Friday Tech News

Good morning and Happy Friday!

I really should say welcome back, and thanks for understanding a brief 2-week hiatus from this end. It’s been crazy busy with work, Thanksgiving, preparing for the holiday’s, traveling, and prepping to run my first half-marathon!

Thank you for bearing with me. Onto the consolidated version of this weeks’ edition of FTN.

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 📰 

Dazz | New Dazz Unified Remediation Platform Gives CISOs One Remediation Solution for Everything Developed and Run in Code, Clouds, Applications, and Infrastructure

Hugging Face | Dell Technologies and Hugging Face to Simplify Generative AI with On-Premises IT

Rubrik | Rubrik Ruby Generative AI Companion

AWS | Amazon's Cloud Unit and Nvidia Join Forces to Alleviate Global GPU Shortage - NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA)

Cohesity | Cohesity Expands Collaboration with Microsoft

ServiceNow | ServiceNow expands its generative AI portfolio with three new capabilities

Palo Alto Networks | Palo Alto Networks Introduce the Cortex XSIAM 2.0 Platform: Featuring a Unique Bring-Your-Own-Machine-Learning (BYOML) Framework

Microsoft | Microsoft unveils mysterious "Azure Boost" feature that could give your workspace cloud a serious speed upgrade

Atlassian | Atlassian launches free resource to foster responsible tech innovation

CyberArk | CyberArk unveils passwordless authentication options to reduce credential theft

Trend Micro | Trend Companion reduces time spent on manual risk assessments and threat investigations

Fortanix | Fortanix launches 'Key Insight' for enhanced data security in hybrid multicloud environments

Rafay | Rafay Launches Cloud Automation Platform to Deliver Self-service Automation for Cloud Infrastructure

Securonix | Securonix Joins Wiz Integrations (WIN) to Provide a Unified Approach to Protecting Complex Cloud Environments

XM Cyber | XM Cyber Launches New Kubernetes Exposure Management

Fortanix | Fortanix debuts Key Insight to manage enterprise encryption keys

Uptycs | Uptycs Unveils Cross-Cloud Anomaly Detection Engine to Identify Potential Security Breaches Across Workloads Running on AWS and Hybrid Multicloud Environments

Storj | Storj Launches Storj Select: Enabling Secure and Customizable Cloud Storage Solutions for Compliance-Minded Organization

Snowflake | Beyond Key & Snowflake Join Forces To Deliver Cutting-Edge Data Management Solutions and Services

HPE | HPE Announces GenAI Collaboration with NVIDIA, AI-native Architecture and Hybrid Cloud Solutions - High-Performance Computing News Analysis

Databricks | Securiti Announces Partnership With Databricks to Enable Enterprises to Readily Govern and Secure Their Data

Databricks | Unravel Data Partners with Databricks for Lakehouse Observability and FinOps

AWS re:Invent

Groundcover | groundcover Launches Observability Platform For Amazon EKS

Saviynt | Saviynt and AWS Team Up to Revolutionize Cloud Identity & Access Management

Veracode | Veracode unveils new DAST Essentials and GitHub app at AWS re:Invent

LaunchDarkly | LaunchDarkly Collaborates with AWS to Generate Product

Rubrik | Rubrik Helps Customers Further Protect Amazon S3 Data

Cisco | Cisco Launches New Business Performance Insight and Visibility for Modern Applications on AWS

AWS | Amazon, Nvidia Expand Cloud Collaboration

AWS | AWS launches S3 Express One Zone, promises 10x write speed improvement

Bitrise | Bitrise Integrates with AWS

AWS | Revolutionizing Access Management: Amazon Launches Palm-Scanning Tech For Business Security

Qlik | Qlik Expands Integrations with AWS to Scale AI for Impact - Database Trends and Applications

Informatica | Informatica Broadens Relationship with AWS

Drata | Drata Enables Quick Launch Feature for Faster Procurement in AWS Marketplace

AWS | AWS launches SaaS Quick Launch for easier deployment of SaaS apps

AWS | Amazon launches AWS SDK for Rust and Kotlin languages

NetApp | AWS re:Invent: NetApp Scale-out FSx for Ontap File Systems Up to 9x Higher Storage Performance Compared to Existing File Systems

Articles I Liked This Week 💡

Yes - not what I traditionally report on, but really loving this app in iOS 17.2. Are you using it yet? It’s so cool. Don’t sleep on the Gen AI impact Apple will be quietly making. Recently I had my AirPods in and my wife texted me a picture…Siri literally described the picture perfectly to me over audio… 🤯 

Mental health is a critical component of wellbeing - take time to try journaling. It’s fun and healthy. I’ve personally been using the Day One app for over 1000 consecutive days and love the benefits it brings me.

Tech Funding & M&A 💸

AI21 | Generative AI Startup AI21 Labs Adds $53M to Earlier $155M Funding Round

• AI21 Labs is an Israel based generative AI and product development platform that enables software devs to build generative AI and LLMs.

Snow | Flexera Enters Into Definitive Agreement to Acquire Snow Software, Broadening Its Portfolio for Technology Value Optimization

• Snow is a Sweden based software asset management platform that provides solutions such as risk mitigation and software license optimization for businesses.

together.ai | Together lands $102.5M investment to grow its cloud for training generative AI

• Together is a California based open source platform that helps researchers, developers, and companies to develop open source Generative AI models.

Raftt | Wiz Buys Cloud-Based Developer Raftt in Roughly $50 Million Deal

• Raftt is an Israel based cloud platform that allows DevOps teams to create and share development environments.

Respell | Respell Raises $4.75M in Seed Funding

• Respell is a California based no-code AI platform that enables sales and product teams to build custom AI workflows.

Replicate | Replicate Raises $40 Million For Its Library Of Open Source AI Models

• Replicate is a California based open source platform that allows software developers to run machine learning models in the cloud.

VAST Data | VAST Data Closes Series E Funding Round, Nearly Triples Valuation to $9.1 Billion

• Vast Data is a New York based SaaS platform that provides solutions such as data warehousing and enrichment for enterprises.

Bigeye | Bigeye Receives Strategic Investment from Alteryx Ventures

• Bigeye is a California based data observability platform that provides solutions such as data pipeline monitoring and anomaly detection for enterprises.

Meme of the week 🤣

Three memes this week since I haven’t posted in a few!

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!