Friday Tech News

Tech Industry Insights | 11/15/2024

Author

Phil Moroni
November 15, 2024

Good morning and welcome to another edition of Friday Tech News! I hope you’ve had a wonderful week.

This week there were diverse announcements across Security, AI, and Cloud. I’m excited about a lot of what I read and the innovation behind the technology enhancements and product launches that came out. The 90s kid in me really loves the introduction of “SmolTools” from Hugging Face. Super fun.

Anyway, I sincerely hope if you’re in sales that your End of Year is going smoothly and that if you’re in IT, you’re getting all the stuff done needed before change management freezes happen.

Enjoy this week’s edition of FTN and thanks for being a dedicated reader and learner.

Stay physically and digitally safe,

Phil

OEM News & Updates 📰

  • Cool to see. The partnership aims to reduce the complexity of IT modernization, allowing customers to run apps on a consistent environment across. both on-prem and AWS.

  • Customers leverage NC2 (Nutanix Cloud Clusters) on AWS to access AWS services like databases, storage, AI of course, and ML offerings.

  • There’s credits being offered to support migrations in general and for POCs. Not a bad option to test things out with if you’re a Nutanix customer today.

  • Supports on-prem, cloud, and hybrid environments allowing orgs to optimize their data architecture without compromise.

  • Integrates with Snowflake’s managed service of Apache POlaris and Databricks Unity Catalog.

  • Offers centralized data governance with RBAC and fine grained access privileges.

  • Snowflake introduced Snowflake Intelligence, a platform enabling business users to query data in NL and create data agents for task automation.

  • The new Open Catalog allows integration with various engines and consistent governance across multiple table formats like Apache Iceberg and Apache Hudi.

  • Document AI is now GA, which extracts and summarizes information from text-heavy documents with self-learning capabilities to improve accuracy over time.

  • Introduced an add-on AI observability and one-click compliance documentation testing to ensure GenAI apps remain compliant with evolving regulation.

  • Features include real-time intervention, moderation, governance, and QA testing to secure AI assets and ensure reliable performance.

  • Now integrated with Vertex AI Platform and Gemini models.

  • Red Hat Openshift AI 2.15 offers improved performance and streamlined workflows, enabling enterprises to scale AI/ML innovation across hybrid cloud environments.

  • Includes model registry, data drift detection, bias detection, efficient fine-tuning with LoRA, and support for NVIDIA NIM and AMD GPUs.

  • Adds new capabilities for genAI model serving, enhanced model serving, and expanded AI training and experimentation options.

  • Falco Feeds provides constantly evolving and curated detections to keep cloud threats at bay and reduces manual work of writing rules against malicious behavior.

  • Covers 95% of container threats within the MITRE ATT&CK Framework.

  • Automates new rule ingestion to minimize maintenance for security teams.

  • Opsera ensures secure and compliant model training and deployment using Databricks infrastructure and optimizes Mosaic AI usage.

  • Facilitates controlled schema deployments in Databricks with built in rollback features to enhance change management and compliance tracking (like we’re all doing that so well anyway).

  • Trying to work more safely with DevOps processes. I don’t want to call that Shift-left anymore. We can think of so many better things to say. How about “embedded security development?”

  • SmolTools includes specialized tools for summarization, rewriting, and task automation powered by the compact SmolLM2 model. Love the name.

  • Optimized for devices with limited resources, making AI functionalities accessible to SMBs, Devs, and Edge devices.

  • Supports tool calling and structured outputs for agentic AI apps.

  • The Akamai App Platform is designed to deploy, manage, and scale highly distributed apps across various cloud environments.

  • Built on K8s, it offers ready to run templates to simplify the deployment and management of K8s clusters.

  • Automates the provisioning process and reduces deployment time from months to less than an hour. Provides near instant scaling for prod workloads.

  • Provides extensive security control and visibility with AI driven insights for real time intelligence on network performance and security events.

  • Facilitates rapid scaling and integrates easily with existing tools, APIs, and systems, reducing onboarding time and infrastructure maintenance.

  • Offers predictive insights and cost optimization. Neat.

  • Enables admins to define robust risk policies for MacOS and iOS devices with or without an agent.

  • Integrates with Jamf seamlesses to manage secure access for devices.

  • Supports all major device types and operating systems.

  • Merging ISPM and CSPM. Cool. Allows for enhanced visibility and control over human and machine identities in multi-cloud environments.

  • The partnership aims to address vulns by ensuring every cloud identity is controlled through a “Zero Standing Privileges” approach.

  • Wiz is eating the world and will be a giant like PANW, Cisco, etc…

  • Automatically instruments application performance management with K8s deployments eliminating the need for additional configurations.

  • Provides dashboards and views to manage K8s faster.

  • Streamlines collab between devs and platform teams by automating APM instrumentation and reducing manual cycles.

  • K8s Explorer integrates with Observe AI’s investigator to provide custom visualizations and suggestions in cloud native environments.

  • Features like K8s Hindsight offer retrospective analysis and performance optimization to better understand ephemeral container environments.

  • Provides a visual map of workload distribution across K8s clusters

  • Cloudera Copilot automates c ode generation, data transformation, and troubleshooting, allowing data practitioners to focus on high impact tasks.

  • Provides consistent coding support across diverse languages, libraries, and workflows.

  • Offers optimal solutions and insights to maintain high coding standards.

  • Automates and delegates repetitive routine privileged tasks to improve productivity and security in a drag and drop interface + customizable templates.

  • Identity Security Cloud: Enhances identity security with dynamic access roles, data segmentation, and improved contextual visibility.

  • Entering into the NHI space with Machine Identity Security. Full visibility, governance, and control over machine identities.

Articles I Liked This Week 💡

  • This is no joke. If you don’t believe me check the Tessl funding below.

Geeky Gadgets | NVIDIAs vision for 2025

Market Screener | AI hitting limitations

Tech Funding & M&A 💸

  • Probely is a Portugal based cybersecurity platform that provides solutions such as AppSec Testing, Compliance, and Vulnerability management for businesses.

  • Upwind is an Israel based cybersecurity platform that provides solutions such as cloud threat detection and vulnerability management for enterprises.

  • PointFive is an Israel based cost visibility and remediation platform that provides solutions such as cloud observability and usage optimization for businesses.

  • Neural Magic is a Massachusetts based AI platform that provides automated deep learning model optimization solutions for businesses.

  • Conduktor is a Wyoming based Apache Kafka platform that offers solutions such as real-time data visualization and documentation for businesses.

  • Tessl is a London-based startup focused on building an AI-native platform for software development.

  • Cybersixgill is an Israel based cyber threat intelligence platform that offers solutions such as phishing detection and security posture mangement support for businesses.

Meme of the week 🤣

Recommendations 👉🏻

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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

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