Friday Tech News

Good morning and Happy Friday!

As we wrap up summer, this was a slower week after #Blackhat2023 but still featured some prominent announcements around AI and Security. I especially enjoyed a lot of the reading I did this week on Cloud Security and think you’ll like some of the articles too.

Thank you so much for making this a part of your Friday morning coffee time. I'm Phil Moroni, and I'm an Account Executive in the Information Technology Services Industry here with another edition of Friday Tech News!

What is this? This is a newsletter that provides updates and insights on the latest trends and developments in the technology industry. I am a professional who specializes in supporting IT leaders in evaluating, investing, and managing people, processes, and technology tools that support their businesses.

Each week, I summarize relevant industry updates from popular Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM's), software publishers, and managed providers. The goal of my research and newsletter is to keep you informed about current trends and events that may impact your business from a trusted and reputable source. It's just information I'm sharing, and, I follow and work with hundreds of partners in the industry, keeping track of their growth, changes, and evolution so that you don't have to.

Bottom Line: As you focus on improving your business through digital initiatives, my commitment is to keep you informed of the fast-paced changes and trends taking place so that you can plan ahead and stay ahead of the game.

Key areas of focus for me are:

1. Cloud Computing, Security, Trends

2. Developer & Security Tools

3. Networking & Infrastructure Tools

4. End User Tools & Workspace Tech

5. Emerging Technologies and Future Concepts

If you have any questions, would like information about any specific vendors I follow, or would like to have a conversation about any topic that is challenging you, I invite you to engage with me! I value feedback immensely and would love to know what you find valuable about this newsletter so feel free to reach out!

Thank you for reading, and stay digitally and physically safe!

Phil

OEM News & Updates 📰

Critical Start | Critical Start introduces Managed Cyber Risk Reduction to address risks, vulnerabilities, and threats

• MCRR provides a comprehensive managed solution to address risks, vulnerabilities, and threats in your environment.

Grafana | Grafana Cloud Profiles Aims to Unify Observability for CloudOps

• Part of the pyroscope acquisition, this new service brings new capabilities to the Grafana platform and will be welcomed by many who use it today for observability.

Google Cloud | Google launches Pricing API to help enterprises optimise cloud costs

• New Improvements to the API will allow customers more granular analysis of ways they can optimize costs inside the platform. Look for more native enhancements to cost and usage dashboards from all the OEMs in the coming year as they try and catch up to 3rd party providers.

Dialpad | Dialpad launches generative AI trained on 5 years of proprietary conversational data

• Dialpad has launched DialpadGPT a domain-specific large language model (LLM) tailored specifically to power features that automate tasks for enterprises of all sizes improving customer service, sales and recruiting.

Stairwell | Stairwell unveils enhanced threat detection for Citrix with general availability of Stairwell for NetScaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway appliances

• New security for NetScaler appliances, this is a nice announcement to enhance visibility into the Citrix stack.

Semperis | Semperis Launches Security-Centric Active Directory Migration and Consolidation Solution to Accelerate AD Modernization and Reduce Customers’ Attack Surfaces

• This solution is designed to accelerate AD modernization and reduce customers’ attack surfaces greatly.

Twilio | Twilio Partners with OpenAI to Revolutionize Customer Engagement

• This partnership will enable Twilio to integrate OpenAI’s GPT-3 language model into its platform, allowing developers to build applications that can understand natural language and respond in kind.

Arthur | Arthur launches open-source tool to help companies make data-driven decisions about LLMs

• Arthur has launched Arthur Bench, which helps users find the best LLM for a particular data set by evaluating how different LLMs will perform in real-world scenarios.

Normalyze | Normalyze Launches Data Security Posture Management Platform on the Snowflake Data Cloud

• Normalyze on Snowflake! This platform is designed to help organizations manage their data security posture by providing a comprehensive view of their data security risks and vulnerabilities in snowflake cloud.

DoControl | DoControl Launches Free Trial for Amazon Web Services Customers

• Big fan of DoControl and what they’re doing. This is a very interesting technology and customers can now take advantage of it for a free trial via the AWS marketplace.

Microsoft | IBM, Microsoft launch generative AI managed service

• This new offering provides clients with the expertise and technology they need to innovate their business processes and scale generative AI effectively.

Articles I Liked This Week 💡

Technopedia | 11 Cybersecurity Trends to Take From Black Hat 2023

• Cloud security remains top of mind with CISO’s also figuring out how to manage and consolidate tooling inside the enterprise.

CIO | How IT does business at Eastman

• I liked this article because it shows how a traditional manufacturing company is embracing concepts for digital transformation.

Dark Reading | 8 AI Risk and Resilience Firms CISOs Should Track

CIO Dive | Microsoft, cloud security under the microscope with federal cyber review

• This is big stuff. Questions still linger from this such as how can cloud service providers improve their own security offerings and practices to prevent future attacks and how customers can evaluate and compare security features of different cloud providers.

DevOps | How Observability and Explainability Benefit the SDLC

Information Week | Adapting to the Cloud Era of Cybersecurity: How CISO’s Priorities Are Evolving

• With more outsourcing occurring, how can CISO’s measure and evaluate the performance and compliance of their overall programs? CISO’s are also exploring what skills they need to develop and adapt to the cloud era of Cybersecurity.

InfoWorld | Centralized cloud security is now a must-have

Tech Funding & M&A 💸

Anthropic | AI startup Anthropic raises $100M from Korean telco giant SK Telecom

• Anthropic is a California based AI safety and research company that researches and develops GenAI solutions for businesses.

OX Security | Supply chain security startup OX Security receives strategic investment from IBM Vent

• Ox Security is an Israel based SaaS platform that offers solutions such as supply chain security, risk visibility, and workflow automation for developers.

Global Illumination | OpenAI acquires AI design studio Global Illumination

• Global Illumination is a New York based digital product company that leverages AI to build creative tools, infrastructure, and digital experiences.

Domainr | Fastly Expands Domains API and TLS Capabilities with Domainr Acquisition and General Availability of Certainly Certification Authority

• Domainr is a California based domain status API platform that enables individuals to search domains, shortened URLs, and gTLDs.

Configu | Configu raises $3 million pre-Seed funding for its open-source configuration orchestr

• Configu is an Israel based company that provides an end-to-end application configuration orchestration platform that helps reduce bottlenecks and prevent production failures by providing visibility, reliability, and security to organizations via standardization of how application configuration is managed.

Arpio | Arpio Raises $8.2 Million Round

• Arpio is a North Carolina based disaster recovery platform that offers solutions such as AWS disaster recovery and vaulted data protection for businesses.

Meme of the week 🤣

Recommendations 👉🏻

This is a section that I intend to build out more! Know fantastic newsletter resources for information? Please let me know so I can start linking appropriate reads here!