AI-related announcements dominate once more. New models for Bedrock. Vector search everywhere, and DynamoDB does a bait-and-switch. Welcome to day 3 of re:Invent 2023.

“What’s New in Sysdig” is back with the November 2023 edition! My name is Dimitris Vassilopoulos, based in London, United Kingdom, and I’m excited to share our latest feature releases with you!

By 2030, the world will look very different, not in the least because of new technological innovations. Many will expect to see a proliferation of next-generation technological solutions from smart cities, to augmented reality, to autonomous cars, to the metaverse. Service providers have a role to play in ensuring that the underlying network that we have across the UK (and beyond) has the capacity and scalability to support these solutions.

In an era defined by rapid technological advancements, the cloud has emerged as a transformative force, revolutionizing the way businesses store, manage, and process their data. According to industry reports, 90% of large organizations have already implemented multi-cloud environments. In 2020, the global cloud market was valued at approximately $371.4 billion, and it’s not showing any sign of slowing down.

The Cloud infrastructure solution has been around for many years now and has been proven that it can optimize your operations, reduce costs, and boost the efficiencies of developers. Thanks to these benefits, organizations of all sizes in different industries are considering moving into the Cloud infrastructure if they haven’t. This article will explore the world of cloud infrastructure, helping you determine if it is the right fit for your organization.

In the digital era, businesses face an intricate web of legal and regulatory requirements. Navigating these complexities is crucial for maintaining customer trust, protecting sensitive information, and avoiding legal repercussions. The adoption of cloud services like Microsoft Office 365 has transformed how businesses handle data, bringing both opportunities and challenges in compliance.

AVD (Azure Virtual Desktop) has grown in popularity and for many reasons many organizations are choosing to consume AVD via a specialist Managed Service Provider (MSP). For the MSPs offering AVD, monitoring and troubleshooting AVD especially for multi-tenant environments is challenging and involves significant, costly and skilled effort using native tools such as Azure Insights or Azure Monitor.

Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) now offers a high-performance storage class, S3 Express One Zone, that delivers consistent single-digit millisecond data access for your most latency-sensitive applications. Designed for your most frequently accessed datasets, S3 Express One Zone replicates and stores your data within a single AWS Availability Zone, scales to process millions of requests per minute, and uses hardware and software optimized for low latency.

We had the opening keynote by Adam Selipsky. If you missed the live stream, you can watch it on YouTube here. Unsurprisingly, so much of the keynote was about AI.

Today Sysdig has been recognized for achieving the Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) Ready designation from Amazon Web Services (AWS). This specialization recognizes that the Sysdig cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP) is validated by AWS Partner Solutions Architects to integrate with Amazon EKS and Amazon EKS Anywhere. Amazon EKS Ready Partners like Sysdig offer AWS customers the ability to customize the Kubernetes solution to fit their business needs.

This is the fifth and final part of this FinOps series, The Operate Phase. If you have missed any of my previous blogs, here is a list of posts in the series: Note: I am ex-AWS, so you will notice a lot more focus on AWS tools and services as examples here, however we are cloud agnostic and all cloud providers have similar services and tools.

After the absolute barrage of announcements on day 0, day 1 brought us some mild excitement and one big disappointment…

In this edition of the Cloud Observer, we dig into the impacts of recent submarine cable maintenance on intercontinental cloud connectivity and call for the greater transparency from the submarine cable industry about incidents which cause critical cables to be taken out of service.

In an era where digital threats are evolving rapidly, securing your Office 365 environment has never been more crucial. Office 365, a suite known for its robust productivity tools, also demands a proactive approach to security. This blog post delves into essential practices and strategies to fortify your Office 365 setup against various cyber threats.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides a range of managed database services that provide multiple database technologies to handle various use cases. They are designed to free businesses from tasks like database administration, maintenance, upgrades, and backup. AWS databases come in several types to cater to different business needs.

Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company, today announced the 2023 AWS Partner Award winners, recognizing leaders around the globe playing a key role helping customers drive innovation and build solutions on AWS. Announced during re:Invent 2023, AWS Partner Awards recognize our Top Partners of the Year and Rising Star Partners of the Year, whose business models have embraced specialization, innovation, and collaboration over the past year.

In typical re:Invent fashion, AWS has made a series of big announcements before the main event even kicks off! Here are some groundbreaking serverless updates that you should know about.

At one time, tech advancements were a major drain on small businesses. Housing your software and digital assets in-house once created a financial nightmare many emerging companies couldn't handle. On top of that, threats to security and a complete lack of flexibility made establishing a foothold challenging. That was especially true when going up against established industry heavy hitters.

SharePoint Online, a cornerstone of modern enterprise collaboration and content management, offers administrators a range of tools and features to optimize and secure their digital workspace. This article delves into several advanced tips and techniques, offering in-depth insights for SharePoint Online administrators to elevate their site management and user engagement strategies.

This tutorial guides you on how to use the Amazon SageMaker Orb to orchestrate model deployment to endpoints across different environments. It also shows how to use the CircleCI platform to monitor and manage promotions and rollbacks. It will use an example project repository to walk you through every step, from training a new model package version to deploying your model across multiple environments.

It’s that time of the year again as re:Invent is almost upon us Here is a list of the serverless-related announcements so far that you should know about.

The cloud changed how businesses work, making things more flexible and adaptable. But keeping track of app performance from a user’s point of view in this new setup is tough. Legacy tools tend to not give developers an understanding of their users' perspective. That's where synthetic monitoring comes in. It's a strong way to focus on users and fix the problems that legacy tools miss.

Upcoming specific new AWS regulations will significantly impact how businesses handle their AWS operations. Starting from January 15, 2024, AWS will no longer permit the resale of discounted Reserved Instances (RIs) bought from the Amazon EC2 Reserved Instance Marketplace. This update aligns with AWS’s service terms, particularly Section 5.5, which explicitly prohibits the resale of discounted RIs.

Discover LightMesh’s latest IP address management upgrades, featuring streamlined subnet imports and collaborative Support Teams, transforming network efficiency. Exciting news from LightMesh! We’ve enhanced our IP address management (IPAM) solution, offering powerful upgrades for efficient network management.

AWS Step Functions allows you to coordinate activity from hundreds of services—including AWS Lambda, Amazon EKS, and Amazon API Gateway—to build and orchestrate serverless workflows. With Step Functions, you organize work into workflows known as state machines, in which each state defines a task or decision and specifies the next state in the workflow.

Amazon Bedrock is a fully managed service that offers foundation models (FMs) built by leading AI companies, such as AI21 labs, Meta, and Amazon along with other tools for building generative AI applications. After enabling access to validation and training data stored in Amazon S3, customers can fine-tune their FMs to invoke tasks such as text generation, content creation, and chatbot Q&A—without provisioning or managing any infrastructure.

Developers and SREs choose to host their applications on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) for its reliability, speed, and ease of use. On Google Cloud, development teams are finding additional value in migrating to Kubernetes on GKE, leveraging the latest serverless options like Cloud Run, and improving traditional, tiered applications with managed services. Elastic Observability offers 16 out-of-the-box integrations for Google Cloud services with more on the way.

For those who remember the tech world before the COVID digitalisation gold-rush, the 2019 assertion by Gartner that 'The Data Centre Is (Almost) Dead, ruffled feathers. The report warned that by 2025, 80% of enterprises will shut down their traditional data centres. In fact, 10% of organisations already have. Then the pandemic hit and the global demand for world-class user experiences (for workforces and customers alike) exploded.

Understanding your AWS S3 billing is crucial to effectively manage and reduce your costs. Charges in AWS S3 are primarily based on three factors: the amount of data you store, the number of requests you make, and data transfer fees. Storage costs are calculated per gigabyte (GB) stored, which are tiered depending on the total size of your data. Requests costs are incurred with each put, get, or list operation on your objects, with prices varying based on the type of request.

Microsoft Teams has emerged as a cornerstone of modern workplace collaboration, offering a suite of tools designed to streamline communication and project management. Despite its widespread adoption, it’s crucial to acknowledge that no platform is without its limitations. Understanding these constraints is essential for organizations to navigate potential roadblocks effectively and make informed decisions about their communication infrastructure.

Introduction Azure Files snapshots are a crucial component in the landscape of cloud computing, offering robust solutions for data protection and management. These snapshots capture the exact state of SMB file shares at distinct moments, providing a critical safety net against data loss and corruption. Understanding their functionality and proper utilization is essential for any organization leveraging Azure cloud services for file storage and management.

The cyberthreat landscape continues to change along with technological advancements. Industry thought leaders expect to see changes in software companies’ approach to security and the defenses they put in place to protect their businesses and their users. Here are five of developers’ cybersecurity priorities for 2023 and predictions for how software companies will adapt their processes to address them.

In the realm of digital transformation, migrating to SharePoint stands out as a pivotal step for organizations seeking to enhance collaboration, streamline data management, and boost operational efficiency. SharePoint, a robust platform by Microsoft, offers a plethora of features that cater to diverse business needs, from document management to team collaboration.

For companies using Microsoft System Center Orchestrator versions 2016, 2019 or earlier who are looking for a replacement for their aging Orchestrator systems, they have an option to migrate to a new 64 bit version Orchestrator 2022 (more details on this can be found in the Kelverion Orchestrator Best Practices Guide) but many companies are considering replacing their Orchestrator system entirely and are looking for guidance.

Big news! Microsoft have just dropped Azure Monitor SCOM Managed Instance (SCOM MI), their cloud-based alternative to SCOM. It’s fully Microsoft managed, and so it promises to take the headache out of deploying, scaling, and managing your SCOM Management Groups. Read Microsoft’s announcement blog to learn all about it.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides a vast ecosystem of products that make DevOps an absolute dream. Products like AWS Elastic Beanstalk have ready-made services for autoscaling, deployment, and logging (to name a few). However, teams may prefer to take a barebones approach and build incrementally - in which case AWS Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) would be the preferred option.

Open Telemetry (OTel) is an open source observability framework that has garnered significant attention for its powerful capabilities in monitoring metrics, logs and traces.. It is second only to Kubernetes in the CNCF velocity chart with contributions being made from major players in the cloud industry, and has a growing community helping build out a thriving ecosystem.

Businesses are prioritizing sustainability to minimize their environmental impact. Since we started, we’ve completed over 130 migration projects with regional and international customers. These projects generally involve right-sizing resources, moving to major cloud providers like Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services, and modernizing applications.

As autumn graced the vibrant city of Chicago, I had the distinct opportunity to immerse myself in the heart of innovation and camaraderie at the CNCF’s Kubecon North America conference. Over the span of four remarkable days, from Nov 6-9, I was fortunate enough to walk alongside the many enthusiasts, contributors and organizers of open source and cloud native communities.

Virtana is proud to announce a series of new capabilities focused on empowering our customers with advanced AI-driven capabilities, enhanced user interfaces, and deeper integrations, all aimed at optimizing application and infrastructure observability. Let’s dive into these innovations and see how they revolutionize the way IT professionals interact with their environments.

Quickly deploy the Cisco AppDynamics Kubernetes® and App Service Monitoring solution for cloud native application observability using Helm charts and Amazon EKS Blueprints for Terraform module. In this blog, I’ll show you how to deploy the AppDynamics Kubernetes and App Service Monitoring solution for cloud native application observability using Helm charts and the Amazon EKS Blueprints for Terraform module. Now, you can do it in just minutes.

When you enter a query in SharePoint Online‘s search box, you are tapping into a complex system designed to interpret your needs and retrieve the most relevant content. It’s a system built not only to understand what you’re looking for but also to respect the security and organization of your company’s data. By mastering SharePoint Online’s advanced search capabilities, you unlock the potential to transform vast data stores into actionable insights swiftly.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a legal mandate across the EU, requires enhanced protection for EU personal data transferred to countries with inadequate levels of data protection safeguards—including the US. The EU-US Privacy Shield, which was in place until 2020, facilitated these protections but was invalidated by the Schrems II ruling as a result of US surveillance concerns.

Effective Google Cloud Platform (GCP) cost management is an essential aspect of cloud administration, ensuring that resources are used optimally without overspending. Utilizing BigQuery for GCP cost analysis offers a comprehensive solution to understand and control your cloud expenses. The integration of GCP billing data into BigQuery allows for real-time analysis and detailed insights into your cloud spend.

Embarking on the journey of understanding your cloud bill can initially seem daunting, but grasping a few essential concepts and familiarizing yourself with common terminology can significantly demystify the process. At its core, cloud billing is the method by which cloud service providers charge for the resources and services that your business consumes.

Having your websites and apps run smoothly at all times is crucial to the success of your brand, and having something go wrong can be catastrophic. But getting bogged down in all of the things that go into setting up and managing them is time-consuming and complicated—especially if your tech team's capabilities are on the lighter side. With an enterprise hosting solution, everything is handled for you. You get infrastructure, management, security, scaling, and more all rolled into one.

Cloud computing has revolutionized the technology landscape, increasing deployment velocity exponentially. Organizations leverage cloud technologies to improve availability, drive innovation, enhance agility, and streamline operations. However, a one-size-fits-all approach to cloud technologies doesn't always meet the diverse needs of modern enterprises.

In the labyrinthine corridors of modern enterprise software, SharePoint Online stands as a beacon of collaboration and efficiency. It’s not just a tool; it’s a multifaceted platform that has been meticulously refined to meet the multifarious demands of today’s businesses.

What’s important when building a new business? A good idea is vital, obviously, plus the right people, hard work, experienced investors, and so on. Building trust is important, but probably far down the list. It’s not that trust isn’t important, it’s just likely to be put aside while working on tasks that are perceived as more time-sensitive or of a higher priority, especially those which directly and noticeably impact the bottom line.

Synthetic monitoring in Cloud Monitoring tests the availability, consistency, and performance of a web application from a real user’s perspective.

As a developer, when I first stepped into the wonderful world Kubernetes, I was amazed at the endless configuration possibilities it offered for containerized apps. It felt like I was handed the most multifaceted tool for all my deployment needs.

Today, I’ll be covering troubleshooting Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) issues. I’ll cover the common causes of problems beyond logon and how you can monitor and troubleshoot to identify the root-causes of issues and how to resolve them resolve them. For information on troubleshooting logon problems and slow logons, please see my previous article: Troubleshoot Slow Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) Logons.

Companies used to have an easier time complying with regulations, but compliance has really never been a straightforward endeavor. In the past, there was one set of rules for businesses to obey, the local rules in the place where companies do business. If the business expanded into new parts of the world, they would have to comply with new rules, but these would apply only to those new territories. The global economy means an end to this approach.

In the ever-evolving and fast-changing landscape of cloud computing and modern software development, achieving 360-degree visibility into your critical business services, applications and infrastructure is essential. This is where observability comes into play. Observability, especially in a cloud-based or cloud-native environment, has become a critical aspect of maintaining and optimizing complex systems and services.