On The Cloud Pod this week, Peter is spending the next 12 hours in a rejuvenation chamber like a regular villain straight out of a James Bond film.   

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 is on a mission to replace humans so we can go on holiday permanently. 
• Google is a bit early with the April Fools’ joke.
• Azure is, much to our surprise, ahead of everyone else for once.

Amazon Web Services: Battle Bots

• Amazon announces Alexa Conversations is now generally available for voice app development. We’re still a bit disappointed in her voice — it would be nice to hear something a bit more natural.   
• Amazon launches computer vision service to detect defects in manufactured products. Soon we’ll just be sitting around eating bon bons — we can’t wait!
• AWS Asia Pacific (Osaka) region now open to all, with three availability zones and more services. We think this is a reaction to the huge cloud growth in Japan. 
• AWS DeepRacer League’s 2021 season launches with new Open and Pro divisions. Apparently it’s gone virtual and is being dominated by experts.

Google Cloud Platform: A Bit Jealous

• ‍✈️ Google introduces GKE Autopilot, a revolutionary mode of operations for managed Kubernetes. Autopilot makes it sound like an Oracle product. 
• Google announces the Risk Protection Program to enhance trust in cloud ecosystems. Google wants you to pay insurance in case its cloud goes down… 
• Google extends BigQuery BI engine for faster insights across popular BI tools. Pretty cool! 
• New enhancements for Google Cloud Marketplace Private Catalog including Terraform support. This is pretty good for internal teams managing private catalogs.  

Azure: Killing It

• Microsoft has announced a trio of new industry clouds. We think other providers will follow very soon.   
• Microsoft to establish the first datacenter region in Indonesia as part of Berdayakan Ekonomi Digital Indonesia initiative. Justin apologizes for butchering the name of that initiative.    
• Azure is killing off a bunch of its products. No, the dates aren’t wrong — 2024 is a leap year:
  • Action required: Switch to Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 by 29 February 2024
  • We are retiring Classic Azure Migrate on 29 February 2024
  • Azure Stack Edge Pro FPGA is retiring on 29 February 2024
  • Update the Azure Cosmos DB Java SDK by 29 February 2024  
  • Azure Batch rendering VM images & licensing will be retired on 29 February 2024
  • We’re retiring the standard version of Custom Voice on 29 February 2024
  • We are retiring Azure Cognitive Services Text Analytics v2.x on 29 February 2024
  • Please upgrade your Azure AD Connect sync to a newer version by 29 February 2024
  • Azure Batch Transcription and Customization Rest API v2 will be retired by 29 February 2024
  • Azure Application Gateway analytics will be retired on 29 February 2024
  • Update your scripts to use Az PowerShell modules by 29 February 2024
  • Update your Azure Media Services REST API and SDKs to v3 by 29 February 2024
  • We’re retiring Azure Network Watcher Connection Monitor (classic) on 29 February 2024
  • Jenkins plug-ins for Azure are being retired on 29 February 2024
  • AKS legacy Azure AD integration will be retired on 29 February 2024
  • We’re retiring Classic Application Insights on 29 February 2024
  • We’re retiring Network Performance Monitor on 29 February 2024
  • Azure Batch ‘CloudServiceConfiguration’ pools will be retired on 29 February 2024   

Azure Ignite: Don’t Get Excited

• Innovate across hybrid and multi cloud with new Azure Arc capabilities. Bit of an anti-climax. 
• Azure releases several new capabilities for Azure Data and AI. A mixed bag of capabilities.
• Introducing Azure Percept, an easy-to-use platform for creating responsible edge AI solutions. But it still requires a human… so manage your expectations.  
• Satya Nadella shares the five attributes that will drive the next generation of cloud innovation. Do not watch it! Jonathan has a peg on his nose so he doesn’t have to smell the bullshit.
• Introducing Microsoft Mesh, a new mixed-reality platform powered by Azure. Actually kind of cool.  

TCP Lightning Round

⚡Saved from watching Satya Nadella’s keynote meant Jonathan hadn’t been bored to death and takes this week’s point, leaving scores at Justin (3), Ryan (1), Jonathan (4). 

Other headlines mentioned:

• AWS Config now supports Amazon container services
• Amazon Elasticsearch Service now supports rollups, reducing storage costs for extended retention
• TLS 1.2 will be required for all AWS FIPS endpoints beginning March 31, 2021
• You can now seamlessly connect customers and business with Azure Communication Services and Microsoft Teams
• Google is bringing your GKE logs to the GKE cloud console
• AWS CodePipeline now supports 1000 pipelines per account
• Amazon EKS now supports adding KMS envelope encryption to existing clusters to enhance security for secrets
• Microsoft Power Fx: The open-source low-code programming language is in public preview   
• The AWS Lambda console now features a new navigation design

 Things Coming Up

• Microsoft Build — May 19–21 (Digital) 
• Google Cloud Born-Digital Summit March 25th 2:30 AM – 5:00 AM Pacific Time (US)
• Google Cloud Next — Not announced yet (one site says Moscone is reserved June 28–30)
• AWS re:Invent — November 29–December 3 — Las Vegas
• Oracle Open World