A Lot’s Happening at AWS: Crypto Miner Malware, JEDI Delays, More
Get the latest on activity with and around the world’s largest public cloud vendor.
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Partners, have you checked to see whether you or your customers are affected? On Aug. 21, cybersecurity firm Mitiga said it found a Monero crypto miner in a public instance of an AWS virtual machine. Researchers discovered this particular script within a Windows 2008 virtual server hosted by an unnamed vendor.
“Based on recent research and analysis, we are issuing a global advisory, warning AWS customers running EC2 instances based on Community AMIs (Amazon Machine Instances), from potentially embedded malicious code,” Mitiga wrote in its blog. “We strongly advise verifying their security before continuing using these instances.”
Further assessments revealed that AMIs provided by trusted vendors on the AWS Marketplace do not present similar risk, Mitiga said. Still, the firm noted, “We have concerns this may be a phenomenon, rather than an isolated occurrence.”
Mitiga’s advice: AWS users running Elastic Compute Cloud instances based on Community AMIs need to check for the Monero crypto miner sooner rather than later. Partners are probably best suited to do this. Either verify the instances, terminate them or replace them with ones provided by an AWS trusted vendor, Mitiga recommended.
AWS employs a high concentration of former state CIOs. Three of them joined the company in just the past year. That analysis comes from GovernmentTechnology.
Craig Orgeron, who served as Mississippi’s CIO, is the latest to start at AWS, as the publication noted. He holds the title of “executive government adviser.” So do Chuck Grindle and Morgan Reed. Grindle came from Kentucky and Reed from Arizona. Hardik Bhatt, from Illinois, leads AWS’ digital government business.
The time has come and gone for the DoD to say whether Microsoft will keep its JEDI crown or whether the contract might instead go to AWS. A federal judge earlier this year said DoD had 120 days to reconsider parts of the deal and get revised bids from Azure and AWS. That deadline has passed. The Pentagon wants more time, which resets decision day to Sept. 16.
Here’s what the DoD wrote in an Aug. 10 court filing, according to NextGov: “During the remand, DoD has identified areas of concern with respect to the revised proposals received from both offerors, resulting in multiple solicitation amendments, rounds of proposal revisions, and exchanges with the offerors. In evaluating each offeror’s final proposal revisions, however, DoD has recently identified the need to reopen limited discussions related to certain aspects of the offerors’ pricing proposals.”
Rumor has it Amazon wants to invest in cloud services provider Rackspace, which just went public. Neither company is commenting (nor are the analysts to whom Channel Futures reached out for input). It seems fair to speculate, though, that Rackspace’s managed service providers would benefit. After all, Rackspace has similar deals in place with Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure and VMware. An AWS investment would mean more resources both for Rackspace and its channel partners. According to Reuters, Amazon wants to buy a minority stake in Rackspace. Negotiations may take at least a couple of months.
If you’re a channel partner into quantum computing, you’re in luck. AWS recently released its much-anticipated Braket platform. As Sarah Wallace, analyst at Futurum Research, explained in an Aug. 21 blog, “Amazon Braket can be used to test and troubleshoot quantum algorithms on simulated quantum computers running on computing resources in AWS to help them verify their implementation. Customers can also use Amazon Braket to run their quantum algorithms on their choice of quantum processors based on different technologies, including systems from D-Wave, IonQ, and Rigetti.”
Quantum computing can solve problems in the physics, chemistry and pharmaceutical fields, as well as financial services, supply chain logistics and telecom, Wallace noted.
“[W]hile we’re in the early days of quantum, we’re seeing the major players in cloud and computing stake their respective claims to using quantum to help customers solve their most complex challenges,” Wallace said. “Amazon’s launch of Braket enables the use of quantum computing in the Amazon AWS cloud — and that’s good business. Good for Amazon and good for AWS customers.”
AWS is offering Braket as a fully managed service.
Amazon Web Services held fast to its status as public cloud leader in the second quarter. If we were a betting publication, we’d guess the vendor will retain that title in the third quarter, even as Azure makes slow inroads. Synergy Research Group calculates AWS’ market share at 33%. The firm attributes that ongoing success to organizations’ “ever-larger” cloud spending increments, especially as COVID-19 continues.
“As far as cloud market numbers go, it’s almost as if there were no COVID-19 pandemic raging around the world,” said John Dinsdale, a chief analyst at Synergy Research Group. “As enterprises struggle to adapt to new norms, the advantages of public cloud are amplified.”
Overall, Synergy projects the public cloud market will grow by well more than 30% this year. For the second quarter, AWS reported slightly slower growth of 29%, compared to 33% in 2020’s first quarter.
Harnessing the power of data remains a big task, despite recent computing advancements that make the job easier. Explorium, which has developed a data discovery platform for businesses, aims to continue those efforts.
The San Francisco-based company has joined the AWS Partner Network as a select technology partner – this after raising $31 million in Series B funding. Teaming up with AWS through the partner program extends the channel’s access to artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities via Explorium.
“Joining the APN is an important step for Explorium and reinforces our commitment to empowering data scientists and business leaders to drive better predictive outcomes by supercharging their ML models on AWS,” said Or Tamir, cofounder and COO at Explorium.
A little in the weeds, perhaps, but useful: Amazon EKS, AWS’ fully managed Kubernetes service, now is generally available on the vendor’s Graviton2 processor. As TechRadar points out, this means faster performance, better machine learning, fully encrypted memory and more. In its official blog, AWS said internal workload testing has resulted in 20% lower costs and up to 40% higher performance in certain instances. Read the blog for all the nitty-gritty details.
Finally, Amazon is beefing up its Tech Hubs around the country. The new hires – 3,500, in all – will, in large part, support AWS. Amazon will expand its Tech Hubs in Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Manhattan, San Diego and Tempe, Arizona. Amazon will spend more than $1.4 billion to support the Tech Hub expansions.
Finally, Amazon is beefing up its Tech Hubs around the country. The new hires – 3,500, in all – will, in large part, support AWS. Amazon will expand its Tech Hubs in Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Manhattan, San Diego and Tempe, Arizona. Amazon will spend more than $1.4 billion to support the Tech Hub expansions.
From a dangerous crypto miner to JEDI delays, a potential Rackspace deal and more, we’ve got juicy tidbits on what’s happening at Amazon Web Services.
The world’s No. 1 public cloud vendor is staying so busy and preparing to spend so much money it’s almost as though COVID-19 doesn’t exist. In many ways, AWS channel partners stand to gain from the momentum. Indeed, those specializing in some of the more arcane parts of cloud – artificial intelligence and in-the-weeds containers, as two prime examples – already are benefiting.
On the business side of things, find out how AWS appears to be laying the groundwork to win more government contracts and not lose out to rivals. And that leads to another thing: What’s going on with the infamous JEDI project? We have an update. To that end, from crypto miner to JEDI and a potential Rackspace investment, catch up on the latest news involving the world’s No. 1 public cloud vendor in the slideshow above.
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