Weekly Cloud Info #W18- 2025

Author

Walid LARABI
May 02, 2025

Hi!

This week in cloud & AI: OpenTofu joins CNCF to secure Terraform’s open future. Kubernetes 1.33 lands with native sidecar support and 24 new features. AWS launches Nova Premier, a 1M-token multimodal model for complex tasks. Google and Azure roll out smarter AI tools and automation for modern apps.

Have a great read. ☕

📰 Top picks of the week

OpenTofu Joins CNCF, Securing Terraform's Open Source Future with MPL 2.0

The OpenTofu community has voted to join the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) after creating an open-source fork of Terraform. Initially formed in response to HashiCorp's licensing change, OpenTofu aims to secure Terraform's open-source future. The CNCF made an exception to allow OpenTofu to use its original license, the Mozilla Public License 2.0. This decision fosters collaboration among various stakeholders in the open-source community.

CNCF: Kubernetes 1.33 Launches with Native Sidecar Support and 24 New Features

Kubernetes 1.33 introduces 24 new capabilities, with 18 features declared stable, including native support for container sidecars. This allows IT teams to orchestrate sidecar containers automatically alongside application containers. Other enhancements include topology-aware routing and improved pod control. The update aims to boost stability and facilitate the handling of resources in Kubernetes clusters.

CNCF Welcomes Cozystack: New Open-Source Platform for Private Clouds and PaaS

The CNCF has accepted Cozystack, an open-source platform for building private clouds and PaaS, into its Sandbox as of February 28, 2025. Cozystack allows users to deploy managed Kubernetes clusters and other services on bare metal, enhancing performance for various industries. This integration ensures the platform's commitment to open-source principles and invites broader community involvement to accelerate development. The team aims to apply for CNCF Incubating status later this year.

AWS Lambda Standardizes INIT Phase Billing from August 2025

AWS will begin standardizing billing for the INIT phase of Lambda functions starting August 1, 2025. This change will apply to on-demand invocations using managed runtimes with ZIP packaging, impacting costs slightly. The INIT phase occurs during function cold starts, involving steps like retrieving code and preparing the execution environment. Users are advised to monitor and optimize this phase to minimize costs.

AWS Enhances Amazon Cognito with Context Support for M2M Authorization

Amazon Cognito now supports enhanced context for machine-to-machine (M2M) authorization in OAuth 2.0 flows. Users can include contextual information like IP address and environment when requesting access tokens, simplifying access control. This reduces the need for multiple app clients, cutting costs and streamlining management. The feature is available for Cognito users in Essentials or Plus tiers across various AWS Regions.

AWS Launches Nova Premier: A Powerful Multimodal Model with 1 Million Token Context

Amazon has launched Nova Premier, a multimodal foundation model for complex tasks, featuring enhanced intelligence, improved agentic capabilities, and a context window of one million tokens. It achieves high scores in benchmarks like MMLU and offers cost-effective model distillation options. Nova Premier is available in select AWS regions and supports sophisticated workflows. Users can create tailored models using Amazon Bedrock.

GCP Launches BigQuery Data Engineering Agent for Automated Pipeline Management

Google Cloud introduces the BigQuery data engineering agent, designed to automate data pipeline creation and management. This new tool helps teams overcome challenges like manual coding, troubleshooting, and schema mapping. With its AI capabilities, users can simply describe their data needs, and the agent will build the required pipelines. New customers can also access $300 in free credits for Google Cloud data analytics.

GCP: Effortless MySQL to Spanner Migration with Enhanced Tools and $300 Free Credit

Google Cloud has made it easier to migrate applications from MySQL to Spanner, offering new tools and features that ensure minimal downtime. The Spanner migration tool allows for automated schema and data migration, consolidating larger databases quickly. Enhanced capabilities for data movement and new configurations ensure cost-effective and flexible implementations. Organizations can benefit from Spanner’s advanced features for modern applications, including AI-driven functionalities.

GCP Unveils SaaS Runtime: Simplify SaaS Management and Scale with Ease

Google Cloud introduced SaaS Runtime, a fully managed platform designed to simplify SaaS operations, allowing providers to focus on innovation. It offers pre-built blueprints for rapid deployment, automated operations, and deep integration with Google Cloud services. SaaS Runtime enables better scalability and tenant management, streamlining the lifecycle of SaaS applications. Try Google Cloud for free with $300 in credits for new customers.

Azure Launches Phi-4 Models: Advancing Small Language Models for Complex Reasoning Tasks

Microsoft has launched Phi-4-reasoning, Phi-4-reasoning-plus, and Phi-4-mini-reasoning, advancing small language models (SLMs) for complex reasoning tasks. These models balance size and performance, achieving strong reasoning capabilities similar to larger models. Phi-4-reasoning has 14 billion parameters and excels in detailed reasoning, while Phi-4-reasoning-plus further enhances accuracy with more training data. This innovation enables efficient AI applications even on resource-limited devices.

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🎁 This week hidden gem

Join the AWS Certified: Foundational and Associate Challenge to receive a 50% discount on your exam fee. This offer is valid until May 21, 2025, at 5:00 PM PDT. Participants will also gain access to curated AWS Certification Official Exam Prep resources, including practice question sets and exam prep courses.

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