69 – The Cloud Pod asks: Can you hear us now?

A big thanks to this week’s sponsor:

• 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

• AWS Summit Online is on May 13.
• Drama brews in the developing JEDI contract story.
• Please welcome Ryan Lucas as our new full-fledged non-guest host!

General News: This Isn’t the Evidence You’re Looking For

• AWS Summit Online is free to attend on May 13. Expect to hear our predictions soon!
• ️ Following a partial review, the Department of Defense’s inspector general’s office announced they have found no evidence of the DoD awarding the JEDI contract unfairly. Meanwhile, Jon Palmer, Deputy General Counsel for Microsoft argued that allowing AWS a second bid would give Amazon an unfair advantage. But who inspects the inspector?

COVID-19

• Verizon is breaking out the big bucks to purchase video conference company BlueJeans for $400 million. It’s interesting to see BlueJeans back in the spotlight.
• The Information reports that AWS has been comparatively inflexible on cloud bill payments compared to Azure and Google Cloud Platform. At the same time, AWS has maintained the messaging that it is “here to help” during this “unprecedented time.”

 AWS: A Snowball’s Chance at the JEDI Contract

• ❄️ The Snowball family of devices received a ton of updates. All that work on military applications and no JEDI contract to apply it to.
• Federated querying is now generally available on Amazon Redshift. It’s clear that Amazon is investing heavily in Redshift.
• AWS Security Hub launched the BatchUpdateFindings API and the Workflow Status field. Good to see some of these issues worked out.
• This one goes out to all the auditors: AWS Secrets Manager now integrates with AWS Config. And when the auditor’s happy, everyone’s happy.
• AWS IAM will allow you to identify who performed actions when viewing AWS Cloudtrail logs. Now you don’t have to keep track of hundreds of federated accounts manually!
• Amazon Route 53 Domains now allows you to transfer domain names between AWS accounts. This is going to be super helpful.

Google: Non-VPN MVP

• ‍ Google Cloud OS Patch Management Service is now generally available. A great feature, but it won’t patch your docker containers.
• Google Kubernetes Engine enabled Surge Upgrades by default on April 20. It’ll cost you a pretty penny, but the time it can save you means it might be worth it.
• Beyondcorp Remote Access aims to allow remote workers to securely access internal web apps without a traditional VPN. We can’t wait for this to be the new normal.
• Google is releasing industry tailored solutions to healthcare and life sciences organizations. That’s a nice thought, but also a scary reminder of the very real privacy concerns around our personal data.
• Google and Cisco are expanding their partnership to create Cisco SD-WAN Cloud Hub with Google Cloud. It’s hard to pinpoint why exactly we’re supposed to care. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
• Managed backup-restore is now generally available for Spanner.

Azure: Buckets!

• Azure Kubernetes Service now supports a preview of Spot instances. Spot is still a terrible name.
• The National Basketball Association partnered with Microsoft to “enhance online experiences” for fans. And if we don’t get more basketball to watch soon, maybe we can watch the NBA play NBA games on Xbox.
• A collection of Azure Security Center features moved from preview to general availability. Anything that makes security easier to use is great.
• ️ Azure Archive Storage enhanced features are now generally available.

Lightning Round

⚡ With Peter out this week, we’re doing another Weekend-Update style lightning round. That means no points this week, but check out the end of the episode for 10 minutes of polished cloud computing industry humor!

Other headlines mentioned:

• Amazon RDS for SQL Server now supports Multi-File Native Backups
• Amazon CloudWatch Synthetics now supports monitoring private endpoints in a VPC
• AWS Data Transfer Out (DTO) 40% Price Reduction in South America (São Paulo) Region
• Azure SQL Database Hyperscale—Change tracking support now available
• SQL Server 2019 IaaS images with Linux distribution support now available
• Advanced integrations with export of Security Center recommendations and alerts
• Azure Monitor for virtual machines is now generally available
• 16 additional AWS services authorized at DoD Impact Level 4 for AWS GovCloud (US) Regions
• Azure Migrate is now available in Azure Government
• Azure Support API is generally available
• AWS Toolkit for JetBrains IDEs Adds New CloudWatch Logs Integration
• Amazon Redshift introduces support for multi-factor authentication
• Amazon RDS for SQL Server now supports SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS)
• Amazon GuardDuty simplifies multi-account threat detection with support for AWS Organization
• Introducing AWS Cost Categories
• Amazon DocumentDB (with MongoDB compatibility) adds support for cluster deletion protection using AWS CloudFormation
• Amazon Connect now enables customers to interrupt Amazon Lex Chatbots
• AWS Cost Explorer Rightsizing Recommendations Integrates with AWS Compute Optimizer
• AWS Certificate Manager Private Certificate Authority now includes increased certificate issuance rate limits and support for Amazon S3 bucket encryption