlarge with NVIDIA H100 GPU

🚀 Amazon SageMaker Training and Processing Jobs now supports the new EC2 P5 instance size with a single NVIDIA H100 GPU, offering the P5.4xlarge configuration for cost‑effective ML and HPC workloads. The instance enables fine-grained scaling so customers can begin with smaller configurations and expand incrementally, improving cost management and infrastructure flexibility. P5.4xlarge is available via SageMaker Flexible Training Plans and in select regions through On‑Demand and Spot.

Custom Metrics in Amazon CloudWatch Application Signals

🔍 Amazon CloudWatch Application Signals now supports Custom Metrics, enabling developers and operators to define and visualize application-specific telemetry alongside standard health metrics such as fault rates, errors, and latency. You can ingest metrics directly with OpenTelemetry Metrics or derive them from spans using the OpenTelemetry Traces SDK and Metrics Filters. The Application Signals console offers correlated views in the Related Metrics tab, interactive visualization, and quick navigation to correlated spans, top contributors, and related logs. Custom Metrics support is available in all regions where Application Signals is offered; see documentation and CloudWatch pricing for details.

Google for Startups: 2025 Brazilian AI First Cohort

🚀 Google has announced the 2025 Brazilian cohort for the Google for Startups Accelerator: AI First, selecting 11 companies applying AI across finance, health, marketing, and agriculture. The program begins on September 2 and will provide personalized technical and strategic support, including mentorship and access to Google's AI experts. The cohort spans solutions for automated billing and claims, digital pathology, agroforestry intelligence, creator marketing, legal automation, treasury automation, and AI-driven children's storytelling.

Check Point Named Leader in 2025 Hybrid Mesh Firewall

🚀 Check Point has been named a Leader in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Hybrid Mesh Firewall, recognized for ability to execute and completeness of vision. The firm emphasizes its AI-powered network security to deliver consistent, high-performance threat prevention across on-premises, cloud and SASE environments. The recognition highlights unified management and proactive defenses designed for distributed enterprises facing AI-driven attacks.

AWS App Runner Adds IPv6 for Inbound and Outbound Traffic

🌐 AWS App Runner now supports IPv6 for both inbound and outbound traffic on public and private service endpoints. This removes the need for IPv4/IPv6 address translation and helps customers meet IPv6 compliance requirements. You enable the capability by selecting the dual-stack option in the networking configuration for new or existing services. IPv6 support is available in all Regions where App Runner is offered.

Microsoft Tops Modern Endpoint Security Market Share

🔒 Microsoft Defender has been ranked number one in modern endpoint security market share for the third consecutive year, according to IDC’s 2024 report. Market share rose from 25.8% in 2023 to 28.6% in 2024, reflecting a 28.2% growth rate. Defender emphasizes cross-platform protection—Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, and IoT—leveraging AI-powered detection and built-in exposure management to enable rapid SOC response and attack disruption.

Cloudflare AI Gateway updates: unified billing, routing

🤖 Cloudflare’s AI Gateway refresh centralizes AI traffic management, offering unified billing, secure key storage, dynamic routing, and built-in security through a single endpoint. The update integrates Cloudflare Secrets Store for AES-encrypted BYO keys, provides an automatic normalization layer for requests/responses across providers, and introduces dashboard-driven Dynamic Routes for traffic splits, chaining, and limits. Native Firewall DLP scanning and configurable profiles add data protection controls, while partner access to 350+ models across six providers and a credits-based billing beta simplify procurement and cost management.

Cloudflare Workers AI Adds Leonardo and Deepgram Models

🚀 Cloudflare is expanding Workers AI to include closed-source partner models from Leonardo and Deepgram, bringing optimized image generation and real-time audio capabilities to the edge. The launch includes Leonardo's @cf/leonardo/phoenix-1.0 and @cf/leonardo/lucid-origin and Deepgram's @cf/deepgram/nova-3 and @cf/deepgram/aura-1. These models run on Cloudflare's low-latency GPU infrastructure and integrate with Workers, R2, Images, and Realtime for end-to-end developer workflows.

Cloudflare's Edge-Optimized LLM Inference Engine at Scale

⚡ Infire is Cloudflare’s new, Rust-based LLM inference engine built to run large models efficiently across a globally distributed, low-latency network. It replaces Python-based vLLM in scenarios where sandboxing and dynamic co-hosting caused high CPU overhead and reduced GPU utilization, using JIT-compiled CUDA kernels, paged KV caching, and fine-grained CUDA graphs to cut startup and runtime cost. Early benchmarks show up to 7% lower latency on H100 NVL hardware, substantially higher GPU utilization, and far lower CPU load while powering models such as Llama 3.1 8B in Workers AI.

Securing Cloud-Native Workloads From Code to Runtime

🔒 Lacework FortiCNAPP unifies CSPM, CWP, CIEM, and CDR to secure cloud-native workloads from development through runtime. It integrates with CI/CD pipelines to scan IaC, container images, and libraries, and leverages FortiDevSec for static and dynamic testing so vulnerabilities are caught before deployment. At runtime, behavior-based workload protection, cloud audit log analysis, and Fortinet Composite Alerts produce high-fidelity detections, while FortiWeb and automation via FortiSOAR enable edge blocking and orchestrated remediation.

Skopeo for Google Cloud: Simplifying Container Workflows

📦 This post describes how Skopeo, a daemonless CLI for container images, can streamline image management with Artifact Registry and Google Cloud CI/CD. It outlines setup steps and five practical workflows—inspect manifests, registry-to-registry copying, listing tags, promoting images, and automated verification. The article also covers security integrations with tools like Cosign and Binary Authorization, and recommends Skopeo for faster, daemonless automation in Cloud Build and related environments.

Total Economic Impact of ChromeOS: ROI, Savings, Security

📊 Google commissioned a Forrester Total Economic Impact™ study to quantify the value of ChromeOS for enterprise deployments. The analysis modeled a composite organization (multinational, $5B revenue, 40,000 employees) and found a 208% ROI over three years, an NPV of $6.8M, and a payback period under six months. Key benefits included 90,000 saved productivity hours, $1.3M in device and licensing savings, $1.2M from strengthened security, and $1.1M in reduced IT support costs.

AWS Console Adds Account Color Settings for Quick ID

🎨 Today AWS announced general availability of account color settings in the AWS Management Console across all Public Regions. Account administrators can assign a persistent color (for example, red for production or yellow for testing) that appears in the Console navigation bar for all authorized users, enabling quick visual identification of accounts. The default color is grey; viewing the color requires AWSManagementConsoleBasicUserAccess or the custom permission uxc:getaccountcolor.