By Jane Dornemann

Image by Julianne Medenblik

Let’s face it: Keeping your sales team aligned is crucial as your organization grows. That’s because there’s a lot going on. Your product is gaining new capabilities, the company is launching new tools, strategies pivot, and in the meantime, your sales folks are gathering valuable customer insights that should be shared with everyone. 

After a product launches and you share all the standard sales enablement tools (product pitch deck, battlecard, datasheet, conversation guide, etc.), you need to keep momentum going and keep your product top of mind. Sales teams are typically juggling multiple offerings and priorities, so maintaining visibility for your solution requires ongoing efforts beyond the initial rollout. 

If your team isn’t up to date on product changes and aligned on messaging, you’ll likely see decreased sales and confusing communication with customers. 

We love these three ways for keeping everyone on the same page: newsletters, webinars, and demos. Each has its own perks and required effort. 

When sharing info with your sales team, focus on: 

• What they need to know to sell effectively (benefits, differentiators)
• New resources they can use (pitch decks, email templates, scripts)
• New selling opportunities (market fit, industries, target personas) 

Newsletters keep your sellers in the know 

Newsletters can help you meet a variety of objectives such as finding new leads, sharing successful sales strategies through customer wins, and updating sellers on the latest product enhancements, features, and sales tools. 

Win wires are great for sharing internal deal info and building momentum. They help your team discover new use cases and include details about co-selling and upselling strategies. 

For quarterly or monthly newsletters, stick to a template. Consistency matters! At 2A, we build templates for our clients that make structuring and producing content easier. 

Include metrics on who’s buying what, product updates, and selling tips. Our internal newsletter at 2A (called Cloud cover) includes new leads shared through our Teams channel. For the external version, we remove the leads section before sharing our research with customers. 

Pro tip: Ask your sales team to contribute before publishing—they usually have gold nuggets to share. 

Webinars offer a deep dive with experts 

Want something more interactive? Webinars with Q&A sessions are perfect for discussing product changes. They’re essential for new sellers and ideal before big launches or when addressing company issues affecting sales. 

One of our clients runs webinars with partners to explain program changes and answer questions. You can pre-record, edit, and then “air” it with a Q&A. (We like using Riverside for editing.) These recordings can be chopped into bite-sized clips to share in Slack or Teams, or at sales meetings as mini refreshers. 

If you go with live webinars, record them for on-demand viewing later. To boost attendance, schedule two to three sessions so people can join when it fits their schedule. 

Pro tip: Ask for questions beforehand to tailor your content to what people actually want to know. 

Demos make product features make sense 

Nothing helps sellers understand value props faster than seeing a product in action. Demos are perfect for visualizing new features and provide deeper understanding than newsletters or webinars. 

Keep demos pre-recorded and brief—under a minute is ideal. Avoid silent demos (recordings without any explanation). Instead, include context with voiceovers or on-screen text. 

Pro tip: For a budget-friendly approach, use AI voice software (we use Murph AI), which can even be translated into different languages. 

Looking to create internal resources for your sales team? We produce these three assets, as well as playbooks, pitch decks, and more. Contact us for a consultation. 

By Jane Dornemann

Image by Suzanne Calkins

Eighty percent of tradeshow attendees are decision makers, and 85% of them have buying authority in their company. In short: it’s important that you capture attendees’ limited time. 

You want your booth to stand out at the big event, so you’ve got cool swag and great graphics—and you’re demo-ready. But how do you pull in passersby? A screen showcasing your digital logo or static CTA simply won’t do it—but a strategically produced animation can. 

Why are animations great for event booths? 

Anyone can loop stock video, but that won’t bring your brand to life. You only have seconds to get (and keep) people’s attention, which means your animation needs to be several things at once: eye-catching, informative, and on brand. Because making this happen involves different types of talent, we sourced the best advice from our storytellers, designers, animators, and marketing consultants to help you start thinking about your next booth animation. 

The words 

Chunk it up. Events are loud, so ditch the soundtrack and focus on text. Each frame with text should make sense on its own to people who see it and walk by, but animations should also tell a cohesive story for those who stay and watch. One more challenge: It must make sense in a loop. Think in terms of five-second frames and be realistic about what most people read and absorb in that time. 

Less is more. Focus on a main point with no more than three supporting benefits or proof points. Trying to shove every fact and every single differentiator into a 30-second or one-minute animation will throw off the text-to-visuals ratio and overwhelm your visitor. Go for short, tagline-style phrases that are simple to digest but still pack a punch. 

The visuals 

Be big, bold, and slow. Using simple, big, and bold graphics keeps your animation easy to perceive from farther away. As for motion, booth animations should be slower paced but also eye-catching. Make sure the graphics stay on screen long enough for people to digest it as they walk by. 

Think distinct. Visuals should be attention grabbing—bright colors and visual contrasts that will entice someone to stop and look. Think chunky neon green text on black. Find a way to surprise people (within your brand guidelines, of course). 

Stay silent. Unlike other marketing animations, this one shouldn’t have audio since the booth area is too loud. This creates more flexibility: With no voiceover and a simpler script, there’s more opportunity to design the copy into visuals. 

The strategy 

Know where you stand. To inform the direction of your animation, look at what market research says about people’s familiarity with your brand. A startup that’s introducing itself to the world will want different animation content than a household brand that’s launching a new product. 

Feel the pain. Speak to your target customers’ biggest pain points. Don’t get into the weeds about technical details or all the different ways someone can use your product or service. Stay focused on the high-level benefits that your customers care about most—and back it up with data, if you can. Everyone loves a good data point! 

Plan ahead. Sometimes quick turns are unavoidable, and we can handle that. But, ideally, you want to allow four to eight weeks to produce a stellar animation. 

Reduce, reuse, recycle. Don’t forget, showing off your new animation doesn’t have to end when the event does. If you followed our storytellers’ advice, it will be easy to divide the animation into chunks that you can use in social media campaigns, turn into gifs, and include in your lead-generation follow-up emails. 

Looking to create an animation that will keep the show going? Contact us for a consultation. 

By Jane Dornemann

Image credit: Chris Feige

Gossip (for nerds) 

• AWS fell short on cloud revenue for the third straight quarter despite a 17% increase in revenue (less than the increase from the quarter before). 
• Quarterly earnings for Microsoft came with good news—earnings rose 13% and profits rose 18%, which Nadella attributed to cloud growth. This news led stock to rise by 6%, which does nothing for me when I buy a can of peaches for $5. Microsoft reduced its spending on AI by $1B this past quarter. (Probably to buy canned peaches.) But keep in mind, the tariffs haven’t hit Microsoft where it hurts—yet. That’s coming. 
• That’s why AWS is prepping sales and technical teams to answer customer concerns about how the tariffs will affect prices, data privacy, and foreign business relations. Read a summary here, though it is dangerously optimistic and fluffy. The tech leaders quoted at the end aren’t buying the “everything will be fine” sentiment. 
• A year after hiring AI bigshot Mustafa Suleyman to lead Microsoft’s AI department, Copilot adoption is lagging behind ChatGPT. 
• CIOs are in the mood to negotiate contracts with cloud providers following AWS price revisions and Google Cloud discounts. Cloud companies are willing to do this if it means becoming an organization’s vendor of choice for AI integration, which locks in a long-term commitment. 
• The article is paywalled, but word is that AWS customers are dissatisfied with the AWS service for accessing models like Anthropic and Bedrock, and they’ve started looking for alternatives. Maybe AWS pulled an Amazon Prime, where you pay for one-day shipping and free movies and then get neither? 
• Half of Microsoft customers would move to AWS if the former’s licensing costs weren’t so restrictive, says AWS to the UK government. 
• The “frontier firm,” according to Microsoft, is the new…regular firm. It’s structured around on-demand intelligence and powered by “hybrid” teams of humans paired with agents. We shall become “agent bosses” that manage AI agents, not people. And the people who were once managed, well, good luck to them! 

Wheelin’ and dealin’ 

• AWS and academic publisher Wiley have partnered to create an open-source AI agent that allows researchers to perform full-text searches across life sciences literature, reducing research tasks from days to minutes by integrating Wiley’s authoritative content with technology from Amazon Bedrock Agents. 
• Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos are backing a mining startup in the Democratic Republic of Congo. As you may recall, the mining industry is known for its reliance on child labor and dangerous, exploitative worker practices. Apparently, the startup will use AI to identify untapped minerals—like the “massive lithium deposit [it’s] eyeing.” The startup hails from the NIMBY paradise of Berkeley, CA. 
• But why settle for a hill of corporate evil when you can have a mountain of it? Microsoft is preparing to host Elon Musk’s Grok AI model in the company’s Azure AI Foundry, and will potentially infuse it across Microsoft apps and services. 
• Industrial IoT company Litmus is partnering with Microsoft to deliver edge-to-cloud solutions that take real-time data from connected industrial devices. 
• Nasdaq and AWS are creating a blueprint for moving stock exchanges to cloud infrastructure, starting with three international stock exchanges. 
• ClearScale will work with AWS as part of the Small Business Acceleration Initiative program to help small and medium businesses access cloud tools, new technologies, and AI guidance for digital transformations. 
• Clario and AWS are collaborating on the partner’s generative AI platform for processing clinical trial documents and data, hoping to accelerate drug development timelines. 

World domination 

• Microsoft is making a big commitment to its European presence, with an expansion plan for 16 datacenters, doubling the current capacity. There are obvious political undertones in Microsoft’s formal statement. 
• Activists blockaded an AWS datacenter in Quebec, protesting Amazon’s layoffs of over 4,000 workers and demanding the company return public funds. 

New stuff 

• GitLab Duo with Amazon Q is now generally available. GitLab’s integration with Amazon Q Developer connects AI agents for application developers with GitLab’s generative AI tools to support the entire software development cycle. 
• Microsoft has brought People Skills to Copilot for HR departments. It acts as a skills-inference and management agent that lets companies identify and monitor the skills of their employees. 
• IBM has launched a specialized Microsoft Practice within its consulting arm. It will help businesses with personalized transformations involving Copilot, Azure OpenAI, Azure Cloud, Fabric, and Sentinel. 
• Anthropic has formed a new team to recruit AWS customers that want to use its AI products. The team will help customers accelerate adoption through scalable programs. 
• Deloitte has launched AI Advantage for CFOs, a comprehensive AI-powered finance platform built in collaboration with AWS and Anthropic, which combines Finance Automation Agents and AI finance analysis capabilities to transform finance operations across industries. 
• Meta’s Llama 4 models—Scout 17B and Maverick 17B—are now available on AWS via Amazon Bedrock and Amazon SageMaker JumpStart. They offer advanced multimodal capabilities, including image and text processing, and efficient performance through a mixture-of-experts architecture. 
• AWS has launched Mistral AI’s Pixtral Large as a fully managed serverless model in Amazon Bedrock, offering advanced visual and linguistic capabilities across multiple regions. 
• Amazon Nova Sonic is a new foundation model in Amazon Bedrock that unifies speech understanding and generation to help developers create natural, human-like voice conversations in AI applications with better performance and lower costs. 
• AWS released its Well-Architected Generative AI Lens, providing architectural best practices and a framework for evaluating generative AI workloads built on AWS, covering model selection, prompt engineering, customization, and integration. 
• The ‘Move to AI’ Modernization Pathway is a new program from AWS that will help organizations systematically identify and implement AI opportunities within their existing application portfolios. 

Ma’am, I’m going to have to call security 

Hackers stole thousands of Amazon S3 keys as part of a (honestly brilliant) ransomware campaign. Some users are STILL unaware that their keys have been compromised, but it doesn’t matter because it’s “virtually impossible” to undo the damage. The tactics represent a “‘significant escalation in cloud ransomware tactics.’” Read the article to learn how they did it. 

By Jane Dornemann

Image by Nicole Todd

More than two years following the debut of generative AI, companies that brought the technology to their workforces want a return on their investment. Wait—if so cool, why no ROI? Because employees aren’t adopting it effectively. 

A survey from Accenture found that 55% of employees said they’d gain the confidence to use generative AI tools if they had clear guidance and comprehensive training. Perhaps that would close the 20% gap between how C-suite leaders and their employees understand the potential value of AI “to a great extent.” 

So, we have an adoption problem. And as marketers shift their focus to agentic AI, this low adoption rate can make it challenging for prospects to continue on their AI journey. If organizations don’t generate an ROI, they’re less likely to consider the value of agentic AI—and might be skeptical about its ability to uncover invaluable sales leads or enter new markets. 

Fear not! 2A is here to help you grow your generative AI accounts by targeting the end user in a way that will drive ROI. Here are a few things you (and we) can do: 

Produce case studies for everyone. Case studies are middle-to-bottom-of-funnel assets, which are great for helping business and technology decision-makers see a clear path to employee use and ROI. Because we’re talking about technology, it’s easy to default to focusing on the IT and development, or “backend,” aspect of adoption. With agentic AI, we need to think differently. Using new technology to yield real change in a business depends as much on the front of house, so don’t be afraid to be less technical in an agentic AI case study. Spotlight Alex from accounting when he gets to his desk in the morning. It will show leadership how the technology is applied in day-to-day operations that affect the bottom line (versus the journey to a successful integration) and give potential buyers a sense of how it materializes in and improves workflows. Beyond the C-suite, these case studies are shareable with the end user so they can also understand the value and usability of agentic AI for as many use cases as possible. 

Customize end-user guides. Pair your pitch with end-user guides to help employees start using your agentic AI solution, which you can distribute once the customer is on board. These guides should keep it simple, avoid technical jargon, and focus on what users need to get started. For example, instead of explaining the science behind large language models, start with why the tool matters: “You can ask your agent a question or give it a command,” or “You’ll get better results if you provide your agent with a sample of what you’re looking for.” Use real examples to illustrate key points, and consider a tiered approach, such as basic guides for beginners and advanced ones for power users. Most importantly, customize these guides by industry with content marketers who understand sector-specific terms, pain points, and goals for different roles within an industry’s organization. 

At 2A, we love brainstorming, building, and designing end-user materials—and we’re ready to help you boost conversion with this oft-forgotten ingredient for marketing magic. Contact us to get started. 

By Jane Dornemann

Wheelin’ and dealin’ 

• Genetic medicine company ElevateBio is collaborating with AWS to accelerate drug development using CRISPR gene editing therapeutics. 
• A bunch of energy companies created the Open Power AI Consortium to develop AI tools that will improve grid reliability, with Microsoft and AWS as founding members. Part of what is driving this is concern over utility demands for powering AI. This is like when Brazil cut down eight miles of rainforest to build a highway to its climate summit.  
• Cloud-based vegetation management sounds like what a stoner does all weekend but it’s actually a real thing from Hitachi, and it will now get a boost from AWS. Because guess what—we need more reliable energy infrastructure. The lights keep going out on our tomatoes because we all need to ask ChatGPT to give us a picture of a cat wearing cowboy boots and stuff.
• Both Microsoft and AWS have entered deals with Siemens, the global technology conglomerate. Siemens will develop its Industrial Foundation Model on Azure and has been working on a digital building platform with AWS. 
• When I worked for a PR agency our top customer was Adobe, and I had to go to the Adobe Summit every year in Vegas, and one time the hotel messed up booking so I had to share a room with my boss and I thought she was asleep but she wasn’t, and in the dark she suddenly asked if I wanted to gamble and I said YES so we changed out of our PJs and went to play Blackjack. Except she just wanted ME to play, not her, so I did, and I was up like $200 and ready to walk away but she pressured me to keep going and I lost it all on the next hand and then we went back to bed. But anyway, this year at Adobe Summit the company announced it’s going to build new integrations with AWS generative AI services, Amazon Connect, and Amazon Ads. 
• Adobe didn’t only announce integrations with AWS generative AI tools at Adobe Summit. It will also extend its integrations with Microsoft by activating Adobe Marketing Agent in Teams, PowerPoint, Word, and Microsoft 365 Copilot. 

World domination 

• AWS signed an agreement with Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security, which will involve developing new standards for cloud environments and helping European businesses meet requirements via AWS European Sovereign Cloud.
• Denmark’s Danske Bank is migrating all its applications, data, and infrastructure to AWS. 

New stuff  

• Amazon Q in QuickSight has new scenario analysis capabilities that support non-technical people in building data models and asking exploratory “what if” questions, like “What if we CRISPRed a bunch of lizards to build a fleet of dinosaurs for a luxury dinosaur taxi service, do you think business would finally designate dinosaur parking spaces, yes or no?”
• Working with AWS and Anthropic, Deloitte launched AI Advantage. It provides intelligent analytics and insights, along with an agent that automates finance tasks, using Amazon Bedrock and Anthropic’s LLMs. 
• Microsoft showed the world what’s come out of its Azure AI Foundry thus far. It released agent framework, which simplifies the orchestration of multi-agent systems. And, there’s AI Red Teaming, an AI that systematically probes (ooooh, say more) other AI models to flag safety risks. 
• Oh, did you think we were done with agents for today? No. Microsoft’s Researcher agent addresses multi-step research at work while its Analyst agent “thinks like a skilled data scientist” to get insights in minutes.  
• Connected to work at the AI Foundry, NVIDIA has several things going with Microsoft, including the AgentIQ toolkit for real-time agent monitoring and optimization.  
• On a different day, Microsoft announced multiple new capabilities for its Security Copilot agents—they can provide threat intelligence briefings, optimize conditional access, and more. 
• AWS has made multi-agent collaboration in Amazon Bedrock generally available. This will make it easier for developers to churn out and manage AI agents that work together to carry out complex tasks…like training dinosaurs to drive. 
• At Google Cloud Next, Google announced new features to its Agentspace that will lower the barrier to adoption. No-code agent creation pulls in users of all technical levels and the new Tensor Processing Unit and AI Hypercomputer both boost the cloud provider’s presence in AI hardware and software. Several other announcements, including agent-to-agent communication protocol, show that Google’s AI investments are paying off. 

Ma’am, I’m going to have to call security 

• Google is set to acquire cybersecurity company Wiz in a $32B deal that the tech giant will use to make its cloud platform more secure. The company also announced new security agents. 

Professional pivots  

• The VP of AI/ML services for AWS, who oversaw solutions like Amazon Bedrock and Amazon SageMaker, has left after a year. Personally, I am less baffled by his one-year tenure than I am by the fact that he spells out hashtag in his LinkedIn profile before using an actual hashtag.  
• The general manager of generative AI at AWS is leaving to launch his own company. PLEASE PLEASE let it be a dinosaur parking logistics company. 

Gossip (for nerds) 

• An ex-senior product manager is suing AWS for discrimination, claiming she was laid off because of her gender and age. When AWS laid off people in 2023, it reduced the percentage of women in leadership positions from 62.5% to 28.6%. In a 2024 re-org, 60% of those laid off were over 40. 
• Microsoft is backing out of many of its data center commitments on a global level. Indonesia, the UK, and Australia locations have been halted, and in the U.S. plans for Illinois, North Dakota, Wisconsin, and Ohio are paused. It’s unclear why, but this article suggests that Microsoft isn’t seeing enough demand to justify the new centers versus other reasons like rising construction costs. This article says, “Trump’s tariffs are likely to have a hugely negative impact on the US tech sector.” GREAT. 
• While the big three U.S. cloud platforms dominate, they don’t own it all. Europe has its own cloud providers, and they say they have two advantages: a friendlier interface and onboarding process, and less dubious privacy rules than their American counterparts. I feel like there’s a third advantage, but I just can’t think of anything that might drive the world away from U.S. cloud providers, can you? I mean, there’s not really anything going on, you know? 
• Voicing concern about anti-competitive tactics, two U.S. senators want to know more about Microsoft’s and Google’s partnerships with AI companies. 
• At a 50th anniversary celebration during which Microsoft unveiled new Copilot features around memory, some employees stood up to protest the cloud giant’s contract with Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), interrupting the company CEO in front of thousands of people. Microsoft supplies IDF with AI-powered software used in selecting bomb targets in Gaza. (IDF also uses AWS to store surveillance information). A protesting employee was fired shortly after the event and another resigned.
• The Microsoft CTO says AI will generate 95% of code in the next five years, but that doesn’t mean a total replacement of human developers. Meanwhile, other outlets report that big tech firms ARE using AI to replace employees. Earlier in the year, Satya Nadella said AI agents would eventually replace all software-as-a-service and that in the future, people will be hired based on the agents they’ve created. I don’t like this game. 

Best Friends Forever 

• New to AWS Marketplace: Credential security platform Dashlane; Pipe17, an ecommerce software platform; Afiniti’s eXperienceAI, which provides customer experience technology. 
• New to Microsoft Azure Marketplace: Zenity, which secures AI agents; Happiest Minds’ generative AI investor solution; CTERA’s edge-to-cloud files services; CloudAtlas AI Guardian for ethical AI governance and security; SPIN Analytics’ RISKROBOT, which helps financial institutions model credit risk; ThetaRay’s Sonar, a SaaS transaction monitoring solution for fintechs and banks; accounts payable automation solution Dooap; and Apiboost’s Developer Portal. 

By Jane Dornemann

Image by Suzanne Calkins

Gossip (for nerds) 

• Even though its cloud division underperformed, quarterly earnings for Amazon surpassed expectations. Profits were up 88% from a year ago! Everyone was on Amazon buying canned goods and oxygen canisters because soon we won’t be able to go outside without having to engage in hand-to-hand combat with the half-zombie half-human who used to be our neighbor while a nuclear bomb explodes in the background. 
• In Microsoft’s quarterly earnings report, AI revenue was $3B above forecast. However, its cloud earnings fell short (the exact words from UBS analysts were “far worse than expected”), which led stock to dip 5%. 
• While AWS ramps up data center spending, Microsoft canceled leases with at least two private data center operators. It currently leases data center capacity from various suppliers, but recent cancellations may signal an oversupply (an “AI bubble”) issue—slow customer payoffs and the arrival of DeepSeek are two reasons why demand may be cooling. 
• So, what does this all mean for next quarter? Microsoft’s CFO says it’ll probably fall short again, citing influences like foreign exchange rates and businesses not dedicating budgets to AI. Also, spitting truth: “Customers feel that ‘sorely needed features, enhancements, and fixes to core products’ have been put to the side ‘in favor of trying to build a Copilot into everything.’” 
• A Microsoft executive said AI will transform wealth management, making it easier for smaller entities like startups to compete with big banks. This is because of AI’s ability to condense data and reduce costs. Specifically, agentic AI can replace people in jobs like customer advisement and portfolio construction with AI. 
• Is AWS the technology version of Carrie Bradshaw, who spends all her rent on shoes? The cloud giant is doling out the equivalent of a year’s revenue (~$100B) on infrastructure to support AI. 
• Have you ever renovated a kitchen? Here’s the tech version of that. 
• Microsoft doesn’t want Donald Trump to advance limits on AI chip exports to Chinese companies, and says doing so would be a “strategic misstep.” Oh really, has that happened lately? 
• According to a report from AWS, European startups are adopting AI much faster than their large enterprise counterparts—creating a “two-tier AI economy.” 
• Leaked documents revealed that Microsoft is far more involved with the Israeli military and its operations than previously known. 
• Allegations that DOGE is feeding sensitive Department of Education data to AI using Microsoft Azure is alarming to cybersecurity experts (and everyday people, too). 
• There are no private memos, OK? Just write like it’s gonna be leaked, because the people need their corporate bread and circuses. In this month’s leaked memo, managers will need to manage more, but also less. 
• CrowdStrike has made history as the first cloud-native cybersecurity ISV to earn more than $1B in annual sales from AWS Marketplace. Why yes, we DID do marketing work for them. 

Wheelin’ and dealin’ 

• Mondelēz International, the snacks and confectionary company that produces Oreos and Sour Patch Kids—which are chock full of red dye 3 and make your kids lose their goddamn minds—is moving to AWS. 
• Investigative analytics software provider Cognyte is integrating its solution to be deployable with Microsoft Azure. This will bring Cognyte tools into Azure to process and analyze unstructured data. Am I ever going to read something about data and not think of The Goonies? Probs not. 
• Following an investment from Microsoft, Veeam will build AI products. Veeam’s core products focus on cybersecurity. 
• VC firm General Catalyst is partnering with AWS to co-develop and deploy integrated AI products for healthcare—predictive care insights, diagnostics, patient engagement, and platform interoperability. My favorite part of this article is that they included the misspelling in Matt Garma’s emailed quote. Someone get ahead of this man and send him a there-they’re-their primer. 
• AWS is going to help Honda transition from hardware-based vehicles to software-based ones using generative AI, IoT, and AWS compute. And, in partnership with AWS, automotive technology company Valeo is building new solutions for software-defined vehicles. 
• Wow, AWS really is putting the wheeling back into dealing because there is more vroom vroom news. AWS is expanding its presence as the global technology provider for SRO Motorsports Group to “digitally transform the science of racing.” 
• Educational publisher Pearson is expanding its use of AWS, including AI capabilities, to further personalize learning. 
• Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center is collaborating with AWS to accelerate breakthroughs in cancer research by applying AI to multimodal data. The deal will also support AI-powered drug discovery efforts. Montefiore Health System is doing similar stuff with AWS. 
• Clinical AI company Aidoc has entered into a strategic collaboration with AWS, which will start with optimizing Aidoc’s CARE Foundation Model. The FM helps doctors with real-time identification of suspected critical conditions. 
• Defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton is working with AWS to “enhance technology for federal agencies.” Great timing. 
• Snowflake is expanding its partnership with Microsoft to bring OpenAI’s advanced models straight to customers through Snowflake Cortex AI on Microsoft Azure AI Foundry. 
• Faros AI is collaborating with Microsoft to bring its data platform for optimizing engineering to Azure. 

Ma’am, I’m going to have to call security 

• A hacker named Codefinger (ewww) is targeting Amazon S3 buckets, and the ransomware campaign is so effective, organizations are reporting that they can’t shut it down without issuing payment. This could potentially affect supply chains. Um…it’s Cadbury crème egg season, so there better not be supply chain problems. 
• Russian scammers are posing as Microsoft tech support on Microsoft Teams, even doing video calls in some cases and getting employee permission to take over screens! Can you imagine watching someone download malware on your computer screen in real time? Talk about a bad day. 

World domination 

• Microsoft went into full diva mode with its creation of a NEW FORM OF MATTER. That’s right—its “topological qubit” is not gas, liquid, or solid, and it can be used to drive quantum computing (which Microsoft researchers now believe is years away instead of decades). 
• The AWS cloud region in Thailand, which includes three Availability Zones, is now up and running. Microsoft is planning to build there but it hasn’t yet. In Singapore, AWS unveiled its Asia-Pacific hub office. 
• AWS announced a $5M investment in “mega data centers” for Central Mexico. 
• The UK has dropped its investigation into a potentially anti-competitive deal between Microsoft and OpenAI—for now, regulators say. 
• Years after Europe asked for more data sovereignty, Microsoft completed its EU Data Boundary project. This will allow EU countries to remain compliant with local regulations, such as storing data in European Free Trade Association regions. 
• AWS launched a CloudFront Edge region in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and hopes to have a fully operational cloud region by 2026. And Saudia Arabia’s STC Group will work with AWS to speed up AI-powered innovation. 
• I didn’t know there was any room left in New York City, but apparently there is, because AWS launched a new, upgraded Local Zone Edge location there. 
• Australia has entered a Whole-of-Government agreement with AWS. And Australian CommBank extended its agreement with AWS to include customer service optimization and AI innovation. 
• India will see $15B in data infrastructure investments from AWS. Also, India’s Tata Power will use AWS AI and IoT to improve things like predictive maintenance for grid resilience. 

New stuff 

• AWS previewed its Salesforce Contact Center with Amazon Connect, which helps service reps avoid platform switching and gives them a choice in the digital channels they use. So, now Karens can unload all their repressed existential angst and political fear on someone either through Salesforce or Connect. 
• It must be Christmas because Santa has visited us all, and in his sleigh is the best present of all: no more Chime. You’d think it would be hard to come up with a gift that every single person on Earth would be happy to receive, but NO, it wasn’t hard.
• And following suit, Microsoft is retiring Skype and moving users toward Teams. 
• AWS issued a new rule for third-party SaaS vendors on Marketplace that want a discount: They’ll need to be running 100% on AWS. 
• Microsoft’s new podcast, Leading the Shift, will feature interviews with experts, customers, and partners on what they’re doing with AI, data, and the cloud. 
• Are we all ready for Microsoft Build? This reporter expects several Copilot announcements.
• Welcome the o3-mini reasoning model to the world, now available in Microsoft Azure OpenAI.

By Jane Dornemann

Image by Julianne Medenblik

As a writer by trade, I’m supposed to tell you that generative AI technologies such as ChatGPT aren’t good enough—that you need a human like me to tell your story. In reality, that statement is only half true. 

Having already moved through the stages of grief, I can honestly say that generative AI has already changed how we work…and it will continue doing so. It wouldn’t have that impact if it were entirely useless, right? There are many ways I now use platforms such as Claude to ideate, tweak a sentence, summarize, or ask for explanations. It’s pretty good, and there are times when it produces something that only needs slight refinement. In quantitative terms, I give it a 7 out of 10. 

But other times, it needs real work, and businesses are taking risks by copying and pasting generative AI content onto their websites or marketing materials. Whether it’s a notably inaccurate summary, a word-bloated paragraph, or a straight-up hallucination—all of which I’ve seen—it’s a bit of a time bomb for brands that aren’t using writers as gatekeepers (as opposed to product marketers, for example). 

It also begs a really big question: Do you want to send 7-out-of-10 content into the world? Does 7/10 content give you a competitive edge, or does it file you into the ranks of the average, along with all the other companies doing the same thing? 

Embracing the writer–generative AI hybrid 

If you’re thinking about using generative AI more, we won’t stop you—but we strongly advise you to still include professional writers with subject-matter expertise throughout your process. At 2A, we know the risks companies take by avoiding this route.  

Here are four essential ways writers can protect you from the pitfalls of generative AI. 

1. We keep you from sounding like everyone else 

Whatever generative AI is writing for you, it’s also writing for everyone else. You may have noticed that marketing content, such as product descriptions, sounds too close to those from competitors. Content often includes overused transitional phrases such as “Additionally” and “In summary.” 

This leads me to ask: Is this a ninth-grade book report? 

Generative AI is good at business rhetoric. It sounds professional, intelligent, and confident. But it’s a mirage. The technology creates content based on all the content it has received or been trained on, and it doesn’t differentiate for you. It doesn’t filter out mediocre writing because it doesn’t understand what mediocre writing is. As a result, it’s not uncommon to receive content that uses passive voice (a no-no in “good” writing) and features wandering sentences. Sometimes, you have to feed it back its own content, then ask it to remove redundancies, be more concise, or stick to active voice. While generative AI can be impressive, it still can’t match—or beat—writing with a human brain. Do you think it could write a blog just like this one? Nope. 

In summary, it’s not there yet (see what I did?). 

Would this opening really hook readers and differentiate 2A’s brand more than the opening we wrote above?  

2. We know all the tools and prompt hacks 

I’ve found that most non-writers who are using generative AI tend to use one platform. For example, they solely use ChatGPT or Copilot. They usually provide relatively basic prompts, such as “Take this marketing brief and turn it into three lines of social copy.” We use generative AI as an assistant in various ways, such as brainstorming, catching typos, and summarizing our human-created content—but we never use it as a primary creator. That’s because it takes as much work to refine as it does to just do it ourselves. The key to reducing the work is a stellar prompt. 

At 2A, our writers have experimented with the full spectrum of generative AI platforms and learned how to craft an excellent prompt that yields the best results. There’s a science to it that takes time, study, and practice to perfect. Some platforms are better for editing or rephrasing, while others are best for context setting. A good prompt should have several elements and set clear parameters. Nuanced content requires several rounds of prompting—and cobbling pieces of each result together. If you’re going to rely on generative AI, it’s your best bet to consult a writer with subject-matter expertise in creating the prompts, running iterations, and finalizing content. 

When you’re a prompting pro, the results are so much better.

3. We safeguard from lies, lies, dirty rotten lies 

Last week, I asked a generative AI platform to explain the concept of a cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP). What I got back had enough inaccuracies that it would have created problems if it ended up in public-facing marketing content—and this wasn’t the first time that I’ve received incorrect information. When I was writing a personal blog, I asked generative AI to provide a brief history of an organization, and while 99% was correct, it gave me the wrong founding year and the wrong number of organizational members. I have no idea where it pulled those from. Imagine if that kind of nonsense was in your global marketing assets! 

If no one is fact checking and verifying sources in every aspect of what generative AI is producing, you’re absolutely taking risks. So, love your human writers, who will go through your generative AI content with a fine-toothed comb. 

We’re not into zippers. 

4. We bend it to your brand 

Brands that hire us have a thorough set of style guidelines we follow. This keeps their content both unique and consistent. For example, some brands ask that we not spell out certain acronyms, while other brands provide a list of terms we need to avoid (such as “execute”). For assets focused on cybersecurity, we’re often asked to avoid fearmongering. These notes are still too abstract for generative AI—but not for us. 

If you’re using generative AI casually to create content, you aren’t using a robust program that allows you to feed it an 80-page style guide. And even then, generative AI can get it wrong. 2A’s writers can customize AI-generated content to follow your brand guidelines in ways that technology simply can’t do right now. 

Want the best of both worlds? Great! You have options: Send us your generative AI–produced content for us to vet and improve, or just send us your resources and provide access to your subject matter experts. We’ll use our know-how to create a stellar final product…one that won’t tell you David Bowie invented the elevator (or that the elevator was invented by David Bowie). Contact us. 

By Jane Dornemann

Image by Suzanne Calkins

Gossip (for nerds) 

• A survey found that 87% of Amazon employees expect their productivity to slide when they return to the office (RTO). And 45% said that even with RTO, they’ll still be in a different location than their manager. Unsurprisingly, 48% of staff are actively seeking new jobs. 
• Maybe that last stat will help with a minor detail: Locations such as New York and Atlanta don’t actually have the room for everybody to RTO. 
• Apple is using custom AI chips from AWS to power its search services. It’s evaluating the newest chip to pretrain Apple Intelligence and similar models. This could make AWS more competitive with NVIDIA. 

Wheelin’ and dealin’ 

• Product design software provider Ansys and generative AI simulation platform Cognata are collaborating with Microsoft on a web-based testing solution for autonomous vehicle sensors and driver assistance systems. 
• Philips has expanded its collaboration with AWS to unify workflows for integrated diagnostics, such as bringing together pathology, cardiology, and radiology.  
• GitLab is combining its Duo AI Assistant with Amazon Q to “accelerate software innovation and developer productivity.”
• Microsoft bought 485,000 NVIDIA AI chips—twice as many as Meta. 
• Marvell—not the cool superhero franchise (that’s one “l,” Marvel), but the “leader in data infrastructure semiconductor solutions”—has signed a five-year deal with AWS. Marvell will supply essential silicon technologies to AWS while using the cloud company’s scalable compute capabilities to design new stuff. 

Ma’am, I’m going to have to call security 

• Let’s start with the good news: Microsoft patched three flaws in Dynamics 365 and Power Apps Web API. Yay! 
• Now, for everything else: Microsoft says passwords are over, and it will delete them for ONE BILLION users (say that like Dr. Evil). They’ll be replaced by passkeys that use biometrics and PINs. 
• That plan might work after Microsoft addresses weaknesses in its multi-factor authentication (MFA) process. Hackers found a way to bypass a couple flaws in the MFA alert systems and gained unauthorized access into Windows accounts. 
• AWS will not deploy Microsoft 365 for at least another year—not until Microsoft fixes all the security issues that AWS has identified. 

World domination 

• Somehow, Microsoft has become the first big tech company to receive certification from South Korea’s Cloud Security Assurance Program. Not only that, but South Korea’s public institutions—which face “constant cybersecurity threat from North Korea”—will use Azure. 
• Two French “cybercrime gangs”—ShinyHunters and The Nemesis, both of which sound like great band names—stole AWS credentials by scanning millions of websites for vulnerabilities. But they got caught after misconfiguring the Amazon S3 buckets that held the stolen data. “We’re the wet bandits! That’s W-E-T….” 
• Norwegian-owned telecom company Telenor is moving all of its TV streaming services to the AWS Cloud. 
• After moving one million 5G customers to the AWS Cloud, Telefonica Germany is working with AWS to test quantum technologies on its mobile network. Just in time: Google announced Willow, its latest quantum chip. 

New stuff 

• Quantum computing hype is starting to replace AI hype. The new AWS Quantum Embark program will help businesses learn how to use the technology when it’s ready, including pinpointing use cases and figuring out technical enablement. 
• The AWS Education Equity Initiative has committed $100M to training students in underserved communities in AI, cloud computing, and more. Oh, but don’t think a penny of this will go toward teachers—no, no. This is $100M in cloud credits. The way AWS pushes cloud credits, you’d think it’s the new dogecoin. ::Fans last spark of willpower to stay alive:: 
• Coming soon is Azure OpenAI’s o1 multimodal model, which early adopter customers say provides improved response accuracy and can fulfill complex requests, such as automating tasks for lawyers. 
• Hope you’re not thirsty! Water usage has been a big concern for data centers, especially with the advent of mainstream AI. Currently, Microsoft consumes 125 million liters per data center annually. Lucky for us, Microsoft is planning to apply a zero-water design for data centers starting in 2027. 
• AWS is also looking at resource optimization for power and cooling, such as direct-to-chip cooling for energy efficiency. 
• Azure AI Agent Service helps developers build and deploy AI agents without having to manage compute or storage. 
• AWS has created a “Buy with AWS” button that partners can add to their websites, making it easier for customers to make purchases through their AWS accounts. 
• Security, at your service: AWS launched Security Incident Response, which helps security teams resolve ransomware attacks and other security intrusions. This journalist says that the new service isn’t too different from what other incident response services have to offer, including those from AWS partners. 
• AWS customers can upload their data to physical terminals called Data Transfer Terminals. It requires a scheduled date and time at a place where there are no signs for any kind of terminal because it’s a secret mission-type thing. Seriously: Look at these pictures! 
• A total of 10 new products (via five keynote speeches) were unveiled at re:Invent (wow, they are SO edgy, starting the name with a lowercase letter). Read a summary in TechCrunch (and also here), which felt like the only news source heavily covering re:Invent this year. 
• The general availability of Trainium2 AI chip-powered EC2 instances was announced at re:Invent, along with Trainium3 chips and “UltraServers,” which allow customers to connect multiple servers to a giant one. 
• Amazon Nova is a foundational model only available on Amazon Bedrock that lowers costs and latency for generative AI tasks. 
• Amazon Aurora DSQL is a new, serverless distributed SQL database that’s four times faster than “leading distributed databases” such as Google Spanner. 
• Oracle has released a limited preview of its Oracle Database@AWS. Customers can connect their enterprise data in Oracle to the AWS Cloud. 

Best Friends Forever 

• Saifr, which provides financial compliance technology, added its AI models to Microsoft’s Azure AI model catalog. 
• New to Microsoft Marketplace: Keyless, a biometric authentication solution; DigiCert ONE, a trust management platform; and Aquant’s Service Co-Pilot, an AI model that improves troubleshooting and proactive maintenance. 
• Marchex, an AI and analytics provider for vertical markets, joined the Microsoft Cloud AI Partner Program. 
• Mirakl’s Marketplace Platform, which helps businesses manage marketplace and dropship operations, is now in AWS Marketplace. 

By Jane Dornemann

Image by Rachel Adams

After taking graphic design as a high school freshman in Missoula, Montana, Nicole was hooked. She was so diligent about immediately practicing her newly acquired skills that classmates came to know Nicole’s design prowess, to which she applied her great sense of humor. 

“I used to photoshop my classmates’ faces onto images. When Miley Cyrus released her ‘Wrecking Ball’ video—I had fun with that.” Soon, she was flooded with requests. It’s rare to be so certain about a career path at the tender age of 14, but Nicole’s passion for digital creativity never wavered. And sometimes, it even got her out of math class. “If the school newspaper needed something, I’d be excused from whatever class I was in to help,” she said. 

From real estate, to public health, to Gartner 

Nicole majored in graphic design at Montana State, where she interned for the athletic department’s marketing team. And she may have completed one of the more unique theses on Earth for graphics students: to raise awareness of a chronic condition from which a family member suffered, she designed a website for Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS). Not long after graduating, Nicole moved to Texas and embarked on a professional journey that can best be described as eclectic. She created beautiful things for a boutique real estate brokerage business; inventive images for a logistics company; stunning designs that supported public health awareness campaigns; and corporate creative at Gartner, the tech research and consulting firm. 

Finding a home away from home 

With a desire to continue trying new things and build on what she learned at Gartner, Nicole applied to 2A. “What I love most about 2A is the people—we have a great team,” Nicole said. “Everybody here cares, and that’s hard to find at other jobs.” 

Nicole learned this firsthand, when she flew to Washington state for her first 2A retreat—only to be struck down by food poisoning. “I was excited to meet my coworkers in person and was like, ‘Hi! I have to go throw up!’” she recalled. “So many people at 2A helped me get through that.” Since joining 2A, Nicole has learned a lot and said 2A’s culture has fostered that growth. “I love that we have creative freedom and are encouraged to try to do things differently.” 

A bit of botany 

Outside of design, she has a love for two kinds of living things: dogs and plants. Nicole recently added a puppy to accompany her dog Odie, and she and her husband tend to a collection of 117 plants—a habit that began after she was encouraged to take a spider plant home from the office years ago. Beyond that, Nicole paddleboards in the summer, but mostly appreciates spending time with family. Every now and then, she makes a point to check out Austin’s food truck scene. “If there is a plant nursery near a food truck, that’s where we go,” she joked (but come on, we know she’s totally serious). 

By Jane Dornemann

Image by Suzanne Calkins

Gossip (for nerds) 

• Trazillionaire Elon Musk has upped the ante on his lawsuit with OpenAI, because he apparently has nothing better to do before he starts running our government so deep into the ground that it touches the Earth’s lava core. He claims that both Microsoft and OpenAI have prevented competition from surviving in the market—in addition to prioritizing profits over the public good. Kind of like…releasing self-driving cars that burst into flames and run people over…BUT I DIGRESS.
• The principal just walked in and asked Microsoft to step outside—the US Federal Trade Commission has its sights set on the technology company’s anticompetitive practices, which include Azure’s restrictive licensing. In a couple months, I’m sure the Department of Government Efficiency will be thrilled to help. 
• Remember all those AWS employees who were “so excited” about the return to the office (RTO)? Well, they might be surprised to hear that a bunch of “distraught” employees wrote an open letter to CEO Matt Garman being like, WTF, dude. The RTO deadline is in January, which is also when the TikTok ban starts, so I hope you like misery. 
• Between January and August of this year, Amazon cut its US advertising budget by 20%. Including its AWS arm, Amazon’s budget for all types of promotional costs has decreased by millions. 
• Increased spending on AI will slow Microsoft’s growth this quarter. Financially, the company can’t address its AI capacity constraints until the second quarter. 
• It hasn’t been announced yet, but Microsoft will use HarperCollins books to train a mysterious AI model. Authors can opt in for the low, low price of one human soul. 

Wheelin’ and dealin’ 

• Amazon doubled its investment in AI startup Anthropic with another $4B in funding. Moving forward, Anthropic will use AWS Trainium and Inferentia chips to train and deploy its largest AI models.
• This is just in time to give US intelligence the power of generative AI, along with Palantir. The press release can’t actually tell us what the CIA will do with this technology, so hats off to the author, who somehow managed to craft six paragraphs of absolutely nothing but filler text.
• On the other side of the spectrum, the press release about the expanded partnership between AWS and MongoDB tells you waaaay more than you want to know.
• Nokia will provide routers and switches for Azure datacenters in an extended agreement between the two companies. This is funny because Amazon sued Nokia a few months ago for patent grabbing. Which happened a year after Nokia sued Amazon for patent infringement—and blogged about it! Let’s all just sue each other back and forth forever until we die.
• AWS announced a Generative AI Partner Innovation Alliance that will help customers build their own AI solutions. It’s launching with nine partners, one of them being a government intelligence and weapons systems contractor, which makes complete sense because we are the worst.
• Cognizant is partnering with AWS to deliver smart manufacturing capabilities for the industrial sector. Maybe they can smartly manufacture a way for me to get out of this country.
• Technology and communications company Lumen will supply AWS with its fiber network to improve datacenter connectivity. In turn, Lumen will use AWS solutions, including those for generative AI, to modernize its systems.
• Outbrain has agreed to improve its advertising platform by scaling its operations on Azure and enhancing its services with generative AI solutions from Microsoft.
• Money launderers, we just wanna get to know ya. Is green your favorite color? AWS is partnering with Binance to help the crypto platform better screen customers using an AI integration. This comes after a shakeup in Nigeria, where one Binance exec escaped detention and left the country while another was thrown in prison for “suspicious cash flows.” But, please, focus on the customers.
• Europeans want a more compliant cloud. They’ll get one by the end of 2025, when the AWS Europe Sovereign Cloud launches, complete with regulatory-friendly partner solutions in its Marketplace.
• It’s now easier for AWS customers to extend their on-premises Nutanix environment to the cloud. Thank you, Nutanix!!!!!
• A collaboration between Microsoft and Kyndryl makes it easier for customers to extend their on-premises environment to Azure. 

World domination 

• Microsoft ran out of places to shove Copilot, so it has expanded to a larger market—the limitless universe. In partnership with NASA, “Earth Copilot” will help us collect petabytes of data from observation satellites and make it easier for the general public to access it.
• If you Google news out of Sunbury, Ohio, you’ll mostly find obituaries and an inordinate number of animal-hoarding instances (What? Why? How?). Aside from that, you’ll learn that AWS is going to open a $2B datacenter there, which will be finished in 2028.
• AWS is giving away $110M in free computing power to researchers so long as they use Trainium AI chips. 

Ma’am, I’m going to have to call security 

• I need to learn how to code or something for Microsoft’s bug bounty program, which is awarding $4M to those who uncover security flaws. Look, if I win this thing and go on vacation and return to work suddenly looking a decade younger, I did NOT get a facelift, I just rested…with whoever Lindsay Lohan has been resting with. And if I DID get a facelift…no I didn’t.
• As I write this, millions of personal data points are up for grabs, thanks to developers who used Power Pages to build a website without implementing proper access controls. 

New stuff 

• It was a party at Ignite, starting with Microsoft’s unveiling of a custom AMD processor for virtual machine instances and two Microsoft-made chips, which is very demure and mindful of them.
• Azure AI Student has been packaged with other services and rebranded as Azure AI Foundry.
• Azure Local is a new cloud computing platform that allows companies to extend Azure to their on-premises and edge environments.
• Microsoft launched not one, but two infrastructure chips, meant to accelerate AI adoption and increase security.
• Leaving no stone unturned and no career unthreatened, Microsoft is building AI agents for lots of specific tasks, from real-time translations using your voice to processing invoice approvals and customer returns. Does Microsoft know that we, uh, need to like, buy food and stuff? To live? Pretty please, may we?
• It also introduced new AI models for industry. It has been building these pre-trained, fine-tuned models with big partners such as Siemens and Bayer.
• Fabric Databases, an addition to Microsoft Fabric, provisions autonomous databases in seconds.
• Redis can now be fully managed by Azure.
• Not on my 2024 bingo card (then again, neither was the CEO of the Worldwide Wrestling Federation becoming the head of education), but AWS will make it possible for Amazon Q to integrate with Microsoft Office 365.
• AWS App Studio is now generally available. It uses generative AI to build enterprise-grade apps. 

Professional Pivots 

AWS has hired Julia White (who killed Mr. Body in the library with the candlestick) as the company’s new chief marketing officer and VP. She previously spent 20 years at Microsoft and several years at SAP. 

Best Friends Forever 

• Splunk’s security observability and security platform is now available on Azure. 
• AI governance company Saidot can now integrate with Azure AI. 

New to Azure Marketplace 

• IBM subsidiary Apptio’s Targetprocess solution, which helps finance teams plan and manage budgets
• DataChant’s BI Pixie, which sounds like a little booster for Power BI
• Awardco, for employee recognition and rewards
• Shift Technology offers several products for property and casualty insurers
• Red Hat’s Enterprise Linux AI, a foundation model platform
• Cribl, which is too close to an offensive term for my comfort, is a data engine for IT and security
• IntelePeer’s SmartAgent and SmartOffice, which offer AI-powered communications automation 

New to AWS Marketplace 

• Jitterbit, which is also now an AWS Partner, a SaaS service that solves “hyperautomation issues”
• SugarCRM’s Sugar Sell and Sugar Market
• AttackIQ, which provides breach and attack simulation solutions
• Coder, an open-source platform for self-hosted development environments