Friday Tech News - 3 Year Anniversary

Good morning and Happy Friday!

This edition marks over 150 editions I’ve written of FTN since starting on July 9th, 2021.

In my first edition of Tech News, it was a direct email with only a few major OEM related updates and nothing more. See? Kinda fun to look back on some of these announcements and see where they’re at today and see how far this newsletter has come.

I’m proud of how this has grown and morphed into something new. I want to continue to evolve it to make it more useful for you as a consumer. If you have any suggestions, I’m all ears!

For now, I just want to express my gratitude to you for sticking by me and keeping up with the trends in enterprise tech.

Thanks so much and have a wonderful weekend.

Phil

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 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 📰

AttackIQ | AttackIQ Democratizes Easily Repeatable, Efficient Testing Missions

• New Feature: Mission Control. Designed to streamline and improve BAS deployments for large organizations.

• It addresses the complexity of BAS deployments across distributed departments and BU’s.

• Offers centralized testing interface for security teams to orchestrate testing across a distributed workforce with ease.

Anodot | Anodot Inks Strategic Partnership with YäRKEN

• Provides a unified interface for managing cloud costs across on-prem and private cloud environments.

• Both companies offer platforms that aid in cost management.

• Nice update in the FinOps world.

Salt Security | Salt Security’s knowledge base (KB) assistant, Pepper, streamlines security efforts

• Pepper, Salt’s AI assistant has finally come out and is designed to streamline security efforts.

• Salt has integrated AI across their platform to address ecosystem challenges with applications in API discovery, posture governance, and behavioral threat detection.

• Great marketing.

Anaconda | Anaconda, Inc. Launches Snowflake Notebooks Integration to Further Democratize Python for Data Science, AI Use Cases

• Now integrated with Snowflake notebooks to enhance python, SQL, and Markdown development within Snowflake’s platform.

• Features native. Git integration and scheduling, supporting collab and version control and efficient data workflows for consumers and analysts.

Veritas | Veritas expands cyber resiliency data protection solution for Google Cloud customers

• This announcement addresses the growing sophistication of cybercrime and Veritas’ attempt to thwart bad actors in the cloud.

• Integration with GCP allows customers to deploy and manage Veritas ADP easily.

Anthropic | Anthropic expands developer console for creating and evaluating AI prompts

• New Dev Features: Prompt Generator and a Test suite for AI prompts powered by Claude 3.5 Sonnet.

• Developers can add or import test cases to evaluate how the AI model will respond, with the option to auto-generate test cases.

DarkTrace | Darktrace launches MDR service

• New release from DarkTrace for 24/7 monitoring, investigation, and proactive threat containment.

• Available for customers using DETECT AND RESPOND.

Boomi | Boomi Bolsters API Management Offering With New API Control Plane

• Helpful in API governance and control

• Offers federated API management and a vendor independent approach for effective utilization of on-prem and cloud API runtimes.

Aviatrix | Megaport and Aviatrix® Partner to Simplify Hybrid and Multicloud Network Connectivity

• Customers can deploy Aviatrix services on Megaports platform which provides access to a global private network and enables path-protected private connections between data centers and clouds.

Oracle | Oracle and Palantir Unlock New Innovation in Cloud and AI to Power Businesses and Governments Around the World

• Palantirs Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP) is now certified on OCI and globally available.

• Aims to accelerate AI initiatives for businesses and governments.

Alluxio | Alluxio Enterprise AI 3.2 features new native integration with Python ecosystem

• Latest version introduces native integration with Python ecosystem enhancing the ability to run AI workloads across various environments.

• Significant performance improvements and I/O performance and GPU utilization are highlights.

• New Python Filesystem API for better integration with Python Applications + advanced caching.

NVIDIA | Nvidia co-organizes a contest to help build AI dataset to accelerate GPU design

• AI will now help in constructing better AI.

Automation Anywhere | Automation Anywhere Unveils New AI + Automation Enterprise System Empowering Companies to Achieve 10x Business Impact with AI Agents and Transforming Mission-Critical Workflow

• Well, yet another AI announcement in a product.

• This comes with a new feature, AI Agent Studio, which enables the custom creation of AI Agents with low-code tooling.

Solo.io | Solo.io Announces Gloo AI Gateway to Address Growing Demand

• Release of Gloo AI Gateway, a new product designed to accelerate AI innovation in cloud native application networking.

• Aims to fuel innovations for developers, enterprises, and basically trying to put themselves as a leader in cloud native computing and application networking.

New Relic | New Relic Launches the First Fully-Integrated, AI-Driven Digital Experience Monitoring Solution

• Ai Driven DEM (Digital Experience Monitoring) has arrived from new Relic.

• Provides end-to-end visibility and real time insights across mobile, web, and AI apps.

• Helps businesses identify and resolve user friction points for consistent digital experiences.

Arize AI | Arize AI, LlamaIndex Roll Out Joint Platform for Evaluating LLM Applications

• This partnership aims to address technical challenges in preparing modern LLM systems for real-world deployment.

Articles I Liked This Week 💡

CSA | CCSK v5: The New Standard in Cloud Security Expertise

• Comes out 7/16!

TechCrunch | As Microsoft leaves its observer seat, OpenAI says it won't have any more observers

Business Standard | IBM Software sees 30-40% productivity gains among developers using GenAI

Tech Spot | Microsoft's AI speech generator achieves human parity but is too dangerous for the public

THN | GitLab Patches Critical Flaw Allowing Unauthorized Pipeline Jobs

Tech Funding & M&A 💸

Prodvana | Databricks Acquires Prodvana to Enhance Cloud Infrastructure Capabilities

• Prodvana is a California based intelligent deployment platform that creates a bridge between your applications and infrastructure enabling guardrails and word class development experiences.

• Comes on the heels of purchasing Tabular in June and Lilac in March

• DB remains HOT.

Tracebit | UK's Tracebit raises €4.6M in seed funding

• Tracebit is an England based cybersecurity platform that solves threat detection and deception by simplifying deployment and scaling across modern cloud infrastructure.

Nasuni | Vista Equity Partners invests in enterprise data platform Nasuni

• Nasuni is a Massachusetts based hybrid cloud storage platform that provides solutions such as secure file sharing, edge computing, and ransomware mitigation for businesses.

Valdi | Storj Acquires Cloud Computing Firm Valdi; Terms Undisclosed

• Valdi is a California based computer peripherals company that manufactures and distributes graphics processing units and cloud storage systems for enterprises.

Silo | AMD acquires Europe's largest private AI lab

• Silo AI is a Finland based AI lab that develops software products offering solutions such as visual awareness and data annotation for industries including mining and energy.

Fireworks AI | Fireworks AI Raises $52M in Series B Funding

• Fireworks AI is a California based GenAI platform that enables product developers to run, fine tune, and share LLMs.

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!