On The Cloud Pod this week, the team rediscovers who Ryan is after an eternity (a secret agent). Plus AWS Fargate now delivers faster scaling of applications; new features for Oracle Support Rewards; and Google Cloud Optimization AI: Cloud Fleet Routing API from GCP.

A big thanks to this week’s sponsor, Foghorn Consulting, which provides full-stack cloud solutions with a focus on strategy, planning and execution for enterprises seeking to take advantage of the transformative capabilities of AWS, Google Cloud and Azure.

This week’s highlights

• Witness the magic of AWS Fargate scaling of applications — harder, faster, better, stronger.
• Ooooh! Unveiling brand new shiny features for Oracle Support Rewards.
• Better planning with more routes: GCP unleashes Optimization AI, API for Cloud Fleet Routing (CFR). 

Top Quotes  

• “Because of that Fargate-specific limitation, [with] the first three services you’re concurrently updating, you’ll actually get a much faster rate through ECS test launches, but that fourth service will be slower. At that point, if the math works out where you’re better off hosting it on EC2 … it’s a lot more complex. I’ve worked with a lot of teams on trying to get ECS services to scale faster, and usually I look at them a little skeptically — do you really need this fast?”
• “In terms of looking at lists of interview questions from Google algorithm questions and the traveling salesman problem and optimizing journeys through multiple locations, multiple cities, everything else, it’s a really hard problem. It only gets exponentially more difficult. And then the more efficient you are with that, the more it costs the environment, the more it costs in time or it costs money. So yeah, it’s actually a worthy problem to solve.”

General News: Microsoft Feels the Heat

• We’re feeling the pain of Microsoft’s licensing, as its tactics to win the cloud battle lead to new antitrust scrutiny.

AWS: A Very Fargate Indeed

• NetApp’s ONTAP, so line up your glasses for a very fine update indeed. Check out the podcast where we interviewed their very own Anthony Lye. #ShamelessPodcastSalesmanship
• AWS Fargate now delivers faster scaling of applications, and you can see it in action with ECS. Understand token buckets and how AWS uses them, and if you need a hero, Vlad Ioenscu is here.
• ✅ Microsoft Active Directory geeks rejoice: a favored topic of the masses with configurable synchronization launched via Single Sign-On.
• ♨️ The Log4j saga simply won’t die: Apache hotpatch issues get a report here.    

GCP: Taxi, Please

• Combining data and cross cloud analytics: BigQuery Omni is here, and customers are going to be very happy.
• API for cloud fleet routing appears in the form of Optimization AI — your route’s going to be a lot easier now.

Azure: The Beauty of Grafana

• Extend that Azure SQL Migration for Azure Data Studio and make those dreams come true.
• ️ Visual Studio Code extension for Azure Container Apps is now in preview, so get a good look while you can.
• You’re stylistically spoiled with Azure Managed Grafana’s data visualizations, now in preview.

Oracle: Second Prize…

• Oracle Support Rewards has some shiny new features.

TCP Lightning Round

⚡ There’s not much of a move this week, with the scores standing at Justin (4), Ryan (1), Jonathan (2), Peter (1)

Other Headlines Mentioned:

• General availability: Azure Archive Storage now available in Switzerland North 
• Azure Purview is now Microsoft Purview 
• Introducing DevSecOps Solutions from AWS DevOps Competency Partners 
• Crate.io extends database service offering to Google Cloud  
• General availability: Azure Cosmos DB autoscale RU/s entry point is 4x lower
• Amazon Kendra releases Quip Connector to enable document search in Quip repository 

Things Coming Up:

• Google Cloud Summit Series (Updated Regularly) 

May 4th – Google Workspace Summit

• AWS Summits

May 4-5th – Madrid

May 11-12th – Berlin

May 18th – Tel Aviv

May 23-25th – Washington DC 

• IBM Think – May 9th-13th
• DevOps Enterprise Summit Virtual – Europe – May 10th-12th |  Registration Open  |  CFP Open
• Microsoft Security Summit – May 12th
• Kubecon EU – May 16th-20th
• Google Next – June 6th-8th
• RSA Conference – June 6-9th
• Amazon Re:Mars – June 21st – 24th 
• AWS Reinforce – June 28th-29th → Now Moved to Boston
• DevOps Enterprise Summit Virtual – US – August 2nd-4th
• Blackhat USA – August 6th-11th
• VMWorld – US – August 29th-September 1st
• DevOps Enterprise Summit US Flagship Event The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas – October 18th-20th
• Google Cloud Next – October 11th – 13th 
• Oracle Cloud World – October 16-20th 
• Kubecon US – October 24-28th
• MS Ignite – November 2nd-4th
• AWS Reinvent – November 28th-Dec 2nd (assumed)
• Oracle OpenWorld – TBC

Microsoft events – TBD Check for status