Cloud Technology News of the Month: March 2022
Tags: cloud, news, kubernetes, devops
Published: 2022-04-06 08:59:54

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<p>March was full of surprises, the biggest one being Google Cloud's pricing increase, among many other stories from the cloud space.</p>
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<p>This series explores the most interesting cloud technology news, bringing you up to speed with the latest releases, acquisitions, research, and hidden gems in cloud computing – the stuff actually worth reading.</p>
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<p>What happened in the cloud world this March? Keep on reading to find out!</p>
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<p>_____</p>
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<h2>Story of the Month: Google Cloud raises its storage pricing</h2>
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<p>Over the years, we have mostly seen cloud pricing decrease thanks to the sheer scale of hyperscalers. AWS has reduced its prices <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws-cost-management/amazon-ec2-15th-years-of-optimizing-and-saving-your-it-costs/">107 times</a> since its launch in 2006 (as of April 2021).</p>
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<p>But things are different now.</p>
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<p>Perhaps we should've taken our cue from Google's increase of its Maps API pricing by<a href="https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/maps-platform/introducing-google-maps-platform"> up to 1400%</a>.&nbsp;</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-plain"><p><strong>Now, Google decided to </strong><a href="https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure/updates-to-google-clouds-infrastructure-pricing"><strong>increase its pricing once more</strong></a><strong> for some types of storage, load balancing, and data transfer.</strong></p></blockquote>
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<p>Specifically, the announcement included these points:</p>
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<ul><li>Price rises for Cloud Storage, Persistent Disk Snapshots, Cloud Load Balancing, Network Intelligence Center, and Cloud Ops Monitoring (that last one only made it to customer emails).&nbsp;</li><li>Previously free data transfer for creating and restoring multi-region snapshots will be charged at inter-region rates.&nbsp;</li><li>Google will release a new archive snapshot option for persistent disks later this year.</li><li>The Storage Transfer Service will be free of charge for the rest of 2022 to allow customers to move files to other buckets.</li></ul>
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<p>Google’s pricing changes will impact the heart of customer applications, forcing many to rethink current architecture or pay more to keep them running as usual.</p>
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<p>For example, restoring a multi-region snapshot of 100MB will cost $1 in Europe and the US, and the cost may be even higher in other regions. These charges may easily add up, depending on your architecture.&nbsp;</p>
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<p>The problem isn't only going to affect small companies - enterprises that value stability and predictability will also be hit. Welcome to the new world of cloud where pricing may change at any time.</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-plain"><p><strong>That's why continuous optimization holds so much value for companies looking to mitigate the impact of such increases on their cloud budgets. </strong></p><p><strong>Nothing helps to keep new pricing in check like an automated engine that makes the most cost-effective infrastructure decisions for you.</strong></p></blockquote>
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<p>_____</p>
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<h2>The Business of Cloud</h2>
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<p>https://twitter.com/Tech_Correspond/status/1503728689732853761</p>
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<p>And <strong>Google</strong> announced its intent to acquire the cybersecurity company Mandiant to make a move in this rapidly expanding space.</p>
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<p>Source: <a href="https://www.googlecloudpresscorner.com/2022-03-08-mgc">Google</a></p>
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<p>Chips ahoy! <strong>Intel</strong> is building another billion-dollar megafab to expand its EU footprint as a chipmaker. Following the company's announcement of its $20bn investment in Ohio earlier this year, now we're looking at a $33bn-worth manufacturing operation set in Germany.&nbsp;</p>
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<p>But is this enough to quench the thirst for chips of the global tech industry? The company <strong>ASML</strong> that builds machines to go inside chips says to expect a 2-year backlog (and luckily, it is increasing its manufacturing capacity).</p>
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<p>Sources: <a href="https://www.intc.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1532/intel-announces-initial-investment-of-more-than-33">Intel</a>, <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/763c9e15-44ab-43bc-b3e9-0d03bf27e841">Financial Times</a></p>
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<p><strong>Russia</strong> has just two months of data storage left. When you come to think about it, that makes sense - why would the country have a big hard drive manufacturing sector?</p>
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<p>Source: <a href="https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/technology/russia-faces-it-crisis-with-just-two-months-of-data-storage-left/amp/">Bleeping Computer</a></p>
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<p>_____</p>
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<h2>Security &amp; Outages</h2>
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<p>In his <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/open-letter-okta-amit-yoran/">Open Letter to Okta</a>, Amit Yoran of Tenable wrote:</p>
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<p>"Like many of you, the first question I asked myself after learning of <strong>the</strong> <strong>Okta</strong> <strong>breach</strong> was, 'Are we exposed?' That's an incredibly simple but crucial question — one that Okta customers should have had the chance to ask themselves two months ago when the company first discovered the compromise."&nbsp;</p>
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<p><strong>Okta's massive Lapsus$ breach</strong> is something cybersecurity people will talk about a lot this year.</p>
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<p>In January, Okta experienced a security breach, but customers only learned about this on March 22 after the Lapsus$ hacking group published screenshots showing that it accessed the company’s internal apps and systems. Okta later confirmed that 366 of its corporate customers had been affected by the breach (2.5% of its customer base). The Lapsus$ gang also compromised a Microsoft employee's account and went after the software consultancy giant Globant.&nbsp;</p>
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<p>Apparently, the cyberattacks have been traced to a teenager in the UK, and some arrests have been made. But the idea that a breach goes undetected for two months is still crazy.</p>
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<p>Sources: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/open-letter-okta-amit-yoran/">Amit Yoran on LinkedIn</a>, <a href="https://therecord.media/okta-revises-original-statement-says-hundreds-of-customers-affected-by-lapsus-breach/">The Record</a>, <a href="https://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/129391/hacking/lapsus-gang-compromised-microsoft-employees-account.html">Security Affairs</a>, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-23/teen-suspected-by-cyber-researchers-of-being-lapsus-mastermind">Bloomberg</a>, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-24/u-k-police-arrest-seven-young-people-in-connection-with-hacking">Bloomberg</a>, <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/30/lapsus-globant-breach/">TechCrunch</a></p>
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<p><strong>Orca Security</strong> identified another awful Azure breach called AutoWarp that allows getting credentials for other tenants by asking a high port on localhost for them.&nbsp;</p>
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<p>Source: <a href="https://orca.security/resources/blog/autowarp-microsoft-azure-automation-service-vulnerability/">Orca Security</a></p>
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<p>A popular French online luxury clothing store <strong>exposed its customers' data</strong> spectacularly - we're talking about 200GB containing almost 2 million files. All because of one misconfigured Amazon S3 bucket.</p>
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<p>Source: <a href="https://www.hackread.com/kids-luxury-clothing-store-melijoe-data-exposed/">Hackread</a></p>
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<p>_____</p>
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<h2>Food for thought</h2>
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<p><strong>Flexera 2022 State of the Cloud</strong> is out, and it's eye-opening. Microsoft Azure is closing the gap with AWS. In some customer categories, Azure even surpassed AWS - 80% of enterprises use Azure vs. 77% using AWS. Also, 89% of respondents now have a multi cloud strategy, and 80% of them have a hybrid cloud strategy.</p>
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<p>Source: <a href="https://info.flexera.com/CM-REPORT-State-of-the-Cloud">Flexera 2022 State of the Cloud Report</a></p>
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<p>_____</p>
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<h2>Meanwhile at CAST AI</h2>
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<p>Here are some new product features hot off the press:&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
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<ul><li>We have added an extra sheet that lists all workloads and their CPU &amp; RAM requests in the Excel extract of the Available savings report.</li><li>Spot nodes can now be interrupted directly from the node list. The interrupted node will change its status and eventually be removed from the cluster while the new spot node is provisioned instead. The whole process takes a few minutes to complete.</li></ul>
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<p>_____</p>
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