By Jane Dornemann

Image by Suzanne Calkins

Wheelin’ and dealin’ 

• Accounting tech firm Sage, which serves SMBs, has partnered with AWS to build a domain-specific large language model using Amazon Bedrock and Amazon Lex. What I really want is a collaboration with Sage that has them making things with SageMaker so we can say Sage is a maker of SageMaker stuff. And then Sage can turn around and do a big deal with McCormick spices, specifically in their sage-making department, so Sage can sell SageMaker to the world’s No. 1 sage maker. 
• AWS, Accenture, and Anthropic have formed a partnership to help businesses in regulated sectors, such as finance and healthcare, access advanced AI models using Bedrock from AWS and Claude 3 from Anthropic. Accenture will train its engineers to use these tools so they can offer implementation support.  
• This is part of the AWS plan to run the world’s “biggest AI playground,” starting with Bedrock. 
• There’s a leadership shakeup at Microsoft, starting with its hire of Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of DeepMind and Inflection, who is now EVP and CEO of Microsoft AI. The company has also hired Karén Simonyan, another Inflection co-founder, as chief scientist. Pavan Davuluri is the new head of Windows and Surface. And it’s unclear if Mikhail Parakhin, who was the head of advertising and web, is staying with Microsoft or not. Microsoft also promoted Azure VP Girish Bablani to president. 
• After peeling off Inflection’s top two people, Microsoft agreed to pay the company $650M in cash to bring its AI models to Azure—and use most of its staff. So, basically this is what Mustafa’s new browsing history looks like.
• Inflection and OpenAI have to share the spotlight with others. Microsoft invested $16M in Mistral, a French AI company, to bring Mistral’s newest AI model to Azure. Geez, Azure is getting more models than NYC Fashion Week (I get one dad joke per newsletter). 
• This is part of Microsoft’s strategy to partner with many different AI companies. Microsoft will rely on these partners to enhance AI offerings while it focuses on building AI-essential infrastructure. 
• ALSO having entered a partnership with Microsoft, Mistral AI is providing AWS with its foundation models for tasks like code completion and text summarization. 
• And it’s wasting no time! Microsoft and OpenAI have plans to launch a $100B data center by 2028, which will include an AI supercomputer dubbed “Stargate.” Microsoft is largely footing the bill, which is about 100 times more than some of the biggest data centers, or about the same as my new health insurance deductible.  
• After entering a major partnership with Microsoft, NVIDIA is now partnered with AWS to bring its Blackwell GPU platform to the cloud provider, which will offer it with EC2 instances. The goal is to accelerate generative AI capabilities. Chuckin’ chips to all the big clouds…NVIDIA has major rizz and serious player energy and I am here for it. 
• E tu, Granicus? The “government experience” software and services provider is partnering with AWS to offer “engagement solutions” to the public sector. This will help the public sector do things like “customize citizen interactions.” In other words, it will help the government capture and correlate billions of our digital interactions. Should be fantastic, can’t wait. 

World domination 

• Kries from the Kremlin? In step with Amazon and Google, Microsoft has limited or removed access to more than 50 of its cloud products in Russia. Many Russian companies will find their keys for Dynamics 365, Azure, and other major platforms invalid. (However, this doesn’t address the Russian companies that had used foreign accounts to bypass any future restrictions.) While it seems like the private sector’s version of sanctions, these tech companies may be doing the Russian government a favor—the dictator, I mean president, wants to steer Russian businesses toward domestic solutions. I dunno, though…have you ever been on a Russian elevator? 
• Meanwhile, Chinese officials are telling government departments to stop using Intel, AMD, and Microsoft; they also want to drive domestic software and hardware production. They should make a TikTok about it… 
• AWS will launch an Infrastructure Region in Saudi Arabia by 2026. As part of its long-term commitment to the Kingdom, AWS will invest $5.3B there—a measly one-third of Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal’s net worth. “Why don’t you take me to dinner first before you insult me,” I imagine Talal saying to Jeff Bezos. “Take me out on your quaint little sailboat Jeff and tell me about this cheap infrastructure plan, it amuses me,” he’d say.  
• More in our neck of the woods, AWS plunked down $650M to buy Talen Energy’s 1,200-acre data center campus in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. Um, more interesting than that are the local news stories, forever my favorite. What’s going on in Luzerne County, you ask? A few things, like the installation of a toilet drop box for your ballots, an unruly hospital patient pulling the fire alarm, a drunken man kicking a state trooper, and a talent show!!! The data center will fit right in.  
• AWS will also open a new Direct Connect location in Hawaii, allowing businesses to establish a private, physical network connection between AWS and their data centers or offices. 
• Government agencies in the U.S. West region can use AWS Wickr, an encrypted communications service, following its FedRAMP authorization. Is there, like, a reason why the U.S. East can’t use it? Or will it just be approved in three hours because of the time difference? 

Gossip (for nerds) 

• AWS laid off hundreds of people, primarily in sales, marketing, and store technology teams. This is sad news for us over at 2A, and we hope to see those people we’ve enjoyed working with do big things wherever they go. 
• Microsoft will have to change how it markets its Teams and Office products following antitrust pressure from the European Union. The company has agreed to unbundle the two solutions, which makes Slack very happy. In the last decade, Microsoft has paid more than $2B in EU antitrust fines.  

New stuff  

• There is now an AWS Generative AI competency that businesses can earn, and the cloud giant claims it is the first to offer such a competency to partners.  
• Generative AI data company DataStax has achieved the new, totally hot and totally coveted Generative AI Competency. Crayon, an IT services company, has also colored itself competent. And so did Loka, a full-stack consultancy.  
• Microsoft designed a new safety feature that can better detect when AI is hallucinating and block malicious prompts. Prompts Shield will (try to) protect against indirect and direct attacks, in which users manipulate the AI to do something or use it to carry out a malicious attack, respectively. Here are some other safety tools. 
• This didn’t stop a self-described whistleblower at Microsoft from sounding the alarm on the harmful imagery Microsoft’s Copilot Designer can, and does, produce—even from benign requests.  
• Teams update: Microsoft has improved the AI features in Teams to offer message generation and smarter meeting summaries.  
• Businesses can move their data to other cloud providers for free, says AWS—and don’t think it’s out of the goodness of AWS’ heart. The company had to do this to comply with the European Data Act. 
• New capabilities are out for Amazon Connect, including a self-service, drag-and-drop tool to create Live Chats, along with some new plug-ins.  
• Copilot Pro is now available worldwide. Customers can use it to build their own copilots and embed them in Office apps.  
• Copilot is also ready for cybersecurity prime time, says the company that’s always getting hacked.  
• And Microsoft is developing a specialized strategy for bringing Copilot to finance teams, but its success depends on how customers use their data sources to generate results. 

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

• To get even less work done, congressional staff are no longer allowed to use the Microsoft Copilot chatbot because of security concerns. This comes after limitations on ChatGPT usage.  
• YOINK! AWS has won Gee Rittenhouse away from his position of CEO at Skyhigh Security, after only two years there. Rittenhouse will join AWS as VP of enterprise security.  

Best Friends Forever 

• Box has integrated Azure OpenAI Service with its selection of AI tools, but remains committed to its terrible user experience.  
• Veeam, a data backup and restore software company, is adding Microsoft Copilot and AI services to offerings. 
• Cognizant is going to work more closely with Azure by creating a special platform for Azure.  
• Tidal, a SaaS platform that helps with cloud migration and application management, is now part of Microsoft’s Azure Landing Zone Accelerator program.   
• Philips and AWS are collaborating to bring better diagnostic capabilities, including improved digital pathology, to healthcare companies.  
• Leidos, a company that—and I quote—“addresses the world’s most vexing challenges,” has entered a multi-year strategic agreement with AWS to solve famine…oh wait, no, to accelerate innovation in the commercial market. My bad. The world is pretty short on innovation, though… 
• Danske Bank, which is Danish but not like the kind you have for breakfast, I mean like the country, is migrating all its stuff to AWS.  
• Cybersecurity firm Arctic Wolf has made its entire portfolio available in AWS Marketplace. 
• Keeper Security, a cloud-based zero-trust software provider, has joined the AWS Partner Network. 

By Jane Dornemann

Image by Suzanne Calkins

World domination 

• Spain is getting a 2B Euro investment from Microsoft, in a collaboration with the country’s government, to beef up cybersecurity and inteligencia artificial, if you will. Also, Germany is getting a 3B Euro AI investment that will focus on expanding datacenters to accommodate the technology. 
• What better way for AWS to celebrate Q4 earnings than upgrading datacenters, which it will, for Local Zone locations in Chicago and Houston. It’s also opening a new Local Zone in Atlanta. 
• Mexico is getting $5B in AWS investments, which will include a new AWS Region and three Availability Zones. 
• Türkiye is the next international Amazon CloudFront edge location. I’m visiting Türkiye in three weeks, and since I have anxiety, I read all about how it’s due for another major earthquake and then created five different action plans. (One of which involves hiding in caves! AWS, I’m willing to sell you these plans for undisclosed amounts of money, so hit me up.) 

Wheelin’ and dealin’ 

• You know what will really help in an earthquake? Enhanced connectivity whilst traveling abroad, and wouldn’t you know it—Samsung, TELUS, and AWS are gonna make that happen. (But not in three weeks, so, time for ANOTHER plan!) 
• More telecom stuff: Vonage, Ericsson, and AWS are collaborating on new solutions to improve the customer experience and help businesses use 5G, network APIs, and generative AI. (What I want know: Do caves get service? I mean, good enough service to stream 90 Day Fiancé in a cave?) 
• New intel on Intel: The chip producer will manufacture semiconductors for Microsoft in a deal valued at $15B. This will, at least, help Microsoft expand its datacenters, and marks NVIDIA’s first AI foundry service. 
• It’s existential-threat-to-humanity time! The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is doing things that are sure to end well, such as engineering cyborg insects and launching nuclear-powered spaceships, has renewed its funding for Microsoft Azure Quantum. Unironically for Microsoft, quantum computing poses some cybersecurity threats. (My only hope: That I live to see the day where a quantum-computing hive of bees fights a robotic infantry mule to the death while I pound five Red Bulls and scream my lungs out.) 
• DeepScribe, an AI-powered medical scribe (I’m imagining a Renaissance-era guy with a quill scribbling doctor’s notes), is working with AWS to accelerate applications of large language models (LLMs) in medicine—starting with processing de-identified clinical conversations. (Also, that guy has pointy felt shoes. And a cape. But a small one.) 
• AWS has joined forces with Mistral AI, and will lean on the machine learning startup to make two AI models. 
• Financial services powerhouse BNY Mellon is migrating all its crap to Microsoft Azure. It’s also working with the Azure team to unite the cloud with BNY’s industry-specific data and analytics capabilities. 
• Microsoft is partnering with media platform Semafor to help the two harried journalists remaining in any newsroom work with generative AI. Additionally, Meltwater, a media intelligence solution, is collaborating with Microsoft to…do exactly what Microsoft loves to do, which is jam everything so full of jargon you can’t understand what’s happening. Happy deciphering. 
• Persistent has launched an AI-powered population health solution with Microsoft to determine patient needs and predict the cost of care. 
• CrowdStrike and AWS have created a startup accelerator in the EMEA region (aka half the world) and have selected 22 companies for the first cohort. 

Gossip (for nerds) 

• Let’s go from the fruitful valleys of Europe to the barren wastelands of Becker, Minnesota, where Microsoft will build a datacenter. Whichever Microsoft person is assigned to oversee that second-rate Siberian prison probably did something wrong, like opening one of the many, many phishing emails hitting Outlook. 
• Thanks to its innovations in AI, Microsoft is growing faster than AWS. The most recent earnings call revealed that Azure revenue increased 30% in just the last quarter and 24% year on year. AWS is still in the lead for cloud market share—for now. 
• Meanwhile, AWS was like, IN YOUR FACE, ANALYSTS! after the company surpassed expectations on a Q4 earnings call. Interestingly, the cloud provider acknowledged that its generative AI earnings were “relatively small” but it expects that to change dramatically over the next several years. Anyway, pour one out for that $24 billion in revenue, a 12% jump from Q3. 
• Cloud computing company Akamai has been fighting the good fight to become a cloud contender, and its geographical expansion is getting attention. For one, if Akamai’s broader availability wins it more market share from the big three, the giants might have to start cutting their pricing. Jk, this is late-stage capitalism—they have no chance. 
• The VP of AWS Infrastructure Hardware, Ahmed Shihab—who is credited for building out all AWS storage and compute systems—has jumped ship for Microsoft to become the VP of Azure Storage. So, I guess we’re just straight-up ignoring non-competes at this point. CORPORATE ANARCHY. Burn it all down, Ahmed!!!!  

New stuff  

• Let’s return to the little joys: Microsoft Teams. Coming soon to an endlessly pinging account near you is an AI-powered planner. It brings Microsoft To Do, Planner, Project, Copilot, and Microsoft 365 into one solution. 
• This is from Fox News, so who knows if it’s true, but AWS has launched a program to help SMBs get smart on AI and other technologies. 
• AWS is making serverless tech faster after launching an open-source project, LLRT. The company says it reduces runtimes and costs. 
• Windows Copilot is getting a makeover with the trial release of a Power Automate plug-in (Kelly lives for this stuff), which promises to “banish boring tasks.” One example Microsoft gives is using this tool to “Write an email to my team wishing everyone a happy weekend.” What a nice idea…except for the part where you outsourced a two-sentence email to AI. 
• Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose is now just Amazon Data Firehose. And AWS Glue can now integrate with Amazon Q, which can generate ETL script. 
• The Copilot icon will start animating, like a Clippy 2.0, when it recognizes you could use its help. But it won’t come CLOSE to what our motion designer Brian could have done with it. 

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

• Hackers are using Amazon Simple Notification Service to pose as USPS, but really, it’s a smishing campaign. You can tell that it’s fake because the messages don’t inexplicably ship to Malaysia when they’re addressed to Ohio, then to Virginia, and finally to Ohio five weeks later. 
• As Microsoft boasts that thousands of customers are using its AI tools, it’s good to remember that some of them are nation-state hackers. Malicious actors from Iran, North Korea, Russia, and China are employing generative AI for harmful cyber operations such as researching foreign think tanks, learning how to evade detection, and generating phishing content that “[attempts] to lure prominent feminists.” Oooooooh, so they wanna f*ck around and find out, I see. Greta Gerwig, they’re coming for you! Catch these hands, North Korea. (But for funsies, which campaign that sounds like a nail polish is your favorite?) 
• In the last Cloud cover, I joked about that Microsoft breach targeting executives. Well, turns out, it was kind of a big deal. Like, the biggest breach in Azure history-level big deal. I’m just gonna say it: Microsoft needs to start shifting left. I’m talking about whatever the developer equivalent of Karl Marx left is. It needs to happen. 
  • Cybersecurity firm Proofpoint found new campaigns targeting executives’ Microsoft Azure accounts. 
  • Microsoft pushed some updates this month and called urgent attention to “at least three” of 73 vulnerabilities in the Windows ecosystem—including Outlook—that hackers are exploiting. 
• All this is just in time for Microsoft to make Azure OpenAI available to our barely functioning government! I’m ready for a world where ChatGPT is speaker of the house. Azure OpenAI isn’t FedRAMP approved yet, but my guess is that approval will occur around NEVER O’CLOCK. 

Best Friends Forever 

Partner mischief this month was all AWS. 

• New to the AWS ISV Accelerate Program: Verusen, a supply chain intelligence platform, and SmartBear, a provider of observability and software testing solutions. 
• New to AWS Marketplace: Merge (what North Carolinians love to do at the last minute without signaling), a platform that lets businesses add product integrations. 
• Consulting firm Pariveda has achieved AWS Nonprofit Competency status and Blackline Safety achieved AWS Public Sector status. 
• API security company Salt Security has joined the AWS Lambda Ready Program. 
• Lightning AI has signed a strategic collaboration with AWS to offer its customers an enterprise-grade platform. (If you’re not doing that, what ARE you doing?) 
• Digital business services provider Teleperformance has achieved the AWS Well-Architected status…and announced it in an email with a typo in the first sentence. My heart bleeds for the PR intern or checked-out PR executive—either one is a candidate—who let it happen. RIP to you, friend. 

Miscellany 

• Microsoft is axing Azure IoT Central, a big part of the Azure developer platform. Developers at big companies like NVIDIA are allegedly “faced with uncertainty” about this, but given that it won’t die until 2027, they have several years to find certainty. And, bless Microsoft’s heart, it’s still soliciting new subscriptions for Azure IoT Central. 
• Microsoft’s AI Red Team is in charge of finding risk in its generative AI systems. They’re now employing a tool called PyRIT, which will…automate risk discovery because manual efforts are taking too long. ::Lets face fall into hands and weeps:: 

By Jane Dornemann

Image by Suzanne Calkins

You’re ready to embark on your next content marketing campaign and you’ve decided an ebook is the way to go. This may sound simple, but the truth is, there are so many types of ebook that it can feel like going into an ice cream parlor—everything looks good, but only one flavor will win you over. And you don’t want to choose an ebook that will have you gazing at your companion’s double scoop, wishing you’d gone with a different option. 

In this blog post, we offer five criteria that will help you narrow down the type of ebook that’s right for your campaign. 

1. Audience: If your audience is at the beginning of their buying journey, then your flavor is… 

Neapolitan 

This ebook targets readers who are new to your brand and focuses on creating awareness. It spotlights basic business value propositions and how those differ from competing solutions. These ebooks provide a high-level overview of ways the solution(s) can help solve readers’ problems. Keep the content between three and six pages, as you don’t want to bombard your audience with too much information. Remember: chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry: Set the stage by showing you understand the challenge, explain how the product works, and support your claims with a customer success story. 

2. Depth: If you need to detail product use cases and solution architectures, then your flavor is… 

Dark chocolate 

Product-centric ebooks are like dark chocolate—some people love it, nay, need it, while others are a hard pass for the moment—which makes knowing your audience especially crucial when choosing this flavor. Your readers should be mid-funnel and want to learn specifics about your offering and how your product compares to other options. Because this flavor is a more overt sell, keep the content straightforward and informative. Follow it up with a call to action that moves them closer to conversion, such as watching a demo, signing up for a trial, or speaking with an agent. It’s rich in flavor, it stands out, and it’s key to getting your reader to buy what you’re selling. 

3. Breadth: If you’re trying to appeal to a broad audience, then your flavor is… 

Rocky road 

Sometimes you want to mix it up—but this only works if everything makes sense altogether. (In restaurants, this is called a “chaos menu.”) If you want an all-of-the-above mash-up—product and feature descriptions, tips and advice, case studies, a predictive analysis on what’s next, and partners’ capabilities—make sure you delineate sections and arrange information so that it flows organically. Make it easier for a discerning reader to find the parts they’re most interested in while supporting read-throughs with clear connections from one item to the next. For example, if you spend one chapter highlighting a product and its features, transition into a product-centered customer success story or include a graphic illustrating how the product works with customer systems. If your ebook covers multiple topics, think about topic progression. For example, if you offer migration and modernization services, start with migration and move into modernization, (not vice versa, nor jumping back and forth between the two). 

4. Positioning: If you offer a new concept or framework that makes you stand out among competitors, then your flavor is… 

Lavender honey 

This ebook flavor is ideal for demonstrating your brand’s thought leadership by sharing expertise-based, innovative ideas. This isn’t for ice cream newbies; the content should target mid-to-late funnel readers, including current customers you want to upsell. Your readers don’t need to learn about what your business does or its value. Your already-invested audience wants confirmation that you’re deeply familiar with their industry’s unique challenges so they can turn to you for an effective, experience-filled approach to problem solving—now and in the future. These ebooks tend to be longer and can be up to 12 pages. They can include forward-thinking concepts such as perceived future trends, case studies, research, guidance, and scenarios. 

5. Collaboration: If you want to showcase how your organization or solution works with a large cloud provider, then your flavor is… 

Berries and cream 

Some campaigns are based on joint solutions that explain how two offerings provide something better together for shared customers. Create this flavor by turning the collaborative benefit into a theme throughout the ebook. You don’t want berries on one side and cream on the other. Chances are that your reader is familiar with your brand or your partner’s, but they may not have tried the mélange. Briefly describe each of your flavors and make evident why they taste so good together—better than any competitor combo. Explain what your reader can accomplish with your integrations, demonstrate your capabilities through a customer story, and wrap up with a summary of sweet benefits. Or a napkin. Either one. 

We’ve spilled many secret ingredients of our successful ebooks with you, but those are only the cherries on top. To recruit our Michelin Star–worthy word chefs for your next ebook, contact us. 

By Jane Dornemann

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

• Once again, Washington officials and private sector executives are accusing Microsoft of dropping the ball following another hacking incident. Russian spies (Is this real life?) breached Microsoft’s systems to gain access to senior executives’ emails. They were full of sensitive information like, “Re: Chipotle for lunch??” and Teams messages such as, “I slowly feel my soul dying with every second of this quarterly meeting.” All parties (except Microsoft) say this was a fully avoidable incident, prompting U.S. officials to publicly state that the government needs to “reevaluate its dependence on Microsoft.” 

Wheelin’ and dealin’ 

• Hold the (Voda)phone, there’s a big new deal in town: The telecom company signed a $1.5B, 10-year agreement with Microsoft. (They stole the deal right out from under me because I didn’t have change for a $20.) The goals of this deal run the gamut, from targeting SMBs to improving financial inclusion in Africa. And of course, transforming the customer experience with generative AI. Can’t take a single breath without that these days. 
• Space Force (Again, real life?) is tapping Microsoft to build a cloud-based, simulated space environment. It will incorporate augmented reality via HoloLens headsets and serve as a training vehicle that allows participants to interact with digital copies in orbit. (Can you imagine tripping on LSD in that thing?! PLUTO LOOKED INTO MY SOUL and then he gave me a bucket of fried chicken.) 
• Walmart, everyone’s favorite spot to get really depressed about the state of humanity, is working with Microsoft on new AI solutions for Walmart customers. For example, using AI to answer a customer’s query and generate personalized responses. Naturally, the sample photo is of someone buying one bag of Doritos from Walmart online. Because we are Americans and that’s what we do. 
• The Walmart stuff arrives just as Microsoft announces its play to bring generative AI to retailers, particularly through Copilot. This includes Copilot templates that retailers can personalize across the buyer journey, AI to generate insights, and generative AI for marketing campaigns. SymphonyAI is working with Microsoft to bring predictive and generative AI to retail. 
• Choice Hotels International, a large hospitality chain that includes Comfort Inn and Econo Lodge, has fully migrated to AWS for all its operations. But what’s really important here are the (real life) online reviews for Choice Hotels, such as, “There were meth syringes by our truck in the morning and the room smelled like piss” and “I was given a king suite with blood on the covers and zero hangers.” ZERO HANGERS!!!! 

World domination 

• Nothing makes a $1.5B Microsoft-Vodafone deal look bad like moving the decimal mark over a whole place, which AWS has done with its $15B investment in Japan. Those dolla dolla bills are going toward expanding AWS Cloud infrastructure and supporting AI computing needs in the country. Google and Microsoft have also been going heavier on investments in Japan, and all three have deals with the country’s government, but this gives AWS the largest presence of them all. 
• AWS had some spare change left over after that, and decided to invest in…Mississippi? Uh, OK…I guess why not. The company is spending $10B to build a data center in the greater Jackson area. Well, that’s great because this project should bring some much-needed funds to the area…EXCEPT that it’s 100% corporate-tax exempt. During a “special session,” they decided that the state itself has to provide $44M in funds for tasks like workforce training. For AWS. Also, the state must loan a ton of money to the county to build a sewer system. For AWS. But hey, what a deal (for AWS), amiright! 
• As tensions rise between the U.S. and China (Americans are asked to “reconsider travel to China”)—along with an Executive Order limiting chipmakers in Chinese business dealings—Microsoft is uncertain about the fate of its Beijing-based AI lab. With China accounting for $212B in Microsoft sales, Microsoft doesn’t yet have an answer to the Biden administration’s request to pull the lab entirely. 
• Is it just me or is it Chile in here? AWS got the green light to build a $205M data center in Santiago. This will be the first AWS data center in the country. 
• AWS has won three contracts with the UK government—valued at about $1B dollars—a sign that the British government is deeply locked into AWS services. 
• Microsoft customers can now store all their personal data in the EU, a place with real privacy laws…a place where people don’t order Doritos online from retailers that take out “dead peasants” life insurance policies on their employees. ::Looks longingly toward the Atlantic:: 

Gossip (for nerds) 

• After beating Apple to briefly become the most valuable company in the world (and becoming the second company to ever reach a $3T market cap), Microsoft reported a 33% profit increase and an 18% jump in revenue. (Can’t wait for more layoff news. Oh, wait…) 
• AWS has hired a guy who makes shirt choices that are bold but still socially acceptable. “Damn it! Honey, the AWS folks need a new headshot, and I told them I’m still on vacation! Ugh, just snap me right here. How’s my hair?” “You look great, sweetie, and don’t worry, this will probably just go on some ID badge and not in globally available news.” The new CFO was formerly Amazon’s operations and logistics manager. Now that I know his name I’ll be calling him for answers on what happened to Prime’s 24-hour delivery promise. 
• Ashish Dhawan, who was the managing director of AWS enterprise workload sales, has moved to NetApp. 
• Google hired a former Okta and Microsoft exec to be its new AI leader, driving the company’s AI go-to-market strategy. 
• It’s official—the FTC is poking around the partnerships between Microsoft (and four other big tech companies, including AWS) and AI companies. Reading between the lines, this feels less about concern for society and more about the government fearing a loss of power to tech companies. I can’t WAIT for this hearing, where we’ll surely be entertained with questions from officials along the lines of, “Could the Google make me into an AI? This feels dangerous,” and, “It is my understanding that AI can connect to the internet, is that really necessary?” 

New stuff 

• Please find the most gossipy person you know and have them apply to AWS, because I NEED to know where this new AWS Secret Region is. It’s only for the U.S. Intelligence Community, which frankly I think I should be working for, because you wouldn’t believe what strangers have felt compelled to tell me on my travels. I basically already work for the Intelligence Community and should know where this is. 
• AWS has introduced a new SME partner competency: SMBs. 30 Partners (including Trellix) have already achieved the Small and Medium Business Competency and offer a range of services and solutions specific to SMBs, such as security, storage, migration, and AI. 
• To make OpenAI even more accessible, Microsoft is working on a smaller, cheaper version for those of us living in the gutter. It has compiled a team to develop a conversational AI that requires less computing power. In this case, they just have to “do less with less.” 
• You can now get Copilot Pro for $20 a month, meaning I can use that $20 from my failed Vodafone deal. For small businesses, there’s a Copilot virtual assistant that Microsoft 365 customers can purchase. 
• Microsoft has launched new partner benefits, which include access to Copilot, product licenses, and Azure credits. 
• Check out this announcement for Microsoft Mesh, featuring avatars that, for some reason, have no bottom half to their bodies. Mesh “powers 3D immersive experiences” for hybrid workers so interactions “feel more face-to-face” (except for dunno why, the bottom half of bodies). 
• Microsoft and Norwegian software company Cognite are collaborating to build data tools and copilots to help industrial companies improve operations using Microsoft Fabric. 
• Digital and cloud transformation company Mastek is strategically collaborating with Microsoft to build industry-specific solutions using Azure OpenAI. 
• Sony, Honda, and Microsoft are one big happy family that will make Afeela, an electric car. Here we go: Afeela a joke coming on. 
• Siemens, which does things like pay half my mortgage, has formed another strategic partnership with AWS that will boost AI usage in engineering and manufacturing markets, primarily through low-code offerings. This deal allows AWS to ride the coattails of Siemens’ credibility in these markets, and helps Siemens move more aggressively into the software field. 
• Panda is a new proposed framework from AWS that aims to provide a large language model–based debugger for databases. It will help people troubleshoot and debug databases for better performance—something AWS demonstrated when it threw Panda at ChatGPT to show how vague and incomplete the generative AI’s recommendations are. 

Best Friends Forever 

• Now on Microsoft Azure Marketplace: MIT and Harvard’s Broad Institute’s open-source Terra platform, used for biomedical analysis; FintechOS, which allows banks and insurers to design, build, and deploy digital banking and insurance products and customer experiences; Cranium AI’s security platform; and Cognigy.AI, which I dunno what it does ‘cause the release was bad, which feels like a requirement these days. 
• New to AWS Marketplace: Rackspace Technology’s Cloud DBOps, a managed service for commercial and open-source databases running on various AWS services, and Harbr’s “last mile” data solution. 
• Sacré bleu! Starting at the end of 2024, Capgemini and Orange will have formed a joint venture, Bleu, to help French companies adopt Microsoft Azure and 365 through its “cloud de confiance” (trust) services. 
• BAE, which reads like I’m yelling across the house for my significant other but is actually an ISV, has earned its AWS Migration Competency. 
• Dragos, which sounds like a company Daenerys Targaryen established, has achieved the AWS Manufacturing and Industrial Competency. It provides cybersecurity for operational technology. 
• TierPoint has earned two new Microsoft Solutions Partner designations, Data & AI and Digital & App Innovation. 
• Dentsu, which sounds like a Japanese denture shop, is expanding its AI tool offerings using Amazon Bedrock. 
• SourceFuse, a digital transformation company that’s also apparently a braggart, has officially achieved 100 AWS Certifications. 
• Revenue lifecycle management solutions provider Conga earned the AWS Life Sciences Competency. 
• DevOps software provider JFrog has integrated its Artifactory platform with Amazon SageMaker to streamline the process of building, training, and deploying ML models. 

By Jane Dornemann

Image by Evan Aeschlimann

New stuff  

• I covered the big stuff from re:Invent in the last Cloud cover, but here is a good roundup refresher in case you also killed your brain over holiday break with cheese, chocolate, wine, and binge watching Naked and Afraid. 
• This edition of “White Men in Space” is Lasers! Amazon’s Project Kuiper, which involves sending laser-based communications satellites into space, has hit a milestone, and is set to broaden access to the AWS Cloud. The U.S. military is running tests on these also, culminating in the perfect marriage of unbridled capitalism and the military-industrial complex. What could possibly go wrong? The initiative is a challenge to He Who Shall Not Be Named (because every time you say his name he gets more power!!!) of SpaceX, so expect some juvenile, bitchy tweets in the next few weeks. Like he writes any other kind. 
• Cancel next Christmas for nerds because it’s here early! Microsoft announced a new tool, AppCat (Azure Migrate application and code assessment tool for .NET), which will help developers who are migrating .NET applications from on prem to Azure. 
• Microsoft is planning to “drastically expand” its AI studio with ChatGPT-4 Turbo, dubbed by some kid who was playing with his G.I. Joes when asked for a good name. It will also fold in open-sourced AI model Llama 2 to the Azure AI Studio. 
• Button, button, whose got the button? The Windows keyboard will look different following the first change in three decades, which is the addition of a Copilot key. It will be available to some starting in February and can carry out tasks, such as text and virtual meeting summarization, across Microsoft’s web and productivity apps. Waiting for the day I hit the Copilot button and get, “This could have been an email.” 
• Microsoft has launched AI Odyssey, a program to skill 100,000 India-based developers in AI technology and tools. 
• Amazon Aurora Serverless v1 is doing something Millennials will never be able to—retire! While AWS is discontinuing support, the newer Aurora Serverless v2 is still around—though users have some complaints about it. 
• New stuff from AWS this month: a fourth-gen Graviton processor (Graviton4), which provides more memory and better compute performance; Amazon Braket Direct, a fully managed quantum computing service; and additional support for AWS IAM Access Analyzer that provides automated detection of unused access. And, now AWS customers can establish zero-ETL connections among certain data services. In the future, it will be available to those running those services on Azure and Google Cloud. 

Gossip (for nerds) 

• Microsoft’s AI Image Creator has been generating realistic images of public figures, such as Joe Biden and the Pope, along with people from ethnic-minority groups, being flayed, decapitated, and mutilated in other graphic ways. Wall Street Journal reminds readers, “and [this has been] built right into your computer software.” Microsoft blames customers for using the tech in ways it was not intended and for employing cleverly worded prompts. Microsoft’s executive in charge of AI safety did not grant WSJ an interview, which is always a good look. 
• The New York Times is suing OpenAI for copyright infringement, based on how the tech platform uses the publication’s stories to train chatbots, piling on to recent lawsuits brought forth by prominent authors like John Grisham and R.R. Martin. 
• Meanwhile, a new AWS study revealed that business leaders want to get serious about responsible AI use—and also that some people don’t even know what that constitutes. 
• Regardless, the AI frenzy will only continue, according to a new survey from CNBC. More than half of large organizations plan to purchase generative AI software like Copilot in the next six months. 
• Dee Templeton, Microsoft’s VP of Technology and Research Partnerships and Operations (who also wears a leather jacket in her LinkedIn photo because SHE MEANS BUSINESS…but in a COOL motorcycle way) has secured a seat on the newly formed OpenAI board. 
• Enterprise tech company Lumen has hired AWS’ former global AI leader as its new product officer. He will probs do important stuff and make boatloads of cash. Yay for him! 
• So, I learned that if Business Insider gates the article you want to read, you can go read it on Business Insider India—kinda rude, tbh. But ANYWAY, apparently AWS is doing this PsyOps thing called “quiet firing” where they don’t fire you, they just take away your role and tell you to find a home somewhere else internally. The interviewee is one of (allegedly) several others who aren’t allowed to do anything at the office, are sent to the basement with their red staplers, and are still collecting a paycheck. Employees report that AWS is waiting them out until they get so miserable they find another job. ALLEGEDLY. Shout out to my homies at Business Insider India for this free tea! 
• On the sales side, AWS is reorganizing. The 60,000-person department will consolidate some sales teams and change to how technical staff help customers because AWS clients “expressed dissatisfaction with the company’s existing practices.” 
• Microsoft may overtake Apple as the most valuable U.S. company, with a “slim margin” of $100B difference between them. The change is attributed to Azure revenue and the AI frenzy, and Apple’s stagnant value is attributed to the fact that nobody wants to be a little Apple fanbitch anymore. That’s right, I said it. You wanna wait outside a store overnight for the iPhone 105 or whatever, that costs $1,200 and is as delicate as a butterfly, well you go on ahead, while the rest of us nurture our common sense…with Copilot. (Too soon?) And yes, I have an Android and my green messages are coming for you. 
• There’s a cloud guppy out there trying to compete with much bigger fish. Postgres-based cloud database startup, Tembo, is taking on AWS, Snowflake, and Oracle. The company thinks its open-source appeal will win it some significant market share. I personally think Bezos would never let that happen and I personally think Tembo’s founder is going to trip and fall onto an ether rag and will conveniently wake up on a laser in space or something, I dunno. 

Wheelin’ and dealin’ 

• A big government cloud project is off to a slow start, no way!!! A YEAR after committing $9B to upgrade its computing tech with AWS and Microsoft, the Pentagon has progressed only 2%. Word on the street is that a big part of the delay is concern over the security of commercial cloud tech—which could influence how quickly other public sectors move to the cloud.  
• Microsoft can’t move its own company to its cloud. LinkedIn paused plans to move away from its on-prem data centers to Azure because of issues with LinkedIn using its own software tools instead of those from Azure. The project was codenamed “Blueshift,” which I imagine is because it made everyone so sad, but no. The pivot is allegedly Microsoft wants to save Azure resources for paying customers. Which kinda sounds like the “Sorry, I have plans tonight (but don’t)” bullcrap. So, now LinkedIn is going in the exact opposite direction and scaling their on-prem infrastructure. 
• Navigation and map technology company TomTom is partnering with Microsoft to bring generative AI to connected vehicles. The joint solution will use Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service, Azure CosmosDB, Azure Kubernetes, and some other elements to enable natural conversations with vehicles. 
• AWS and Salesforce have expanded their partnership and will build deeper product integrations across data and AI. In a win for joint customers, Salesforce will put some products on AWS Marketplace for the first time, and AWS is bringing some of its services to Salesforce’s Einstein One.  
• IT services and digital engineering company Virtusa has signed a strategic collaboration with AWS around Virtusa’s data and AI lab. The goal is to make it easier for customers to move to the cloud and modernize their IT services with AI, ML, and generative AI. 
• Persistent, which sounds like it does the same stuff as Virtusa, has ALSO signed a strategic collaboration with AWS. See, nobody is special anymore. The goal even sounds like the same but I don’t have time to thoroughly read this press release AND make a sandwich and I choose the sandwich, so here you go, have at it. 

World domination 

• Backward fairytale time! What if a princess doesn’t turn into a pumpkin, but a pumpkin turns into a princess? That freaking happened when a Wisconsin pumpkin farming family sold their land to Microsoft at a ridic overvaluation of $76M so the tech giant can build a data center. Good look on ever seeing that ROI in the next 100 years on that data center, which people who are still alive in the climate apocalypse will be using as shelter to rub twigs together for warmth, and possibly to eat. 
• Canada is getting its second cloud region, in Calgary! Yeehaw. And I guess AWS is all about the cold weather since they opened a new Ground Station in Alaska. Maybe some of those people getting “quiet fired” can apply to be the warmer-uppers for these new locations! 
• In less freezing parts of the world, AWS is investing in Nigeria’s digital economy and tech boom—turns out the Nigerian princes who email me just don’t have the funds to do this (because those funds are frozen and they need my help!!!!). Halfway through this article we find out exactly how AWS plans to invest, which includes AWS Academy (creepy?), AWS Educate (for training but also feels creepy), and AWS re/Start (ok, fine, I like that one. Feels fresh.). 
• Industrial companies around the world are poised to benefit the most from AI, according to this article where the very first sentence is missing a period. Microsoft’s and NVIDIA’s CEOs agreed at a conference that there will be three waves of AI impact: first to startups, which is already happening. The second is “enterprise generation,” which you can read about in a sentence where there IS a period but no space after. The third wave will be the industrial sector. So, we can chill on that for now, but FYI. 
• Oh god please don’t hallucinate meltdown orders!!! Microsoft wants to use nuclear power to support AI’s massive electricity needs. My husband, who served on a nuclear submarine, says nuclear power is OK but also seems to forget that three guys on his sub got ball cancer. But since AI doesn’t have those, should be fine. 

Best Friends Forever 

• RapidScale is a Raleigh-based tech company that recently achieved a Microsoft Azure Expert Managed Service Provider (MSP) designation. And maybe RapidScale doesn’t know this, but the Raleigh area is absolutely bursting with 2A talent. We can’t be contained, and I think someone at RapidScale should reach out to us to learn more—or risk falling behind competitors, as those who do not hire 2A are known to do. 
• Precisely has achieved the AWS Data and Analytics Competency. Who knows, maybe the MPF we created for them helped? 
• Red Canary has achieved the AWS Security Competency.  
• Consulting and digital transformation firm Capgemini won seven AWS 2023 Partner of the Year Awards, which include recognition in AI/ML, an industry partner of the year for automotive, and a sustainability partner for the Greater China Region. 
• Duality AI, a digital twin simulation company, has joined the AWS Partner Network. 

By Jane Dornemann

Image by Rachel Adams

Meet Carolyn, marketing writer turned marketing consultant…turned marketing writer. It makes sense—writers are curious by nature, a trait that 2A is happy to accommodate.  

Carolyn studied medieval literature, earned a master’s in English, and taught at the college level before embarking on her B2B marketing quest in earnest. Her eagerness to learn about all corners of the world has been the driving force behind her varied career, during which she created compelling content for just about every industry you can think of. Her stellar work landed her opportunities to craft copy for all kinds of companies, from tech to healthcare to HVAC and plumbing. 

After all that, she went on to perfect her marketing chops through agencies, where she wrote content for a world of different products and services. Her demonstrated ability to market just about anything—and her experience as both a consultant and a writer—is what makes her such a superhero of an addition here at 2A. 

While Carolyn’s outside-the-box ideas led to director positions in B2B and big tech marketing, she found herself on a quest for a more stimulating work culture. That’s what drew Carolyn to 2A, where she first employed her diverse skillset as a consultant before moving over to a storyteller role. 

Carolyn thrives in 2A’s collaborative environment, where she’s focused on helping clients find more effective and innovative ways to resonate with their audiences through stories. There’s no kryptonite here—the more complex or unusual a marketing challenge is, the more Carolyn is inspired. Approaching each project with the dexterity and improvisation she’s accrued over the years is her M.O.  

Perhaps that panache for the complicated has been bolstered by her literary leanings, from publishing her poetry in literary magazines to doing The New York Times’ crossword daily.  

“Doing puzzles is a lot like content marketing,” she said. “It can be a fun challenge to communicate ideas in a certain number of words or decide how text and design can best work together.” 

In her personal life, Carolyn is committed to service. Thanks to the Be the Match registry, she was able to help save the life of a patient with leukemia through peripheral blood stem cell donation (PBSC), a method of retrieving blood-forming cells for bone marrow transplants. 

The curiosity continues. From roller-skating to embroidery, Carolyn’s sense of adventure extends beyond her (new) role at the office. Whether she’s saving lives or solving the scrappiest of marketing puzzles, Carolyn is the kind of storytelling superhero our clients need and want on their team. 

By Jane Dornemann

Image by Evan Aeschlimann

If you turn this newsletter into a drinking game and take a shot every time I have to say “AI” then get ready to die of alcohol poisoning. CAN SOMEONE PLEASE INVENT SOMETHING ELSE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.

Gossip (for nerds)

• I might as well enjoy this, so here are some juicy tidbits from last round’s OpenAI | Microsoft | OpenAI fiasco: Microsoft had been preparing its San Francisco offices to accept defecting OpenAI refugees, from readying laptops for them to arranging training clusters. Daaaaang that’s so thirsty it’s embarrassing. And even worse, it doesn’t look like Microsoft will have much presence on the new OpenAI board. Even if things had gone through, regulators in the UK thought the OpenAI-Microsoft relationship would’ve been super sus and were ready to unleash a world of hurt. Anyway, Microsoft, if you’re reading this, I really need a new laptop and it seems like you have some extras. (Bonus: The leaked internal memo.)
• Business Insider published an article about AI fatigue, sales tension, and overall issues at AWS but I can’t drink the tea unless I pay them. Which I won’t.
• But the kind and generous people at Techspot will give it up to us gossip-loving, thrill-seeking tech writers for free. Amazon employees are quitting over the company’s return-to-the-office mandate (which includes required relocations).
• Amazon is losing people on the other side of the globe, too. The second top executive in its India and South Asia region, the interim head of AWS India, has abruptly quit. She was “interim” because they needed someone to fill the spot fast when the last person abruptly quit.

Wheelin’ and dealin’

• This is like the advent calendar for drunk tech news, and today’s game is: take a shot every time I say “collaborate” in any form of the verb. SO MUCH COLLABORATION:
  • Accenture is collaborating with AWS to help customers implement Amazon Q. Informatica launched a new set of cloud data management services in collaboration with AWS, which will help data scientists and departmental users of all levels to do more stuff with data. IBM is collaborating with AWS to launch a new cloud database, Amazon RD for Db2, a fully managed offering that makes it easier to manage data for AI workloads across hybrid environments. (That was a twofer, you’re welcome.)
  • And DataStax is collaborating with AWS (are you dead yet? Can you still read the words on this screen? Are you crying? Is your liver screaming?) to take their partnership “to the next level of generative AI.” The article proceeds to give zero details of substance. Whoever wrote this article was that kid who didn’t read the book but somehow bangs out a decent book report. It’s a talented mirage.

World domination

• Air India is moving its IT infrastructure to Azure, shutting down its data centers in Mumbai and New Delhi. Hopefully, this will help Air India’s online reviews, with flyers calling it a “non-recommended airline” where “nobody is kind” and “serves too much food,” leaving “a lasting impression of dissatisfaction” on many a traveler.
• Even though Microsoft will invest 2.5B British pounds in AI infrastructure in the UK, Google still wants the British government to investigate Microsoft’s anti-competitive practices.
• Microsoft has turned its attention to the French (knockoffs) in Quebec, with a $500M infrastructure and skilling investment that will prepare the province for AI. “Mon dieu!” said all the Quebecois. “Will zey allow cigarettes in zee data centaaaaire?”
• Over in REAL Europe, Microsoft is doubling the capacity of its Azure cloud data centers in Germany by next year, specifically in Frankfurt, home of high-quality sausages. If you’re into that sort of thing. All of this investment in AI infrastructure is coming from Microsoft’s expectation that AI deployments will accelerate in 2024. 2023 was for learning and deploying the tech, and 2024 will be all about discovering and applying use cases.
• A good reminder that these AI breakthroughs also fall into the hands of the government—Microsoft is working hard to introduce AI to the public sector (which is fine for now since they aren’t doing anything). In a Q&A with Microsoft’s public sector leader, the interviewer states, “I understand Windows 11 offers a great deal of AI power to government employees” to which the interviewee affirms that yes, now government employees can ask for things in search bars. Raw, uncontrollable power.
• APAC and its 17 markets is the next destination in which AWS plans to invest its efforts.

New stuff

• AWS has released myApplications, a new cloud monitoring app that helps customers find ways to operate their workloads more cost-efficiently. They couldn’t have come up with a jazzier name, like Amazon MakeCents? So boring. And people will get confused. What if someone has to say, “Hey I have to look into my applications with myApplications” and their coworker is like “what?” and he has to keep repeating himself and it’s like the IT version of Who’s On First.
• After hinting that it would, AWS has finally lowered its free structure on AWS Marketplace, with a flat fee of 3%. It will be even lower for partners that have bigger private pricing agreements.
• Oracle has made its Database@Azure service generally available. It operates and manages Oracle Exadata Database Service, the first of several planned Oracle database services to run on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) in Azure datacenters. 
• AWS released Amazon S3 Express One Zone. It is “a new high-performance, single-zone Amazon S3 storage class purpose-built to deliver consistent, single-digit millisecond data access for customers’ most latency-sensitive applications.”
• AWS is adding four new capabilities to its supply chain offerings for the cloud in 2024 around sustainability, visibility, planning, and generative AI.
• AWS has also added 5 new capabilities to Amazon SageMaker, from reducing ML model deployment costs and latency to preparing data according to natural language instructions. And finally, AWS is updating AWS Clean Rooms with ML capabilities.
• Datadog is expanding security and observability support for AWS serverless apps built on AWS Lambda and AWS Step Functions.
• LaunchDarkly has opened early access to a feature that lets customers use Amazon Bedrock to experiment with AI.
• AMB Access Polygon, which provides serverless access to Polygon blockchain, is now in preview release.
• Microsoft is helping scientists do science things by integrating Copilot with Azure Quantum Elements. It will help researchers explore materials, speed up chemistry simulations, and experiment with existing quantum hardware. If a black hole opens up in your living room, it’s probably Microsoft’s fault.
• And some real cool science-y stuff: Microsoft is working on glass storage—like literally storing stuff in GLASS (click the link for a pic of…glass). It’s made from quartz glass and is primed for use in the cloud.
• Following a soft announcement in June, AWS has officially launched its Generative AI Center of Excellence to help partners build AI solutions. It has also expanded its AWS Advertising and Marketing Competency program to add more competencies in the category.
• Microsoft introduced Azure Integration Environments for public preview, which allows organizations to assemble their resources into logical groupings to manage and monitor their integration resources more effectively. If I were in charge my groupings would be named “crap,” “more crap,” “pics of my dog,” “here’s some other crap,” and so on because I don’t even know what an integration resource is.

Best Friends Forever

• Engineering management platform Jellyfish has joined the AWS ISV Accelerate program. So has Implicity, a remote patient monitoring and cardiac data management solution (aka all I want for Xmas).
• Trend Micro has achieved the AWS Built-In Competency in the Security and Cloud Operations category.
• Data access governance and security solution Theom (not to be confused with the traitor-redeemed-as-hero in GoT) has earned its AWS Security Software Competency.
• CalmWave, an AI for health operations company, is now on AWS Marketplace.
• AWS partnered with Hoppr (not the soft-hearted but brusk and unhealthy sheriff in Stranger Things), an AI startup, to launch a new foundation model that will help healthcare organizations use generative AI tools in medical imaging.
• ServiceNow and AWS also have a lil AI partnership going on—at least for the next five years. ServiceNow’s platform and full suite of solutions will be available on AWS Marketplace, and their first sales targets will be manufacturing, supply chain, call centers, and cloud transformation use cases.
• We already knew that Salesforce was going to make it easier for joint customers to access Salesforce data on AWS, but they announced specific plans at re:Invent. Salesforce is expanding its strategic partnership with AWS. Select Salesforce is now available on AWS Marketplace, and AWS will increase its own use of Salesforce. Back scratching all around.
• OneNeck an IT solutions provider, has achieved four Microsoft Solutions Partner designations as part of its membership in the AI Cloud Partner Program.
• Eviden, which helps businesses with their digital transformation, is collaborating (drink again, I didn’t forget but you may have at this point) with Microsoft to help clients move to the cloud to use Azure OpenAI Service. (And again, that counts.)
• Managed services provider Options Technology has earned its fifth Solutions Partner designation in Digital and App Innovation for Azure.
• Digital business services company Teleperformance, also known as whenever my sister calls me with her latest drama, has received its Microsoft Azure Solutions Partner designation for Data & AI.
• New to Azure Marketplace: bsure Insights, which sounds like a pregnancy test, helps customers optimize spend and reduce risk through insights into their Microsoft users and licenses.
• ForwardLane, an AI-powered decision intelligence platform for asset and wealth management, has attained Microsoft IP co-sell ready status and will engage in global GTM with the ‘soft.

By Jane Dornemann

Image by Evan Aeschlimann

World domination 

• Amazon is promising Europe a sovereign cloud to meet the government requirements of EU companies. “Euro Cloud” has a mullet and wears acid wash jeans and is going to the discothèque like those people on the front of my old French textbook. And they have cigarettes for breakfast, all sovereign-like. 
• Microsoft is going to invest billions to expand its Mt. Pleasant data center in Wisconsin. And the company has bought 300 acres (and jobs) in Licking County. People with dry tongues need not apply. 
• When in Rome, build a data center. At least that’s the current motto at Microsoft. But this is Rome, Georgia, so put those pizza and spaghetti dreams away. Instead, you can dive into the local news, which is basically just obituaries, people stealing random shit, and an article about wild turkeys on the loose. God I love local news. 
• The three big cloud providers are investing almost $9B in Thailand, with AWS building a $5B data center there over the next 15 years. Do you know how much pad thai you can buy with $9B? NOT ENOUGH. THAT’S HOW MUCH. 
  • And Malaysia will be the next cloud region for AWS, following the opening of its Kuala Lumpur office. 
• One of China’s largest tech companies, Alibaba, has launched its own AI model in a bid to compete with AWS and Microsoft. It released its GenAI Service Platform which can be designed for industry-specific applications. 

Gossip (for nerds) 

• Consider this your warning that our robot overlords are closer than they’ve ever been. I, your loyal tech news troubadour, joins others in wanting to know exactly what the board at OpenAI saw that scared the shit out of them. Let me backtrack: It’s been one year since ChatGPT hit the scene, and after showing an AI breakthrough to OpenAI’s board, co-founder Sam Altman was abruptly ousted from the company over concerns about safety and regulations regarding this yet-to-be released evolution (called Q* or “Q Star”). Insiders say Altman didn’t want any power checks on him. Microsoft immediately snapped Altman up, prompting analysts to speculate that this “poker move” added $63B to Microsoft’s value. But WOMP WOMP a day later Altman went back to OpenAI, burning that bridge so badly there aren’t even ashes to show for it. Altman returned on the promise that a new board would be formed, potentially quelling an impending “all-out employee revolt.” Anyway, we’re all gonna die. 
• It’s a good thing Q* is distracting from what’s happening with AI at AWS. Amazon’s Artificial Intelligence Group (AIG) is “undergoing a significant restructuring” only four months after its inception. The department is now divided among six focus areas, according to a leaked email. 
• AND to compete with ChatGPT, Amazon is developing Olympus. But it’s super-secret. 
• After Google Cloud revenue came in below expectations, Alphabet stock fell almost 10%, marking its worst day since March 2020. It’s because Bing is wildly successful and rapidly stealing all the traffic. Just kidding, nobody uses Bing. Still. 

Wheelin’ and dealin’ 

• Hyundai has selected AWS as its cloud provider, so now Amazon is going to sell Hyundai cars. Does that come with Prime one-day delivery? If I don’t like it, do I return it at Whole Foods? If I’m not home when it arrives, will you just take a picture of an ENTIRE CAR PARKED ON MY FRONT STEP? We’ve entered a whole new era of regrettable drunk Amazon purchases. 
• AWS, Microsoft, Google, and Oracle—among other notable tech companies—are creating a framework that will make cloud spend more transparent. Their first idea was to wrap cellophane around it but, no dice. 
• AI observability company WhyLabs has partnered with AWS to let shared customers switch to observability for AI apps through WhyLabs on AWS. 
• The SAP HANA cloud now supports AWS Graviton processors. 
• SnapLogic is collaborating with AWS to offer SnapGPT, a generative AI integration that will assist with data management. 
• Infosys and AWS are partnering in a joint go-to-market push to accelerate cloud adoption across the EMEA region, in particular to financial organizations. 
• Quantiphi has entered a strategic collaboration with AWS to use AWS generative AI tools, such as Bedrock and SageMaker, to power a generative AI platform for knowledge workers. Have you ever met somebody who said “I’m a knowledge worker”? Me neither. If you did, would you remain in the conversation? Me neither. 
• NetApp is extending its alliance (is this the UN?) with Microsoft to include tools for deploying workloads, improving performance, and reducing costs using ML. 

New stuff  

• AWS has launched a generative AI app builder for consumers called PartyRock. I wanna go to PartyRock! It sounds like a bunch of people dancing on boulders and I wanna be there. Or it could just be another name for meth. I don’t want THAT PartyRock. Anyway, it lets you build generative AI applications without any software experience. It’s “for entertainment purposes only”…I bet. 
• Did Microsoft pray to the gods of confused marketing with this? Spend hundreds of dollars for the Willy Wonka edition Xbox and get a…chocolate game controller. That doesn’t work.  
• Teams is getting crowded. New AI-powered features will allow the easily amused masses to decorate their Teams backgrounds. It will clean up the clutter in your background, and even add some seasonal objects and plants so you can go full-out white woman’s Instagram. 
• Let us revel in cups that overfloweth with chips. Following a global chip shortage, Microsoft has built its own custom AI chips, Maia 100 and Cobalt 100, hopefully breaking reliance on NVIDIA. Microsoft is also working with Synopsys, which is using Copilot to help with designing computer chips. 
  • But NVIDIA and Microsoft are still bros. NVIDIA launched a generative AI foundry service on Azure, which will help businesses build custom language learning models (LLMs). 
• Now generally available is Microsoft Fabric, an end-to-end SaaS analytics platform. 
• AWS now offers EC2 capacity blocks for ML.  
• Microsoft could generate $10B a year by 2026 with its 365 Copilot AI add-on. It has also updated Windows 11 to have Copilot. 
• And it unveiled a Copilot-based unified security solution, which combines Defender XDR, Microsoft Sentinel, and the Security Copilot chatbot. 
• Copilot is in so many places I’m awaiting news that it now raises your children. Microsoft’s GitHub is offering a paid enterprise service tier that will assist developers’ work on internal source code. 
• MORE COPILOT…YOU CAN’T ESCAPE!! Siemens and Microsoft have co-developed Industrial Copilot to improve human-machine collaboration in manufacturing. 
• Want some AI skillzzzz? you can sign up for AI Ready, a series of eight free courses from AWS. 

Best Friends Forever 

• BP will use Microsoft Copilot to continue destroying the planet.  
• Schneider Electric is integrating Microsoft Azure OpenAI to generate code and text.  
• MongoDB and AWS are collaborating to optimize Amazon CodeWhisperer for applications built on MongoDB. 
• Spend management platform Ramp has integrated Copilot into its offerings. 
• Cohesity is working with Microsoft to help organizations respond to data loss in M365 faster. 
• New Relic has integrated its AI Monitoring solutions with Amazon Bedrock. 
• No-code business automation solution provider Pipefy is now on AWS Marketplace, along with Elastio’s Insights profile, which simplifies software risk assessment.  
• Zilla security has joined the AWS ISV program and has put its solution in AWS Marketplace. 
• Digital product engineering company Simform has achieved its AWS Migration Competency. 
• Forethought, an AI-first customer support automation platform, has joined the AWS APN and is now available in AWS Marketplace. 
• Last Yard, an in-store and omnichannel solutions provider, has achieved its AWS Retail Competency and joined the AWS ISV Accelerate Program. 

By Jane Dornemann

Image by Evan Aeschlimann

Wheelin’ and dealin’ 

• Hi, welcome to weirdo upside-down world where Amazon is about to become its No. 1 competitor’s biggest customer (by a long shot). No, you are not tripping on shrooms like an Alaska Airlines pilot, this is real.  
• The Mayo Clinic is testing generative AI applications with its clinical staff through Microsoft’s 365 Copilot early access program. This news comes at the same time as Microsoft’s announcement of new tools in Microsoft Fabric and Azure AI for healthcare organizations. 
• Accenture and AWS have teamed up to create the Accenture AWS Business Group and the launch of Velocity, a “continuous innovation engine.”  
• Microsoft has FINALLY closed the Activision Blizzard deal and I am so happy to never have to write about this again.  
• World Energy, a producer of sustainable aviation fuel (that’s a thing?), signed a long-term agreement with Microsoft to….geez, the press release doesn’t even tell you, really. But if I had to read between the lines, it sounds like Microsoft will use World Energy to fuel executive private jets between Seattle and NYC. But let us never utter the term “private jet” lest the masses catch on to our tomfoolery. 

World domination 

• Microsoft is building a data center in Aragon, Spain, which looks like it just got added to my travel bucket list…especially because the region JUST WON THE SPANISH PIG AWARDS!!! Yes, Aragon has the best-performing pig farms, and is now holder of the “Porc d’Or” award. As published in Pig Progress Magazine. I’m serious. ::Subscribes:: 
• AWS is opening a development center in Nairobi to create software development and cloud support. The region has been dubbed the “Silicon Savannah,” which could also be the term for the space between two breast implants, but OK. 
• In one of the biggest news events to happen in Wales is the building of a Microsoft data center. It’s located in Newport—you know Newport—the city right next to Croesymwyalch, not far from Cwmbran and Llanfrechta. Yeah, that one. Hopefully, this news doesn’t get drowned out by recent local headlines such as the reopening of a local mini supermarket and inspectors’ praise for the local nursery, Tiny Tots. 
• Microsoft just laid off nearly 700 employees at LinkedIn, primarily in the engineering department. And it will now ramp up hiring in India. Classic move. Maybe that switcheroo will help them pay off the $29B they owe in back taxes. Yeah, I said it. Cash me ousside. 
• India is HOT and I don’t just mean it’s 130 degrees there at night. I mean everyone wants a piece. In addition to Microsoft’s hiring spree in the world’s most populated country, the government is unveiling digital health IDs with AWS. Biometrics in government hands? I can’t see any potential issues with that.  
• And India’s HCLSoftware is collaborating with AWS so customers can consume the HCLSoftware portfolio as cloud-native services/SaaS in AWS.  

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

• AWS, Google, and Telegram have been targeted by a malware campaign that uses “typosquatting” and “starjacking,” both of which sound like martial arts moves that could mess you up. Also, I hope it happens to me just so I can say “DAMN IT, I’VE BEEN STARJACKED!!!” 
• The AI technology that Microsoft has been pushing is also, apparently, helping hackers hit their victims harder.  
• But don’t confuse that with the campaign that attackers are conducting on SQL Server instances. And if you’re still into SQL Server after that, then you’ll be happy about the public preview of Azure SQL Database free offering. Get hacked—for free!! 
• AND Google, AWS, and Cloudflare saw the largest DDoS attack in their history. None of the articles name the hacking group, which makes me mad because I want to see how cool their name is. But anyway, Google saw 398 million requests per second, otherwise known as whenever I am trying to relax and my son is home. The DDoS graph looks like a Silicon Savannah ifyouknowwhatImean. 

Gossip (for nerds) 

• Satya Nadella is blaming Google for the fact that nobody uses Bing in a federal antitrust trial against Google. To get out from under Google’s hold on search, Microsoft told Apple it would pay billions to replace Google on Apple devices.  
• And funny story: Bing Chat is under fire for security concerns. It’s crawling with malicious ads. It’s Google’s fault!!! 
• Despite that hot mess, Microsoft posted 13% YoY sales growth in its last quarter earnings, beating expectations and adding to an overall “comeback” of tech. 
• It’s a good week for anyone who owns Amazon stock, once again driven by AWS. CEO Andy Jassy says the success of AWS belongs to its work in generative AI with solutions like Amazon Bedrock. And, AWS sales went up 12% YoY. 
• Sdx Central says the top three cloud providers are “battling” for the data center market. The article comes with a fantastical rendering of a city full of data centers on fire, bombarded by planes. (“Midjourney, show me a battle for data centers.”) This reminds me of those Army recruiting commercials that used to show before movies, where they made it look like if you joined you’d be fighting some superpower on a planet with three moons.  
• A Microsoft VP who has been with the company for decades is now moving to Amazon, overseeing devices and services. His name is Panos Panay, which I have been repeating to myself for fun all morning. First I pretended I was a caterer at a nice event with a silver tray of apps and I ask people all fancy, “May I interest you in some Panos Panay?” and then I was offering someone advice and turned it into a Latin saying …”Well, you know what they say – Panos Panay.” 
• Or maybe it will help them spend $3.2B in a “charm offensive” in Australia to push AI and cloud. Australia is currently looking to regulate AI.  

New stuff  

• The Microsoft Azure Incubation team has launched Radius, a platform that lets developers collaborate on building cloud-native applications. In typical Microsoft fashion, this announcement opens with a 43-word sentence. 
• AWS has launched its Process Optimization solution, which uses AI and ML to provide engineers with insights on downstream and midstream operations.  
• New to Microsoft Viva is Skills, which will help organizations understand workforce skills and gaps and then deliver personalized learning to close those gaps through Viva Learning. 
• I hope you powerful people like getting codes by text and email because AWS is going to require highest-privilege users to complete MFA starting next year. See, this is where it’s good to be a nobody. 
• Amazon DataZone has become generally available. Users can catalog, discover, share, and govern data stored across AWS, on-premises, and third-party sources. 

Best Friends Forever 

• Microsoft is partnering with AV provider Legrand to create a hybrid conference space for Microsoft Teams Rooms. These will be Signature Teams Rooms and probably look like EVERY OTHER MEETING ROOM. Look people, a work meeting is a work meeting. Fetch is never gonna happen. 
• Immuta, which sounds like the Italian phrase for “I’ve turned the sound off on the TV,” has integrated its Data Fabric Security with AWS. 
• IBM is set to train 10,000 consultants on AWS generative AI services. Sounds like a blast. 
• Our friends at Databricks are now listed in AWS Marketplace for the US Intelligence Community. Now incompetence can be data-driven. 
• Global professional services firm Genpact is partnering with AWS to fight financial crime with generative AI. The two will message financial criminals using an AI chatbot that says, “Are you SURE you want to do this? It’s really bad and not nice.” 
• Tenovos, a digital asset management firm, has achieved its AWS Retail Competency. The company has proved it can shop til it drops and find the best deals on designer wear.  
• Technology consulting firm Credera has earned its AWS Migration Competency.  
• Data protection company Commvault has joined the AWS Workload Migration Program (WMP). 
• Duality Technologies has joined the AWS Partner Network. It provides secure data center collaboration. 
• Roadway intelligence firm Rekor has joined the AWS ISV Accelerate Program. 
• Dubai-based Superbo, an AI solutions provider, is partnering with Microsoft to deploy Azure OpenAI across the African continent. 

By Jane Dornemann

Image by Evan Aeschlimann

New stuff  

• Oooooh Mesh for Teams in public preview! You’ll need a Teams Premium account to create your Metaverse. It is very meta—we roleplay at work already, so now we will roleplay our roleplay. Whatever it takes to bring bongos to an earnings call.  
• And the new Azure Update Manager, a SaaS solution for managing software updates on Windows and Linux machines across Azure, is now generally available. 
• AWS launched EC2 R7iz instances, which offer a high CPU performance for intense workloads (do these workloads look like Kristen Stewart in every Twilight movie?). Nah, think simulations and electronic design. It also launched AWS Private CA Connector for Active Directory, which lets customers…do something more complicated than I care to explain here.   
• Who cares about the ousted Speaker of the House when there’s a new AWS Competency in town?? AWS Partners can now earn a Telecommunications Competency, which includes key areas like communications as a service (CaaS) and business support systems (BSS). 
• Telecom is so hot right now, says AWS, because the industry is “eagerly embracing” generative AI through an identified 17 use cases. 
• Amazon Bedrock, which is not the jungle version of the Flintstone’s world but instead a solution that plays a major role in the AWS AI strategy, is now generally available—along with a few other AI innovations. 
• Dell has launched APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure, making them the first MSFT partner in the cloud provider’s Premier Solutions for Azure Stack HCI category. 
• Are you a gigantic company? Do you want Microsoft 365 Copilot to supplement your core productivity apps? Congrats, it’s here for you. 
• Microsoft has unloaded some new generative AI tools for the advertising industry. 

Wheelin’ and dealin’ 

• IT solutions giant Infosys is partnering with Microsoft to meld their AI capabilities as a way to “lead the generative AI revolution.” Thanks for the specifics, I can’t wait to see the results of whatever you didn’t say you’re doing. 
• Build Your Own Lake (BYOL) is a new part of the expanded partnership between AWS and Salesforce. It lets customers infuse AWS AI-centered services like Amazon SageMaker through Salesforce’s Einstein Trust Layer and unify Salesforce Data Cloud with AWS data-centric services like Amazon Redshift. 
• AWS and Cloudera signed an agreement that allows the Cloudera Cloud Platform to integrate directly with AWS services. Cloudera will also build all its generative AI stuff on AWS. 
• And then (a lil’ late to the party) Oracle says it wants to form multi-cloud agreements with Salesforce, AWS, Workday, and every other major cloud app. This article has some pretty interesting takes from Larry Ellison.  
• The biggest AWS news to grace our media-overloaded brains is Amazon’s $4B investment in Anthropic AI, an AI safety and research company. In exchange, AWS gets partial ownership and will be Anthropic’s primary cloud provider. Anthropic will also use Amazon’s AI chips. Cute! 
• Of related interest is this Q&A with Diya Wynn, the responsible AI lead at AWS. 
• There’s a healthcare system called Mercy. Literally that’s the whole name. And they’re partnering with Microsoft to use AI to “lighten the load” on healthcare employees. The two are exploring more than four dozen mercy-packed uses of AI to transform care experiences for patients and employees. If I were in charge of marketing, the slogan would be “Have Mercy” and the logo would be Uncle Jesse’s face.   
• And Accenture is helping New York’s Mount Sinai Health System move to Azure. 
• Oracle is expanding its deal with Microsoft and will co-locate Oracle’s Exadata database-optimized server and Real Application Clusters in Microsoft Azure data centers. Why does Oracle remind me of the roommate who said no to takeout but then when yours arrives they want to know if you’ll split it with them?  
• Sports gaming company FanDuel is further moving its operations to AWS to “support…millions of simultaneous players as they place bets…” If that’s not critical societal innovation, I don’t know what is. 
• Application software security platform Contrast Security now integrates with AWS Security Hub. This will allow customers to address security concerns before their apps are deployed. So I guess Microsoft won’t be using it. 
• Mission Cloud, a managed cloud services provider and AWS Premier Tier Partner (they get a free drink in first class), signed a collab with AWS to develop the consulting firm’s data, analytics, ML, and generative AI solutions on AWS. 
• Cloud-based remote monitoring and management company Atera has launched a new AI-powered IT suite with Microsoft Azure Open AI. 
• Every day is Earth Day for KPMG and Microsoft, who will jointly release a new educational platform on environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG). 
• Cloud connectivity company Cloudflare is collaborating with Microsoft to make it easier for companies to run AI in the location of their choice. I don’t mean, like, the snack kitchen. I mean like on networks and stuff. 
• In finance, Finastra announced it would modernize its trade platform using a microservices architecture on Azure.   

World domination 

• British banking and insurance company NatWest group is partnering with AWS to accelerate the use of generative AI. The two will co-create responsible AI products using Amazon Bedrock as part of NatWest’s new AWS Generative AI Innovation Center. 
• I swear to god the EU is just going down the list of Microsoft products one by one—they are now scrutinizing the Teams Video app. Did an American Microsoft person cut their spaghetti with a knife or something? Try to speak French in France? Say they were vegetarian in Greece? Show up 10 seconds late for a meeting in Germany? Geez… 
• On the topic of Germany: Deutsche Telekom unveiled the commercial availability of a full-stack private 5G network service that rides on Azure’s private multi-access edge compute (MEC) platform. 
• Two companies from the two biggest oil producers in the world are screaming “sustainability now!” so it must be legit. Saudi Arabian business Abdul Latif Jameel has selected AWS as its preferred cloud provider and in turn will provide AWS with clean energy capacity via solar in Spain.   
• Also, Amazon got permission to plan three new data centers in north Dublin to which a group called Friends of the Earth, Not Here Not Anywhere said the projects would increase the country’s emissions. The government was like no, you’re wrong. And then the resistance group was like, no, we’re actually right because we did the math, we got receipts. And then the government was like, that’s nice we like money, byyyyeeee.  

Gossip (for nerds) 

• Jeff Bezos is still worth more than OpenAI. But we’ll see how long that lasts now that OpenAI is launching ChatGPT Enterprise, which offers enterprise-grade privacy and security, advanced data analysis, and a longer context window. Some of the money will pay for lawsuits, which may be straining the relationship between Microsoft and OpenAI. 
• AI uses a lot of water and energy, and there is only so much to go around (unless you’re Coca Cola in which case they’ll just let your crops die because you know what helps distract from hunger? A nice cold coke). For this reason, Microsoft is considering nuclear energy. 

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

• A Chinese hacker stole 60,000 emails from 10 U.S. State Department accounts thanks to a flaw that let the hacker improperly use an Azure Active Directory key. And then another flaw led the key to not even be detected. So, in short, we’re doing real good.  
• This is a Microsoft news update so we all know there was going to be more than one security problem. And maybe if they didn’t force people into the new Teams I’d be nicer about it, but what’s done is done. Microsoft AI researcher exposed terabytes of sensitive data on GitHub; the data included two of Microsoft employees’ entire workstations. 
• On the plus side, GitHub Advanced Security for Azure DevOps is now generally available LMAAAOOOOOO. 

Best Friends Forever 

• MSFT:  
  • New to Azure Marketplace are CGI’s All Payments solution; LeapXpert’s Communication Platform; and Lightbits’ Cloud Data Platform. 
  • ECS is now a solution partner in three designated areas: Azure Infrastructure, Digital & App Innovation, and Data & AI. 

• AWS: 
  • Arduino, an open-source electronic prototyping platform—otherwise known as the kit my husband bought two years ago and still hasn’t touched but insists he will—has joined the AWS Partner Network to assist customers in industrial and commercial sectors deliver enterprise-grade Arduino products. Arduino Cloud has run on AWS infrastructure for the last three years. 
  • SequenceShift earned AWS Travel and Hospitality Competency and TCS achieved AWS Automotive Competency. 
  • New to AWS Marketplace: Veriff, a global identity verification provider; Contentful’s Composable Content Platform; Bright Security’s Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) scanner; MixMode’s Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) for AWS; and IRONSCALES (they don’t have to yell!), a cloud email security solution.  
  • Tray.io, which offers a platform for generating money-making AI content, is now an AWS APN member. Its platform is also available in AWS Marketplace. 
  • Ripcord, which offers a document intelligence as a service (DIaaS) platform, has joined the AWS ISV Accelerate program. 

Miscellany 

• You have until 2025 to say your goodbyes to Azure Database MariaDB. 
• AWS has selected 13 tech startups to be part of its first GovTech accelerator, which will provide cloud support for businesses focused on criminal justice and public safety. Prisoners will be able to see which color uniforms best compliment their skin tones using an AI-powered filter.