Image by Suzanne Calkins
Wheelin’ and dealin’
- It’s a big deal, literally: In a multi-billion-dollar co-investment, Intel has agreed to produce a custom AI chip for AWS. Following the news, Intel stock rose 14%.
- On the brink of a history-making election and a world war, you know what we need? More dormant nuclear power plants to start back up. Despite a meltdown in 1979, Microsoft has entered a new energy-sharing agreement with Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island to produce clean energy that will power datacenters for AI.
- You know what else we need? To never, ever let go of the HoloLens headsets for the Army. Even though it’s been an expensive, years-long failure, I say we keep going—and Microsoft agrees. It recently partnered with Palmer Luckey, an American entrepreneur who makes interesting facial-hair choices, to embed new software into the system that will “enhance soldiers,” much like “Starship troopers,” because war is a funny ha-ha movie.
- SaaS log analytics platform Sumo Logic is strategically collaborating with AWS to enhance its services with Amazon Bedrock and Amazon Security Lake. Also, Sumo Logic went full overachiever and earned three competencies in Cloud Operations for education, retail, and government.
- Vodafone is unleashing the raw power of Microsoft 365 Copilot to help 68,000 employees get more work done.
- AWS is the last of the three big cloud providers to say uncle to Oracle. Now, AWS customers can access Oracle’s databases on AWS infrastructure with zero-ETL integration. The companies will co-market the offering.
- NetApp has signed an agreement with AWS to expand and accelerate generative AI efforts. This will increase AWS Marketplace purchases and make it easier for AWS customers to implement NetApp solutions.
Gossip (for nerds)
- No single entity can fund the compute power AI needs, like, ruhl soon. So, conspiracy theory subject fan-favorite BlackRock has partnered with Microsoft to launch the Global AI Infrastructure Investment Partnership (GAIIP). The program wants to raise $30 billion for datacenters and related energy infrastructure to power hungry, hungry hippos AI. NVIDIA will serve as an advisor for the initiative. I’m wondering if the first thing they’d advise is to have THOUGHT ABOUT THIS YEARS AGO before AI was forced into every Microsoft app imaginable, but maybe not.
- After all, not everybody is down with this AI-in-everything approach. Customers testing Microsoft’s AI-shoving in Excel, Word, and PowerPoint have had a “lukewarm response” due to performance and cost issues.
- Nonetheless, Microsoft says, ACTUALLY you’re wrong, people love us. People want to BE us—just look at these gains.
- And then Marc Benioff was like, that’s great, but no. The Salesforce CEO said that Microsoft’s AI products and strategy have “disappointed many customers,” then pivoted to why we should buy his sh*t instead, so…sounds like a bias-free assessment to me.
- Will Amazon see a mass employee exodus after demanding a return to the office? A memo from Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced that everyone must come back in person, five days a week, by January 2, 2025, or GTFO. The company is also eliminating some management positions and bringing back assigned desks.
- Companies that want to do new, shiny things with AI will need to cut budgets elsewhere if they hope to afford true transformation, says Microsoft’s VP for Azure. He also said some things that led his PR team to spontaneously combust, such as warning customers that there’s a risk AI could “do something unpredictable” and that organizations are encouraged to review their content because of Microsoft’s lack of transparency around data use. Finally, some honesty around here.
- In 2024, more job postings require Azure skills and fewer are requiring AWS skills, compared to 2017.
- Gartner named Microsoft a Magic Quadrant leader for container management and named AWS a Magic Quadrant leader for AI code assistants.
- On-prem is back, baby! So says AWS. AWS customers are increasingly returning to on-premises infrastructure, which includes 29% of all cloud customers (not just AWS) in the UK. In EMEA, more than half of companies want to deploy workloads on legacy infrastructure.
- Some rando in Forbes who keeps referring to “we” predicts Microsoft Azure will reach $200B in revenue in the next three years. Good thing you can use wads of cash to plug leaks in nuclear power plants.
- Microsoft isn’t the only cloud computing company going nuclear—AWS is looking to hire a principal nuclear engineer for its datacenters. In March, the cloud provider acquired an entire nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania.
World domination
- South African gold-mining firm Gold Fields is moving to AWS. I’d expected the press release to give it a greenwashing spin, but it was good enough to spare us the bullsh*t.
- Brazil is getting even more datacenters after AWS pours $1.8 billion into expanding infrastructure.
- AWS announced that it will invest more than $10 billion into AI infrastructure in the UK through 2028.
- Oooooooo, high-speed Japanese trains! The Central Japan Railway Company is using AWS for its Yamanashi Maglev Line. The transportation company will use IoT, AI, and ML technology from AWS to reduce maintenance costs and improve operations.
Ma’am, I’m going to have to call security
- Lots of people didn’t have their precious apps for nearly eight hours when a distributed denial-of-service cyberattack hit Azure. Even the UK’s Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunal Service went down, leaving judges to sit in their wigs for HOURS with nothing to do! Microsoft said Azure’s defense response made it worse.
- To prevent a repeat of the CrowdStrike debacle, Microsoft held a closed summit with its security partners and government officials about better collaboration for testing and deployment. Actions will include investments in anti-tampering protections, such as hiring a dad who can hear you turning up the thermostat from a different room.
- Microsoft released a progress report six months after its promise to make security a priority across the board, which include improved audit logs, a security skilling academy, and reduced token access. Good thing it hasn’t reduced tokin’ access, or I’d be super sad.
New stuff
- New upgrades to Copilot include agents that you can boss around, an upgraded LLM, meeting summaries, and more.
- AWS is offering more value to partners through its new Global Passport Program. A select number of international ISVs will participate. The program includes guidance, strategic support, and resources, such as market-evaluation workshops and multi-region deployments.
- You’ll be interested to know that Amazon Connect now supports AWS CloudFormation. JK, you won’t be interested to know.
- Azure Advisor Well-Architected Assessment is in public preview. It provides tailored guidance to optimize cloud infrastructure.
- Is it Fashion Week? Because Microsoft launched three new models for its open-source Phi 3.5 series to help developers with multilingual processing and video analysis, among other tasks.
- AWS announced Parallel Computing Service, which lets customers set up and manage high-performance computing clusters.
Professional pivots
- Carolina Dybeck Happe has left GE to become Microsoft’s new executive VP and COO. The real question is: How legit is her LinkedIn picture? It does not disappoint.
- Thierry Pellegrino has become the global head of advanced computing at AWS.
Best friends forever
- The NFL is using AWS to build a bunch of stuff for the most boring game outside of golf. Tackle Probability is an AI-powered tool that analyzes some boring game stuff. The game giant also developed Digital Athlete to improve player safety, but player safety seems like it starts with not having two 300-lb men slam into each other at top speed for the 100th time in their careers. But I’m no doctor.
- Digital transformation solutions provider Trianz has integrated its Concierto platform with AWS. Concierto is a zero-code SaaS platform that enables “lightning fast migrations to the cloud.” I’ll forgive the hyperbole only because this had me imagine a company putting its computers in a DeLorean…then it drives really, really fast toward the clock tower…then it’s the future and it has migrated.
- Cisco has started offering its AppDynamics application management suite as part of Microsoft’s Azure cloud services.
- Polarin by Lightstorm, which for some reason sounds like the sequel to The Nightmare Before Christmas in my weird brain, is in Azure Marketplace. It’s a cloud network infrastructure platform, which is def not as fun as my sequel.
- Kong, which develops API technologies and isn’t that giant rubber toy you hide dog treats in, has made its Dedicated Cloud Gateways available for Azure.
- Australian biz-tech provider Brennan earned its Azure Data Warehouse Migration Specialization.
- Our friends at Pinecone have made the company’s serverless vector database available on Azure.
- Project-management tech provider LoadSpring Solutions now integrates with Microsoft Azure.
- Belden has integrated its CloudRail software with AWS IoT SiteWise.
- AI development platform Kore.ai’s XO Automation and Contact Centre AI is now in AWS Marketplace.