Issue #35 Mar 16 - Mar 22

Trends

30% instances using Apache logging utility Log4j remain vulnerable

Qualys study found Log4j in 3mn+ vulnerable instances; 50% installations with Log4j2 flagged as end of support. Of 22mn vulnerable applications identified after scanning 150mn+ IT assets, 80% were open source.
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Cloud security tooling fragmentation leading to alert fatigue

59%+ organizations receive 500+ alerts a day; ~40% receive 1000+ alerts/day. Half of cybersecurity teams spend 20% time prioritizing alerts while most are desensitized by false positives and subjected to burnout, according to Orca Security report.
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Analysis

AWS taking a friendlier stance with partners in pursuit of scale

AWS, which remained in a tussle with MongoDB so far has now entered into a strategic partnership with it; recent partnership with Confluent and hiring of partner-friendly people including Ruba Borno from Cisco evidence an optimistic future for AWS partners.
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Amazon responds to Oracle MySQL HeatWave ‘attacks’

As Oracle CTO Larry Ellison announced MySQL HeatWave going multicloud, claiming better query and processing performance than Redshift and Aurora, AWS welcomed HeatWave while maintaining confidence in the price/performance offered by its database services.
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Drilling down into wasted cloud spend

David Linthicum comments on State of Cloud 2022 findings: lack of FinOps processes, active cost governance processes, and unoptimized cloud solutions behind wasted cloud spend; only 68% of cloud expenditure efficient.
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Business Updates

AWS-MongoDB partnership to ease cloud adoption

The expansion of existing multi-year strategic collaboration agreement, will drive adoption of MongoDB Atlas on AWS as the two companies engage in joint developer and go-to-market efforts and facilitate MongoDB’s expansion into further AWS regions.
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Microsoft faces antitrust complaint in the EU after OVHcloud complaint

The complaint by the French cloud provider accused Microsoft of abusing its dominant position, making it difficult to switch to other cloud providers and undermining competition.
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Google Cloud, VMware to offer cloud transformation and modernization capabilities

Announcing the expanded partnership, VMware stated that utilizing Google Cloud VMware Engine with VMware Cloud Universal can power TCO savings of 38% over three years, labor savings of $115,000, and yearly cost savings of $2m+.
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Microsoft partner program rebranded; no changes to New Commerce Experience requirements - yet

Microsoft Partner Network is now Microsoft Cloud Partner Program; Microsoft will now evaluate partners’ proficiency across six key areas. Baseline member status and Silver and Gold competencies to be replaced by new qualifying levels.
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Google Chronicle gets context-aware threat detection - up for public preview

Following acquisitions of cybersecurity businesses Mandiant and Siemplify, Google announced a context-aware thread detection capability for its security platform Chronicle, which is aimed at reducing alert fatigue for cybersecurity teams.
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Azure Health Data Services generally available

Offered as a PaaS solution, Azure Health Data Services brings a number of health data APIs that enable inter-system operability, tools for data management, de-identification, trust enablement and threat protection at lower costs.
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Google Contact Center AI Platform extension to add third-party integration support

The platform now enables businesses to embed experiences into mobile and web channels using existing SDKs, and can automatically perform scheduling functions and route calls based on CRM data and real-time interactions.
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Wins

Standard Bank launches Shari’ah Banking call center powered by Amazon Connect and Salesforce

The new call center utilizes leading technologies to provide fast resolution to customer needs remotely; the transformation is a part of the bank's effort to turn into a platform services organization.
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SonyLIV relaunch powered by AWS enables ten-fold subscriber growth

Powering consistent viewing experiences with cloud native services, adopting user-centric KPIs to assess video quality, and monetizing content with server-side ad-insertion enabled Sony Pictures Networks India to grow its OTT platform’s subscriber base by 10x.
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Real estate major Wedgewood calls Microsoft Sentinel its best investment

Microsoft Sentinel deployed by Microsoft Gold Partner KMicro enables swift response to threats in Wedgewood’s hybrid multicloud environment, with a greater degree of automation.
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