Business Insights

Datascape Podcast Episode 38 – December Cloud Update

3 min read

Dec 20, 2019

Welcome to the December episode of our cloud update podcast. We are joined today by three industry experts who talk about the latest developments from the leading public cloud vendors: Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Amazon Web Service (AWS), and Microsoft Azure. We will not be covering re:Invent 2019 in this show because we will cover it in its own episode in the upcoming weeks, so we’ve left out any major changes discussed there.

Pythian Google Cloud Solution Architect Stéphane Fréchette is our first guest, and he is with us to discuss the latest developments in the GCP space. Some of the movements Stéphane sheds light on include the BigQuery updates that Google has spent a great deal of time working on, GCP’s SQL Server developments, and the latest encryption updates.

Pierig Le Saux, a Principal SRE Consultant at Pythian, shares AWS’s most recent developments. He covers the innovative and complex migration of AWS’s active directory to their Single Sign-On service, recent ML AWS happenings, and Amazon’s decision to introduce its Fire Snapshot Restore.

Finally, no show would be complete without Warner Chaves, Microsoft’s Data Platform Principal, who spends today talking about all things Azure. The latest developments and updates include changes to the Azure file system, streamlining in Azure Backup, and some incredible new features in Azure Media Service that truly show off the cloud’s full potential. So much has happened in such a short space and it’s clear that the cloud never sleeps. Join us today!

Key Points From This Episode:

BigQuery developments: quota changes and federated queries to Cloud SQL.
The impact of the federated query adjustment and whether the BigQuery ‘magic’ will be lost.
An explanation of the automatic re-clustering of data and why it will not impact performance.
You can now write stored procedures in BigQuery and it is a game-changer!
The implication of parquet and ORC files now being a part of federated queries.
Why AWS decided to integrate their active directory into the Single Sign-On service.
The active directory will appear as an app on the AWS interface.
How the file system updates for Azure will work and how it moves from container storage.
Learn more about Azure Media Services and new offerings such as live transcriptions!
Machine learning developments from AWS, and insights into Sagemaker and Comprehend.
Leave no database behind: developments from the beta stage of GCP’s SQL Server.
How Azure Backup resolved its previous inability to restore as files and other developments.
Five important network and application updates on the AWS Load Balancer.
How Microsoft AD will not have compatibility issues and all the possibilities that this opens up.
Finally, there is support for Python 3 on Microsoft AD!
The implications of GitHub Actions now being Azure GA.
An explanation of AWS AppConfig and how it’s filling a gap in the market.
A look into AWS’s CDK updates based on Java and NET.
Confidential computing is coming into the Kubernetes Azure service!
More about ‘secret enclaves’ and how they offer an additional layer of protection.
Customers will soon be able to bring their own management keys into GCP.
Why Amazon chose to introduce Fast Snapshot Restore and how it works.
Multi-language and identification video index transcription is live on Azure Media Services.
GCP auto-scaling updates including automation and policy changes.
The interesting and simple AWS Web Application Firewall updates.
Some of the fantastic new reservation options which are now available on Azure.
All cloud services offer some form of reservation ability yet they are greatly underutilized.
How the change feed is now available on Azure blob storage and what this means.
Features of the new Amazon CloudWatch ServiceLens.