Welcome to above the clouds

GCP – BigQuery under the hood: Enhanced vectorization in the advanced runtime
Under the hood, there’s a lot of technology and expertise that goes into delivering the performance you get from BigQuery, Google Cloud’s data to AI platform. Separating storage and compute provides unique resource allocation flexibility and enables petabyte-scale analysis, while features like compressed storage, compute autoscaling, and flexible pricing contribute to its efficiency. Then there’s […]

GCP – Google is a Leader in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms
We are pleased to share that Gartner® has named Google a Leader in the 2025 Magic Quadrant™ for Analytics and Business Intelligence, for the second consecutive year. We believe this validates our strategy of delivering a comprehensive BI platform for self-service and governed environments that’s accessible to entire organizations through natural language, and backed by […]

GCP – What’s in an ASP? Creative Phishing Attack on Prominent Academics and Critics of Russia
Written by: Gabby Roncone, Wesley Shields In cooperation with external partners, Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) observed a Russia state-sponsored cyber threat actor impersonating the U.S. Department of State. From at least April through early June 2025, this actor targeted prominent academics and critics of Russia, often using extensive rapport building and tailored lures to […]

AWS – One Year EC2 Instance Savings Plans are now available for P5 and P5en instances
Starting today, EC2 1-year Instance Savings Plans are now available for EC2 P5 and P5en instances in all Regions where these instances are available. EC2 Instance Savings Plans are a flexible pricing model that offer lowest prices on individual instance family’s usage in a region (for example, P5 usage in the US (N. Virginia) Region), […]

AWS – Amazon EC2 M8g instances now available in AWS South America (São Paulo)
Starting today, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) M8g instances are available in AWS South America (São Paulo) Region. These instances are powered by AWS Graviton4 processors and deliver up to 30% better performance compared to AWS Graviton3-based instances. Amazon EC2 M8g instances are built for general-purpose workloads, such as application servers, microservices, gaming servers, […]

GCP – Enhancing backup vaults with support for Persistent Disk, Hyperdisk, and multi-regions
To help protect against evolving digital threats like ransomware and malicious deletions, last year, we introduced backup vault in the Google Cloud Backup and DR service, with support for Compute Engine VM backups. This provided immutable and indelible backup capabilities for mission-critical VMs, for both VM metadata and all their attached disks. Today, we’re announcing […]

AWS – Amazon SageMaker AI now supports M7i, C7i, and R7i for SageMaker Model Training and SageMaker Processing
Amazon SageMaker AI is pleased to announce support for M7i, C7i, and R7i instance types for SageMaker Model Training and SageMaker Processing. Amazon SageMaker Model Training lets you easily train machine learning models at scale using fully managed infrastructure optimized for performance and cost. Amazon SageMaker Processing makes it easy to run data pre-processing, post-processing, […]

AWS – Amazon MSK expands Express Brokers to Mexico (Central) and Asia Pacific (Thailand) regions
Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK) has added support for Express Brokers in Mexico (Central) and Asia Pacific (Thailand) regions. Express brokers are a new broker type for Amazon MSK Provisioned designed to deliver up to 3x more throughput per broker, scale up to 20x faster, and reduce recovery time by 90% as […]

AWS – AWS Marketplace now provides an enhanced selling authorization experience for Independent Software Vendors
AWS Marketplace helps Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) manage their AWS Marketplace Channel Partner relationships through selling authorizations, allowing channel partners to resell ISV products. Starting today, ISVs can access an enhanced selling authorization experience through the AWS Marketplace Management Portal. This update streamlines the process, making it more efficient to manage channel operations. The redesigned […]
AWS – AWS Backup Audit Manager is now available in six additional regions
AWS Backup Audit Manager is now available in Asia Pacific (Hyderabad, Jakarta, Melbourne), Europe (Spain, Zurich), and Middle East (UAE) Regions. AWS Backup Audit Manager is a feature within AWS Backup that allows you to audit and report on the compliance of your data protection policies to help you meet your business and regulatory needs. […]