All news with #product update tag

🔍 BigQuery's new Column Metadata (CMETA) index is an automated, highly scalable metadata index that improves query pruning and reduces compute for extremely large tables. CMETA stores snapshots of block- and column-level statistics and is maintained transparently by BigQuery with no user intervention. Early adopters report up to 60x faster queries and up to 10x lower slot usage for selective filters, particularly on clustered columns.

📣 AWS WAF now includes a free allocation of Vended Logs ingestion to CloudWatch: 500 MB for every 1 million WAF requests processed, provided at no additional cost. The allocation is applied automatically across WAF vended logs to CloudWatch, S3, and Firehose and is reconciled on your AWS bill at month end. Usage beyond the included allowance is charged at standard AWS WAF Vended Logs CloudWatch rates. This change helps reduce logging costs while preserving comprehensive security visibility and analytics.

⚡ Amazon Web Services has announced general availability of managed tiered checkpointing for Amazon SageMaker HyperPod, a hybrid checkpointing capability that caches frequent checkpoints in CPU memory and periodically persists them to Amazon S3 for durability. The approach reduces model recovery time and minimizes training progress loss on large-scale clusters. It integrates with PyTorch Distributed Checkpoint (DCP) and is enabled via a CreateCluster/UpdateCluster API parameter; customers can use the sagemaker-checkpointing Python library to adopt it with minimal code changes. Currently available for HyperPod clusters using the EKS orchestrator.

🚀 Cloudflare has added support for the node:http client and server APIs in Workers, enabling developers to deploy existing Node.js HTTP applications at the edge with minimal code changes. This change makes frameworks like Express and Koa runnable on Workers with zero cold starts, automatic scaling, and reduced latency for global users. The client APIs are implemented on top of Workers' native fetch(), and server integration uses an internal bridge that registers listen(port) rather than binding TCP sockets. Some Node-specific features remain limited or unsupported (the Agent is effectively a no-op; trailers, early hints, 1xx responses, and TLS-specific options are not available).

🚀 NetworkX now supports Amazon Neptune Analytics as a graph store, enabling developers to use familiar NetworkX APIs while transparently offloading heavy graph-algorithm workloads to Neptune’s scalable analytics engine. The integration provides Zero-ETL data handling, automatic provisioning and teardown for a serverless-like experience, and preserves existing Python workflows without refactoring code.

🔧 AWS announced general availability of Custom Blueprints in Amazon SageMaker Unified Studio, enabling customers to supply their own managed IAM policies when creating project roles. Teams can replace or augment the default service-managed policies and use custom AWS CloudFormation templates to define infrastructure and parameters for resources such as Amazon EMR on EC2, AWS Glue Data Catalog, and Amazon Redshift. Sample templates are available in the SageMaker documentation, and the capability is offered in all AWS Commercial Regions where the next-generation SageMaker is available.

🌐 Amazon CloudFront now supports IPv6 connectivity to origin servers, enabling end-to-end IPv6 content delivery for web applications. Customers can configure custom origins as IPv4-only (default), IPv6-only, or dual-stack; in dual-stack mode CloudFront will automatically balance requests across IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. IPv6 origin support is available in all supported AWS Commercial Regions and excludes Amazon S3 and VPC origins. This capability can improve performance for native IPv6 users and reduce pressure from IPv4 address exhaustion for origin infrastructure.

🔧 Amazon Keyspaces (for Apache Cassandra) now supports the now() and uuid() functions in SELECT clauses, extending prior support in WHERE, INSERT, and UPDATE. It also introduces a native Duration data type to represent elapsed time between timestamps, removing the need to store intervals as strings or bytes. These updates improve Apache Cassandra compatibility and simplify time-based operations and identifier generation across AWS Commercial and GovCloud regions.

🤖 Amazon Web Services announced enhancements to the Amazon Q Developer chat experience within SageMaker Unified Studio Jupyter notebooks and added a command-line interface for use in notebooks and the Code Editor. By integrating with Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, the assistant becomes aware of project resources—data, compute, and code—and provides personalized, context-aware help. These updates aim to speed tasks like code refactoring, file edits, and troubleshooting while preserving transparency around assistant actions. The capabilities are available at no additional cost via the Amazon Q Developer Free Tier where SageMaker Unified Studio is offered; customers can enable Amazon Q Developer Pro for expanded functionality.

🔎 Google will let users set AI mode as their default search tab, replacing the traditional blue links view for those who opt in. The change will be user-controlled via a toggle or button so individuals can choose AI-driven summaries as their primary experience while the classic Web tab remains accessible. Google says it is studying the impact on ads and publishers.

🔁 OpenAI is rolling out two notable updates to ChatGPT: the Projects feature is now available to all users for free, and a new Branch in new chat toggle lets you split and continue conversations from a chosen message. Projects create independent workspaces that organize chats, files, and custom instructions with separate memory, context, and tools. The branching option spawns a new conversation that includes everything up to the split point, helping manage divergent topics and streamline brainstorming. Both changes aim to improve organization and continuity for repeated or evolving work.

🚀 Baseten reports major cost-performance gains for AI inference by combining Google Cloud A4 VMs powered by NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs with Google Cloud’s Dynamic Workload Scheduler. The company cites 225% better cost-performance for high-throughput inference and 25% improvement for latency-sensitive workloads. Baseten pairs cutting-edge hardware with an open, optimized software stack — including TensorRT-LLM, NVIDIA Dynamo, and vLLM — and multi-cloud resilience to deliver scalable, production-ready inference.

🔍 AWS Systems Manager Configuration Manager now supports SAP HANA, enabling automated validation of SAP HANA databases running on AWS against best practices defined in the AWS Well‑Architected Framework SAP Lens. The capability automatically assesses configurations, proactively flags misconfigurations, and provides specific remediation guidance so teams can address issues before they impact operations. Checks can be scheduled or run on demand, and SSM for SAP Configuration Manager is available in all commercial AWS Regions.

💡 Microsoft Cost Management released a set of July–August 2025 updates to help organizations monitor and reduce Azure spend. The release adds service principal support for the Partner Admin Reader role, enabling EA indirect partners to programmatically access cost data without interactive accounts. Other highlights include a Pricing Calculator user tip, new cost-saving offers such as Azure Firewall ingestion-time transformation (GA) and the Azure Storage Mover preview, updated documentation on billing and reservations, and new instructional videos on cost allocation and Copilot for cost insights.

🔍 Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus now exposes applied quota values and utilization through AWS Service Quotas and Amazon CloudWatch. This integration delivers centralized visibility of service limits across workspaces, enables quick quota increase requests, and provides usage metrics that you can incorporate into CloudWatch alarms and dashboards. Usage metrics are always enabled, provided at no extra cost, and accessible via console, APIs, and CLI in all regions where the service is generally available.

🔐 The AWS Management Console now supports ECS Exec, allowing operators to open secure, interactive shell sessions to running containers directly from the console. This removes the need to switch to the CLI, API, or SDKs for troubleshooting and avoids opening inbound ports or managing SSH keys. You can enable ECS Exec when creating or updating services and standalone tasks, and configure encryption and logging at the cluster level. Sessions launch through CloudShell, and the console displays the underlying AWS CLI command for reuse in a local terminal.

📞 Amazon Connect now provides expanded disconnect reasons that map outbound call failures to standard telecom error codes. These enhanced reasons appear in Contact Trace Records and reporting, giving contact center teams real-time visibility into granular disconnection data to speed troubleshooting and reduce support tickets. The feature is available in all AWS regions where Amazon Connect is offered; refer to the public documentation and best practice guide for implementation details.

🔔 AWS CloudFormation Hooks now supports managed proactive controls, allowing teams to validate resource configurations against AWS best practices without writing custom Hook logic. Customers can select controls from the AWS Control Tower Controls Catalog and apply them during CloudFormation operations, and run them in warn mode for nonblocking evaluation before enforcing policies. A new Hooks Invocation Summary page provides a centralized historical view of control executions and outcomes to simplify compliance reporting and troubleshooting.

📦 Amazon ECR now supports repository creation templates in AWS GovCloud (US) Regions. Templates let you preconfigure encryption, lifecycle policies, access permissions, and tag immutability for repositories that ECR creates during pull-through cache and replication operations. Templates use a prefix to automatically match and apply settings to new repositories, reducing manual setup and helping enforce consistent registry governance across environments.

🆕 Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL 18 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) is now available in the Amazon RDS Database Preview Environment, letting customers evaluate a fully managed pre-release. PostgreSQL 18 adds skip scan support for multicolumn B-tree indexes, parallel GIN index builds, improved OR/IN WHERE handling, and updated join behavior. Observability enhancements expose buffer usage counts, index lookup details during execution, and a per-connection I/O utilization metric. Preview instances are retained for up to 60 days, snapshots remain usable only within the preview, and pricing follows the US East (Ohio) region.