From backup on GCP to geolocation on AWS, from licenses changes at Elastic to healt bots at Microsoft: a recap of the news articles I wrote for InfoQ in January 2021.

Google Cloud Introduces Filestore Backups

Google Cloud has recently introduced a preview in all regions of Filestore Backups, a new product to simplify the migration of file-based applications to the cloud.

AWS Introduces Location Service in Preview

In one of the latest announcements of re:Invent 2020, AWS introduced the preview of Amazon Location, a new mapping service for developers to add location-based features like geofencing and built-in tracking to web-based and mobile applications.

AWS Introduces Amazon Managed Service for Grafana and Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus

In one of the latest announcements of re:Invent 2020, AWS introduced the preview of Amazon Managed Service for Grafana (AMG), a managed Grafana that automatically scales compute and database infrastructure, with automated version updates and security patching. In a related but separate announcement, AWS also introduced a preview for Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus (AMP), a Prometheus-compatible monitoring service for container infrastructure and application metrics for containers.

AWS Transfer Family Introduces Support for EFS

AWS has recently introduced support for Amazon EFS file systems as a data store in the AWS Transfer Family, the managed service that handles SFTP, FTP and FTPS requests. The new option is intended to simplify the migration to the cloud of file transfer workloads.

Microsoft Introduces Azure Health Bot

Microsoft recently introduced Azure Health Bot, an evolution of Microsoft Healthcare Bot that is becoming an Azure service with added functionalities. Built for developing virtual health care assistants, Azure Health Bot combines medical databases with natural language capabilities.

Cockroach Labs 2021 Cloud Report: GCP Outpaces Azure and AWS

Cockroach Labs recently released their annual cloud report identifying Google Cloud Platform as the best overall provider. The 2021 Cloud Report compares AWS, Azure, and GCP on benchmarks that reflect critical applications and workloads.

Elastic Changes Licences for Elasticsearch and Kibana, AWS Forkes Both

Elastic recently announced licensing changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana, with the company moving away from Apache 2.0 and adopting the Server Side Public License (SSPL) and the Elastic License. Amazon reacted with a plan to maintain a fork of both Elasticsearch and Kibana under the previous license.

Google Cloud Workflows Now Generally Available

Google has recently announced that Google Cloud Workflows, the service to orchestrate Google Cloud and HTTP-based API services with serverless workflows, is now generally available. Workflows Connectors are now in public preview.