All news in category “Vendor and Hyperscaler Watch”

🚀 Amazon has launched EC2 R8a instances in the Europe (Ireland) region, powered by 5th Gen AMD EPYC processors (formerly Turin) with up to 4.5 GHz frequency. R8a offers up to 30% higher performance and up to 19% better price-performance versus R7a, along with 45% more memory bandwidth and up to 60% faster GroovyJVM. Built on the AWS Nitro System with sixth-generation Nitro Cards, the family includes 12 sizes (two bare metal) and is SAP-certified. To begin, sign in to the AWS Management Console.

🧭 This practical guide from GoogleWalks developers through how to move AI agents from prototype to production, highlighting architecture, operational patterns, and safety considerations. It explains an agent as an LLM-driven autonomous system surrounded by an orchestration layer that manages session state, long-term memory, retrieval (RAG), tool use, and security. The post emphasizes emerging interoperability standards such as MCP and A2A, and underscores the importance of context engineering, trajectory-based testing, and staged rollouts. Authors provide targeted guides and code samples to help teams adopt these practices and validate agents before broad deployment.

🤖 Palo Alto Networks has rolled out a major Cortex release that embeds context-aware, agentic AI throughout the security operations lifecycle, promising faster detection, investigation and response. An expanded AI-ready data foundation, Cortex XDL 2.0, and new purpose-built agents — including Case Investigation, Cloud Posture and Automation Engineer — aim to slash response times and automate complex playbooks. The launch also introduces the standalone Cortex Agentix orchestration platform and signals intent to acquire Koi to strengthen endpoint protection for AI-driven threats.

📍 Amazon Location Service now provides curated AI agent context delivered as a Kiro power, a Claude Code plugin, and an open Agent Skills-format agent skill. The context supplies pre-validated implementation patterns and step-by-step instructions for common location features such as address entry, map display, nearest-store lookup, routing, and geofencing. Developers can load it into tools like Kiro, Claude Code, and Cursor to improve code accuracy, accelerate feature implementation, and reduce iteration time when integrating Amazon Location APIs.

🚀 Today AWS announced general availability of M8gn and M8gb metal-24xl and metal-48xl instances powered by AWS Graviton4, delivering up to 30% better compute than Graviton3. M8gn adds 6th‑generation Nitro Cards and offers up to 600 Gbps networking and up to 60 Gbps EBS bandwidth for network‑intensive workloads; M8gb targets high block storage throughput with up to 300 Gbps EBS and up to 400 Gbps networking. Both families support EFA on larger sizes and the new metal sizes are available in US East (N. Virginia).

🖥️ Amazon updated WorkSpaces Applications to support up to 4K (4096 x 2160) resolution on non‑accelerated instance types and across all client connection modes. The change provides a consistent, high-quality streaming experience—in native application mode, classic application mode, or desktop view—so users with 4K or ultra-wide (21:9) displays see improved clarity without requiring graphics-accelerated instances. The capability is available at no additional cost in all Regions and requires an agent dated on or after February 4, 2026, or managed image updates dated on or after February 18, 2026.

🛡️ AWS Backup now supports Amazon Neptune in five additional AWS Regions: Europe (Zurich), Asia Pacific (Melbourne), Canada West (Calgary), Asia Pacific (Malaysia), and Europe (Spain). This expansion extends policy-based data protection and recovery to Neptune clusters in those Regions. To protect clusters, add them to an existing backup plan or create a new plan and attach your Neptune clusters via the AWS Backup console, AWS CLI, or AWS SDKs. Review product documentation and pricing for details.

📡 Fortinet announced Alliance Partnerships with Parsec Technologies and Westermo to deliver ruggedized, rapidly deployable secure connectivity for mobile and fixed cyber-physical systems. The Parsec Emergency Connectivity Kit (ECK) packages preconfigured Fortinet devices with rugged enclosures and high-gain antennas for quick field deployment, available as Bloodhound (mobility) and Pitbull (resilience) models. Westermo integration brings WeOS switches and cellular routers into the Fortinet Security Fabric via IPsec, while FortiAuthenticator and FortiPAM extend identity and privileged access controls for industrial sites.

🔒 The Fulu Foundation has offered a US $10,000 bounty to anyone who can modify Ring doorbell cameras so they operate locally and stop sending footage to Amazon's servers. The prize requires a demonstrable method to redirect recordings to an owner's own computer or server rather than to cloud services. The initiative follows public privacy backlash over Ring's Super Bowl ad and broader worries about data ownership and consent.

🔧 Amazon Bedrock now supports server-side tool execution by integrating AgentCore Gateway with the Responses API. Customers can supply an AgentCore Gateway ARN and Bedrock will discover and invoke gateway tools during inference, eliminating client-side orchestration. Tool results are executed and streamed server-side in real time, with IAM-based access control preserved. This reduces latency and simplifies agentic workflows.

🚀 vinext was built in one week by a single engineer guided by AI to reimplement the Next.js API on top of Vite. It functions as a near drop-in replacement—use vinext dev / vinext build / vinext deploy—to run App Router and Pages Router apps and deploy directly to Cloudflare Workers. Early benchmarks report up to 4.4x faster production builds and client bundles up to 57% smaller versus Next.js; the effort cost roughly $1,100 in tokens. The experimental open-source project includes extensive tests, ISR support, pluggable caching, and an optional Traffic-aware Pre-Rendering feature.

🔖 AWS Compute Optimizer now automatically tags EBS snapshots it creates when snapshotting and deleting unattached Amazon Elastic Block Store volumes. The tag — aws:compute-optimizer:automation-event-id — stores the unique automation event identifier, linking each snapshot to the optimization action that produced it. This makes it easier to identify, track, and manage snapshots created through manual or automated optimization workflows. The feature is available in all Regions where Compute Optimizer Automation is provided.

🔒 Organizations are shifting from reactive incident response to proactive cyber defense to anticipate and block attacks before they cause damage. Speakers from PwC and Microsoft highlighted AI-accelerated threats, phishing deepfakes, and a criminal supply chain of ransomware-as-a-service, urging layered controls, zero trust, multicloud resilience, and security by design. Microsoft's Defender for Cloud, integrated with Microsoft 365 and third-party tools and deployed with PwC services, automates detection and response to reduce exposure time and staffing burdens.

⚡ AWS announced that AWS Observability is now available as a Kiro Power, enabling AI agent-assisted workflows to speed investigation of application and infrastructure health issues. The power packages four MCP servers—CloudWatch, Application Signals, CloudTrail, and AWS Documentation—to supply contextual observability, tracing, security signals, and references. It also provides automated gap analysis to identify missing instrumentation and eight steering guides to accelerate incident response and observability improvements.

🎥 AWS Elemental Inference is now generally available as a fully managed AI service that converts live and on-demand broadcasts into mobile-optimized vertical formats and generates highlight clips in real time. Running alongside encoding, the service offers vertical cropping and advanced metadata analysis using an agentic AI that requires no prompts or human-in-the-loop. In beta, large media companies reported 34% or greater savings on AI-powered live video workflows; the service is available in select AWS Regions.

📌 Amazon RDS Snapshot Export to S3 is now available in AWS GovCloud (US) regions, enabling you to export snapshot data in Apache Parquet format for analytics, retention, and machine learning workflows. The export runs directly on snapshots — including manual, automated system, and AWS Backup snapshots — without impacting database performance. Exported Parquet files can be analyzed with Amazon Athena, Amazon SageMaker, Redshift Spectrum, or big data frameworks like Apache Spark. You can initiate exports from the RDS console, AWS SDK, or CLI with just a few clicks.

⚙️ AWS Deadline Cloud now supports grouping short tasks into executable chunks to improve run-time efficiency and reduce cost. Users can specify a fixed chunk size or set a target run time, and Deadline Cloud will dynamically adjust grouping as the job progresses to meet that target. The feature addresses workloads with many short-duration tasks or environments that have long startup times. It is available in all Regions where AWS Deadline Cloud is supported.

🔒 Microsoft is extending Purview data loss prevention controls so the Microsoft 365 Copilot assistant cannot read or process sensitive Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files regardless of where they are stored. The change leverages the Office Augmentation Loop (AugLoop) component so Office clients can supply sensitivity labels for local files as well as for SharePoint and OneDrive. Microsoft will roll out the update between late March and late April 2026 and says it will be automatically enabled for tenants with DLP policies configured to block Copilot. The move follows a January bug that briefly allowed Copilot Chat to access and summarize protected emails.

🚀 Amazon EC2 C7i and C7i-flex instances are now available in the Africa (Cape Town) region. These instances run on custom 4th Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors (Sapphire Rapids) exclusive to AWS and deliver up to 15% better performance versus comparable x86-based Intel instances on other clouds. C7i-flex provides common sizes from large to 16xlarge and targets partially utilized workloads with up to 19% improved price-performance versus C6i. C7i also offers larger and bare-metal sizes that expose Intel accelerators to offload data operations and cryptographic tasks.

🚀 Amazon Web Services announced that Amazon EC2 C8i and C8i-flex instances are now available in the Asia Pacific (Malaysia) and South America (Sao Paulo) regions. Powered by custom Intel Xeon 6 processors exclusive to AWS, these instances deliver up to 15% better price-performance and 2.5x more memory bandwidth versus prior Intel-based generations. AWS highlights up to 20% higher performance relative to C7i variants and specific workload gains—up to 60% for NGINX and 40% for AI recommendation models. Customers can purchase instances via Savings Plans, On-Demand, or Spot and start from the AWS Management Console.