This week's roundup of notable cloud news.
Hello CloudLandia, we've read all the cloud news again this week, so you don't have to.
Once again, there's a little bit of everything going on this week. GCP's cross region replication for SQL Databases caught our eye, as it's the solution to the sort of design issue you can predict when you visualize your cloud environments using Hava.
Asking, what happens to our application if a region goes offline can easily be visualised and the Cloud SQL cross-region replication helps build in the redundancy required for mission critical networks.
Enjoy.
GCP announce cross-region replication for Cloud-SQL 
Being responsible for business continuity isn't easy. You must consider a wide variety of failure scenarios, including the outage of a Google region. In the event of a regional outage, you want your application and database to quickly start serving your customers in another available region if a Google Cloud region fails.
Google worked closely with Cloud SQL customers facing business continuity challenges to simplify the experience, and are excited to launch Cloud SQL cross-region replication, which is available for MySQL and PostgreSQL database engines.
https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/databases/introducing-cross-region-replica-for-cloud-sql
AWS Augment Low cost high throughput Windows file systems 
Amazon FSx for Windows File Server provides fully managed, highly reliable file storage that is accessible over the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol. It is built on Windows Server, delivering a wide range of administrative features such as user quotas, end-user file restore, and Microsoft Active Directory integration, consistent with operating an on-premises Microsoft Windows file server.
This week, AWS announced two new features: storage capacity scaling and throughput capacity scaling. The storage capacity scaling allows you to increase your file system size as your data set increases, and throughput capacity is bidirectional letting you adjust throughput up or down dynamically to help fine-tune performance and reduce costs.
With the capability to grow storage capacity, you can adjust your storage size as your data sets grow, so you don’t need to worry about growing data sets when creating the file system. With the capability to change throughput capacity, you can dynamically adjust throughput capacity for cyclical workloads or for one-time bursts to achieve a time-sensitive goal such as data migration.
GCP adds smart analytics frameworks for AI Platform Notebooks
Google Cloud announced the beta release of smart analytics frameworks for AI Platform Notebooks. Smart Analytics Frameworks brings closer the model training and deployment offered by AI Platform with the ingestion, preprocessing, and exploration capabilities of their smart analytics platform. With smart analytics frameworks for AI Platform Notebooks, you can run petabyte-scale SQL queries with BigQuery, generate personalized Spark environments with Dataproc Hub, and develop interactive Apache Beam pipelines to launch on Dataflow, all from the same managed notebooks service that provides Google Cloud AI Platform.
These new frameworks can help bridge the gap between cloud tools and bring a secure way to explore all kinds of data
https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/data-analytics/enterprise-notebooks-for-ai-ml-analytics
Azure Maps Creator now available in preview. 
As enterprises continue to evolve in their digital transformation journey, there is a need for augmenting Azure Maps content with project-specific and private business knowledge of places. This week Microsoft launched Azure Maps Creator in preview to extend location intelligence to indoor spaces.
Enterprises are taking advantage of Azure Maps capabilities to optimize business operations and transform their business strategy using location and map services. With IoT-powered systems delivering new and more accurate data than ever before, defining new patterns for taking advantage of location data findings is essential.
Creator includes a new set of capabilities that allow an enterprise to securely create and use indoor maps that dynamically change as new events in spaces occur. The data is not used to improve Azure Maps, customers own and are in full control of the created map content, including defining how to secure access using Azure Maps authentication and authorization options.
You can develop solutions for the general public or for selected authenticated users for virtually any indoor space such as offices, stores, factories, and hospitals for facility management, occupant and guest experiences, productivity tools, and more.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-maps-creator-now-available-in-preview/
CircleCI release AWS Serverless Framework Orb to easily deploy serverless applications
CircleCI has released an aws-serverless-framework orb to make it easier to continuously integrate and deploy serverless applications built using the Serverless Framework.
An orb is a sharable package of continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) configurations that is easy to use and makes the software delivery faster and less error prone.
CircleCI is an AWS Partner Network (APN) Advanced Technology Partner with an AWS DevOps Competency. Its continuous integration and delivery platform allows teams to rapidly release code they trust by automating the build, test, and delivery process.
See how it's done in this post:
Is Apple Planning to Enter the Cloud Computing Space?
Since the beginning of 2020, Apple has been hiring profusely in the cloud Infrastructure space in the last few months, based on the job openings published by them. Apparently, they are carrying Steve Jobs’ legacy by implementing the philosophy of hiring the best talent to create revolutionary solutions.
Apple has had a history of attracting targeted engineering talent to augment its efforts in selected fields. It seems like it is doing the same in the cloud computing field now.
It is not hard to believe that Apple might be working on enhancing its Cloud Computing infrastructure to facilitate the needs of its applications such as App Store, iCloud, iTunes, Apple Music, etc. Once it reaches a sophisticated level of infrastructure, it may open up its service to other companies too, just like Amazon did after completely building the AWS foundation internally.
Maybe, Maybe not... this article explores the proposition.
AWS Marketplace allows SaaS contract upgrades and renewals
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced new upgrades to its marketplace to help customers renew software-as-a-service contracts.
As of now, any registered AWS Marketplace seller (ISV or consulting partner) can create an upgrade or renewal offer for SaaS Contract and consumption pricing (CCP) private offers.
According to AWS, the changes will allow customers to “keep up wi
Swift announce AWS Lambda Runtime
Swift announced a new open source project for the Swift Server ecosystem, Swift AWS Lambda Runtime. Distributed as a Swift package, the Swift AWS Lambda Runtime is designed to help Swift developers build serverless functions for the Amazon Web Services Lambda platform.
The project is a group effort that included engineers across the Swift community, including engineers from Apple and Amazon. Notably Fabian Fett pioneered the work in the community and co-authored the library. As an open source library, anyone interested in contributing to the project can easily join in to help make it better.
https://swift.org/blog/aws-lambda-runtime/
Fabian Fett posted a tutorial on his blog around using the AWS console.
https://fabianfett.de/getting-started-with-swift-aws-lambda-runtime
Upcoming Events:
Security Dev Day: Automating Security and Compliance
for Applications and Workloads
Wednesday, June 10th from 8:30 AM - 12:30 PM PT | 11:30 AM - 2:30 PM ET
Whether you are just beginning to deploy applications on Amazon Web Services (AWS) or have a fully running environment, identifying strategies to automate security in your development life cycle will help you identify threats, implementing shift left principles and helping you save costs.
Check Point Software Technologies and AWS are working together to bring you this virtual workshop to learn how to utilize tools, controls, and design models to automate security for your cloud applications while also ensuring compliance.
In this virtual workshop, you will learn how to deploy Check Point CloudGuard Security on AWS, and quickly visualize your applications and workloads, all through one centralized and customizable dashboard. You will learn how to manage compliance rule-sets, auto-remediate compliance violations, while also gaining real-time threat intelligence on your AWS account. Our instructors will be there live, to assist in answering any questions you may have.
Quick Wins:
- Lean how to quickly deploy automated security on AWS
- Manage your overall cloud security and compliance posture
- Visualize events triggering AWS resources
- Identify threats impacting your security posture with complete forensic analysis and remediation
https://pages.checkpoint.com/webinar-aws-security-compliance-cloud-workloads.html
Dev Day - Building Modern ML Applications
Whether you are building a startup or adding to a data-intensive application, taking advantage of a cloud data platform and machine learning technologies is key to innovating and gaining a competitive advantage.
Snowflake and AWS (Amazon SageMaker) are bringing you a series of DevDay events to show how to build data-intensive applications with ML.
These events will show how to use Snowflake Cloud Data Platform to build data pipelines. You will learn how to leverage Amazon SageMaker to bring predictive power to your business; analyze data at a deeper level; and develop, test, and deploy ML models at scale. Our instructors will help you follow along using your Snowflake and AWS accounts and answer your questions live.
YOU’LL HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO:
- Ingest data for analytics powered by Snowflake
- Launch a SageMaker Notebook instance with the Snowflake Python connector pre-installed
- Build a connection to your Snowflake instance to pull data into a Pandas Data Frame
- Train a machine learning model using Amazon SageMaker
- Learn how to persist predictions in Snowflake for easy evaluation and analytics
- Join the on-demand Q&A with your Snowflake and Amazon peers
https://www.snowflake.com/webinar/aws-devday-building-modern-machine-learning-applications-amazon
AWS Summit Online - Europe, UK, Middle East & Africa
Join the AWS Summit Online on June 17 and deepen your cloud knowledge with this free, virtual event.
Hear from your local AWS country leaders about the latest trends, customers and partners in your market, followed by the opening keynote with Werner Vogels, CTO, Amazon.com. After the keynote, dive deep in 55 breakout sessions across 11 tracks, including getting started, building advanced architectures, app development, DevOps and more. Tune in live to network with fellow technologists, have your questions answered in real-time by AWS Experts and claim your certificate of attendance. All sessions will be available in English with subtitles in French, Italian, German and Spanish.
So, whether you are just getting started on the cloud or are an advanced user, come and learn something new at the AWS Summit Online.
When: June 17 Online Starts 09:00 (UTC+1)
https://aws.amazon.com/events/summits/online/emea/
Virtual Masterclass: Cloud Practitioner Bootcamp with AWS
This introductory-level course is intended for APN Partners who seek an overall understanding of the AWS Cloud. It provides a detailed overview of cloud concepts, AWS services, security, architecture, pricing, and support.
Delivered through an interactive online format, at the end of the course there will be an online assessment which will provide a certification upon successful completion.
Ran by AWS and Ingram Micro expert trainers, this course will teach you how to succeed both technically and commercially.
The tailored training will teach you how to:
- Define the AWS Cloud
- Describe the key services on the AWS platform using common use cases
- Describe basic AWS Cloud architectural principles
- Describe the AWS Shared Responsibility Model with reference to basic security and compliance
- Define pricing models
- Identify sources of documentation, including where to go for further information, how to describe the AWS Cloud value proposition, and the different ways to define characteristics of deployment/operation in the AWS Cloud
Course Outline
This course covers the following concepts:
Module 1: AWS Cloud Concepts
Module 2: AWS Core Services
Module 3: AWS Security
Module 4: AWS Architecting
Module 5: AWS Pricing and Support
Please note you will be required to follow the registration link in the confirmation email to secure your place.
If you need a fix of AWS goodness, there is an extensive program of online tech talks scheduled:
Join AWS for live, online presentations led by AWS solutions architects and engineers. AWS Online Tech Talks cover a range of topics and expertise levels, and feature technical deep dives, demonstrations, customer examples, and live Q&A with AWS experts.
Note – All sessions are free and in Pacific Time. Can’t join them live? Access webinar recordings and slides on the On-Demand Portal
Microsoft also has a full training and events calendar underway :
Source : https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/community/events/
Some are going ahead, but we'd suggest contacting the organisers before putting any concrete plans in place.
Thanks for reading, we hope you found something useful. Talking of useful:
hava.io allows users to visualise their AWS, GCP and Azure cloud environments in interactive diagram form including unique infrastructure, security and container views. hava.io continuously polls your cloud configuration and logs changes in a version history for later inspection which helps with issue resolution and provides history of all configs for audit and compliance purposes.
If you haven't taken a hava.io free trial to see what it can do for your workflow, security and compliance needs - please get in touch.
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