On The Cloud Pod this week, the team discusses the future of the podcast and how they’ll know they’ve made it when listeners use Twitter to bombard Ryan with hatred when he’s wrong. 

A big thanks to this week’s sponsors:

• Foghorn Consulting, which provides full-stack cloud solutions with a focus on strategy, planning and execution for enterprises seeking to take advantage of the transformative capabilities of AWS, Google Cloud and Azure.

This week’s highlights

• Amazon gives Justin a long overdue birthday present.
• Google wants to educate the people.
• Azure has a new best friend but could they be a wolf in sheep’s clothing?

General News: Goodbye, Friend

• The Apache foundation has decided to send Mesos to the attic. This makes us sad because we loved the concept.

Amazon Web Services: Happy Birthday, Justin

• New AWS WAF Bot Control to reduce unwanted website traffic. This is great!
• ️ AWS is releasing the Amazon Route 53 Resolver DNS firewall to defend against DNS-level threats. Pricing is interesting on this one.
• AWS launches CloudWatch Metric Streams. After years of complaints, they’re finally fixing this issue. 
• AWS Lambda@Edge changes duration billing granularity from 50ms down to 1ms. Nice price cut!
• AWS Direct Connect announces MACsec encryption for dedicated 10Gbps and 100Gbps connections at select locations. AWS has fulfilled their promise to Justin — three years later.
• Amazon announces new predictable pricing model up to 90% lower and Python Support moves to GA for CodeGuru Reviewer. If this goes down next week, blame Ryan. 

Google Cloud Platform: So Pretty

• Google is releasing an open-source set of JSON dashboards. This is super important.  
• Google announces free AI and machine learning training for fraud detection, chatbots and more. We recommend you check these out.  
• Google Clouds Database Migration Service is now generally available. Everything is so beautiful on paper.   
• Google introduces request priorities for Cloud Spanner APIs. This just reinforces the fact that we don’t know how Cloud Spanner works. 

 Azure: Best Friends

• Microsoft’s new low-code programming language, Power FX, is in public preview. Terrible name.
• Microsoft announces new solutions for Oracle WebLogic on Azure Virtual Machines. They’re running WebLogic on Azure because of some product requirement.   
• The U.S. Army moves Microsoft HoloLens-based headset from prototyping to production phase. You don’t get JEDI, but you get HoloLens!
• ️ Microsoft launches Azure Orbital to deepen the value chain for geospatial earth imagery on cloud. Reminded us to watch Lord of War again, it’s a good movie.

Oracle: Win Dinner With Larry

• Oracle offers free cloud migration to lure new customers. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison will fly you to his private island — but if you don’t sign up, you have to make your own way back. 
• Oracle and Microsoft expand interconnection to Frankfurt, adding a third location in EMEA. Don’t invite Oracle into your data center.  

TCP Lightning Round

⚡ Anyone who makes fun of the Canadian accent wins so Justin takes this week’s point and the lead, leaving scores at Justin (5), Ryan (3), Jonathan (5). 

Other headlines mentioned:

• Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) now supports node image autoupgrade in public preview
• Public preview of Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) run-command feature 
• Amazon WorkSpaces webcam support now generally available
• Amazon VPC Flow Logs announces out-of-the-box integration with Amazon Athena
• AWS WAF now supports Labels to improve rule customization and reporting
• Amazon EKS is now FedRAMP-High Compliant
• AWS Budgets announces CloudFormation support for budget actions
• AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store now supports easier public parameter discoverability
• AWS Systems Manager Run Command now displays more logs and enables log download from the console
• Amazon EC2 now allows you to copy Amazon Machine Images across AWS GovCloud, AWS China and other AWS Regions
• AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store now supports removal of parameter labels 
• Announcing Amazon Forecast Weather Index for Canada

 Things Coming Up

• Public Sector Summit Online — April 15–16
• Discover cloud storage solutions at Azure Storage Day — April 29
• AWS Regional Summits — May 10–19
• AWS Summit Online Americas — May 12–13
• Microsoft Build — May 19–21 (Digital)
• Google Financial Services Summit — May 27th 
• Harness Unscripted Conference — June 16–17
• Google Cloud Next — Not announced yet (one site says Moscone is reserved June 28–30)
• Google Cloud Next 2021 — October 12–14, 2021
• AWS re:Invent — November 29–December 3 — Las Vegas
• Oracle Open World (no details yet)