By Katy Nally

Image by Thad Allen

What’s better than donating to a charitable organization? Watching your donation tap into its mega superpowers!  

For three months this year, 2A’s giving group led a mega match effort to rally our 2A team and grow our donations to worthy causes. Essentially, 2A Hulk-ified its matching policy by not only matching donations, but also tacking on an extra donation when enough employees joined in. All told—through our donations, matches, and mega multipliers—we donated $3,300 to 23 organizations around the world.  

Here’s the plot: On 8/8, we needed eight intrepid employees to step up and make donations. And they did! Their actions first unlocked 2A’s standard match and then came our mega match multiplier, which was an additional donation made to an organization the group decided on—the Maui Food Bank. After that, the shockwaves of support only grew stronger. On 9/9, nine employees channeled their inner green giant, and 2A powered up that multiplier for another round of smashing good support. The Hulk effect resulted in an additional donation to the International Rescue Committee. And finally, 10/10 was the grand finale! Ten employees flexed their philanthropic muscles, and the donations went Hulktastic! Our final mega match multiplier went to World Central Kitchen.

All told, our donations left an impact that echoed like Hulk’s roar. 

As the giving season really gets underway this year, think about releasing your inner superpowers for the greater good.  

Need some giving inspiration? Here’s where the 2A team donated recently: 

• Black Mamas Matter
• Cornerstone Theater Company 
• Geeking Out Kids of Color 
• Hawaii People’s Fund 
• INELDA 
• John R. Oishei Children’s Hospital 
• Lange Foundation 
• Magen David Adom in Israel 
• March of Dimes Foundation 
• NorCal Resist 
• Palestine Children’s Relief Fund 
• Rebuilding Exchange 
• Seeding Sovereignty a Project of Earth Island Institute 
• Southern Coalition for Social justice 
• Special Olympics 
• Survival International 
• UMOM New Day Center 
• United Hatzalah of Israel 
• University of Miami Miller School of Medicine 
• Women’s Medical Fund 

By Kelly Schermer, Katy Nally

Image by Emily Zheng

Ask any major player in the cloud space about partners, and they’ll tell you a robust partner network is key to success. But for smaller tech companies, the value of partnering up isn’t always clear. Sometimes it can look like you’re giving away too much to your competitors, or making an investment that will take a long time to pay off.  

At 2A, we extoll the value of partnerships at least 10 times a day—building messaging guides, playbooks, case studies, pitch decks, and ebooks that illustrate how customers benefit from a better-together scenario. That is to say, we know a good partner program when we see it.  

Take, for instance, Hikari. The company formed as a spin-off from Ireland-based EMIT to help customers get more value out of their data. The secret to Hikari’s skyrocketing success wasn’t only its bet on low-code technology. It was Founder and Executive Chairman Eamon Moore’s vision for a partner network that launched Hikari into the big leagues.  

Moore’s first introduction to a new partner paradigm happened after EMIT won the Microsoft Global Partner of the Year for SMB Cloud Solutions in 2016. “It opened my eyes to a new way of thinking about partner networks. Here was a global group of companies interested in helping each other out—acting as a sounding board for one another. These discussions inspired myself and the team to think about how to adapt to new trends, and they provided tremendous insight into where we could deliver value to each other,” Moore said. 

Once Hikari spun off from EMIT, it partnered with ProcessUs, a firm specializing in Microsoft Power Apps across Ireland and the Netherlands. The companies worked together to deliver low-code solutions that pulled different sources into the Power BI dashboards Hikari built, giving customers better visibility into their data at the touch of a button.  

Business took off. There was clear value in combining the skills of both companies to help customers get more from their cloud data. Then Hikari decided to double down and bring Power Apps capabilities in house. The firm acquired ProcessUs, and the combined team set out to scale the new and improved Hikari.

From his work at EMIT, Moore knew many SMB customers view their Modern Work partner as a trusted IT advisor. While a particular partner might focus on cloud migration or security, their customers still ask them about everything technology related—from a photocopier to a PC to AI. Which puts a lot of pressure on small partners. “At the end of the day, if you try to be a jack of all trades, you’ll be the master of none,” said Moore. “It’s critical to do what you do really well and stick to it—especially when you’re a company our size.”  

Moore reached out to Microsoft and pitched the idea of setting up Hikari to serve Modern Work resellers. Under his proposed model, resellers would work with Hikari to determine if a low-code solution would help achieve their customer’s business objectives. If so, Hikari would support the partner with customer education and solution development.  

Microsoft introduced Hikari to TD SYNNEX, a distributor of IT products and services, that serves thousands of partners across Western Europe. Together they created a P2P model serving resellers who act as the trusted advisors of SMB organizations. Hikari started by helping TD SYNNEX partners with low-code workshops, assessments, proofs of concept, and service development. Over time, it has pivoted to offering a Power Platform Centre of Excellence for partners to ramp up their low-code skills.  

“We believe in the power of the network—the partner network, the Microsoft network, the distributor network,” Moore said. “We all have important, strategic customers that we want to hang on to. We don’t want a competitor knocking on their door and selling them on the idea that they can do everything while we can’t. Partner-to-partner (P2P) relationships help you maintain your existing customer relationships and increase your status as a trusted advisor by bringing in great partners to round out your offerings.” 

Hikari is just one of many companies out there that has created a flourishing partner network. For an overview on how to grow your own B2B technology partner program, download our guide.  

By Jane Dornemann

Image by Evan Aeschlimann

Wheelin’ and dealin’ 

• Hi, welcome to weirdo upside-down world where Amazon is about to become its No. 1 competitor’s biggest customer (by a long shot). No, you are not tripping on shrooms like an Alaska Airlines pilot, this is real.  
• The Mayo Clinic is testing generative AI applications with its clinical staff through Microsoft’s 365 Copilot early access program. This news comes at the same time as Microsoft’s announcement of new tools in Microsoft Fabric and Azure AI for healthcare organizations. 
• Accenture and AWS have teamed up to create the Accenture AWS Business Group and the launch of Velocity, a “continuous innovation engine.”  
• Microsoft has FINALLY closed the Activision Blizzard deal and I am so happy to never have to write about this again.  
• World Energy, a producer of sustainable aviation fuel (that’s a thing?), signed a long-term agreement with Microsoft to….geez, the press release doesn’t even tell you, really. But if I had to read between the lines, it sounds like Microsoft will use World Energy to fuel executive private jets between Seattle and NYC. But let us never utter the term “private jet” lest the masses catch on to our tomfoolery. 

World domination 

• Microsoft is building a data center in Aragon, Spain, which looks like it just got added to my travel bucket list…especially because the region JUST WON THE SPANISH PIG AWARDS!!! Yes, Aragon has the best-performing pig farms, and is now holder of the “Porc d’Or” award. As published in Pig Progress Magazine. I’m serious. ::Subscribes:: 
• AWS is opening a development center in Nairobi to create software development and cloud support. The region has been dubbed the “Silicon Savannah,” which could also be the term for the space between two breast implants, but OK. 
• In one of the biggest news events to happen in Wales is the building of a Microsoft data center. It’s located in Newport—you know Newport—the city right next to Croesymwyalch, not far from Cwmbran and Llanfrechta. Yeah, that one. Hopefully, this news doesn’t get drowned out by recent local headlines such as the reopening of a local mini supermarket and inspectors’ praise for the local nursery, Tiny Tots. 
• Microsoft just laid off nearly 700 employees at LinkedIn, primarily in the engineering department. And it will now ramp up hiring in India. Classic move. Maybe that switcheroo will help them pay off the $29B they owe in back taxes. Yeah, I said it. Cash me ousside. 
• India is HOT and I don’t just mean it’s 130 degrees there at night. I mean everyone wants a piece. In addition to Microsoft’s hiring spree in the world’s most populated country, the government is unveiling digital health IDs with AWS. Biometrics in government hands? I can’t see any potential issues with that.  
• And India’s HCLSoftware is collaborating with AWS so customers can consume the HCLSoftware portfolio as cloud-native services/SaaS in AWS.  

Ma’am, I’m going to have to call security 

• AWS, Google, and Telegram have been targeted by a malware campaign that uses “typosquatting” and “starjacking,” both of which sound like martial arts moves that could mess you up. Also, I hope it happens to me just so I can say “DAMN IT, I’VE BEEN STARJACKED!!!” 
• The AI technology that Microsoft has been pushing is also, apparently, helping hackers hit their victims harder.  
• But don’t confuse that with the campaign that attackers are conducting on SQL Server instances. And if you’re still into SQL Server after that, then you’ll be happy about the public preview of Azure SQL Database free offering. Get hacked—for free!! 
• AND Google, AWS, and Cloudflare saw the largest DDoS attack in their history. None of the articles name the hacking group, which makes me mad because I want to see how cool their name is. But anyway, Google saw 398 million requests per second, otherwise known as whenever I am trying to relax and my son is home. The DDoS graph looks like a Silicon Savannah ifyouknowwhatImean. 

Gossip (for nerds) 

• Satya Nadella is blaming Google for the fact that nobody uses Bing in a federal antitrust trial against Google. To get out from under Google’s hold on search, Microsoft told Apple it would pay billions to replace Google on Apple devices.  
• And funny story: Bing Chat is under fire for security concerns. It’s crawling with malicious ads. It’s Google’s fault!!! 
• Despite that hot mess, Microsoft posted 13% YoY sales growth in its last quarter earnings, beating expectations and adding to an overall “comeback” of tech. 
• It’s a good week for anyone who owns Amazon stock, once again driven by AWS. CEO Andy Jassy says the success of AWS belongs to its work in generative AI with solutions like Amazon Bedrock. And, AWS sales went up 12% YoY. 
• Sdx Central says the top three cloud providers are “battling” for the data center market. The article comes with a fantastical rendering of a city full of data centers on fire, bombarded by planes. (“Midjourney, show me a battle for data centers.”) This reminds me of those Army recruiting commercials that used to show before movies, where they made it look like if you joined you’d be fighting some superpower on a planet with three moons.  
• A Microsoft VP who has been with the company for decades is now moving to Amazon, overseeing devices and services. His name is Panos Panay, which I have been repeating to myself for fun all morning. First I pretended I was a caterer at a nice event with a silver tray of apps and I ask people all fancy, “May I interest you in some Panos Panay?” and then I was offering someone advice and turned it into a Latin saying …”Well, you know what they say – Panos Panay.” 
• Or maybe it will help them spend $3.2B in a “charm offensive” in Australia to push AI and cloud. Australia is currently looking to regulate AI.  

New stuff  

• The Microsoft Azure Incubation team has launched Radius, a platform that lets developers collaborate on building cloud-native applications. In typical Microsoft fashion, this announcement opens with a 43-word sentence. 
• AWS has launched its Process Optimization solution, which uses AI and ML to provide engineers with insights on downstream and midstream operations.  
• New to Microsoft Viva is Skills, which will help organizations understand workforce skills and gaps and then deliver personalized learning to close those gaps through Viva Learning. 
• I hope you powerful people like getting codes by text and email because AWS is going to require highest-privilege users to complete MFA starting next year. See, this is where it’s good to be a nobody. 
• Amazon DataZone has become generally available. Users can catalog, discover, share, and govern data stored across AWS, on-premises, and third-party sources. 

Best Friends Forever 

• Microsoft is partnering with AV provider Legrand to create a hybrid conference space for Microsoft Teams Rooms. These will be Signature Teams Rooms and probably look like EVERY OTHER MEETING ROOM. Look people, a work meeting is a work meeting. Fetch is never gonna happen. 
• Immuta, which sounds like the Italian phrase for “I’ve turned the sound off on the TV,” has integrated its Data Fabric Security with AWS. 
• IBM is set to train 10,000 consultants on AWS generative AI services. Sounds like a blast. 
• Our friends at Databricks are now listed in AWS Marketplace for the US Intelligence Community. Now incompetence can be data-driven. 
• Global professional services firm Genpact is partnering with AWS to fight financial crime with generative AI. The two will message financial criminals using an AI chatbot that says, “Are you SURE you want to do this? It’s really bad and not nice.” 
• Tenovos, a digital asset management firm, has achieved its AWS Retail Competency. The company has proved it can shop til it drops and find the best deals on designer wear.  
• Technology consulting firm Credera has earned its AWS Migration Competency.  
• Data protection company Commvault has joined the AWS Workload Migration Program (WMP). 
• Duality Technologies has joined the AWS Partner Network. It provides secure data center collaboration. 
• Roadway intelligence firm Rekor has joined the AWS ISV Accelerate Program. 
• Dubai-based Superbo, an AI solutions provider, is partnering with Microsoft to deploy Azure OpenAI across the African continent. 

By Jane Dornemann

Image by Evan Aeschlimann

New stuff  

• Oooooh Mesh for Teams in public preview! You’ll need a Teams Premium account to create your Metaverse. It is very meta—we roleplay at work already, so now we will roleplay our roleplay. Whatever it takes to bring bongos to an earnings call.  
• And the new Azure Update Manager, a SaaS solution for managing software updates on Windows and Linux machines across Azure, is now generally available. 
• AWS launched EC2 R7iz instances, which offer a high CPU performance for intense workloads (do these workloads look like Kristen Stewart in every Twilight movie?). Nah, think simulations and electronic design. It also launched AWS Private CA Connector for Active Directory, which lets customers…do something more complicated than I care to explain here.   
• Who cares about the ousted Speaker of the House when there’s a new AWS Competency in town?? AWS Partners can now earn a Telecommunications Competency, which includes key areas like communications as a service (CaaS) and business support systems (BSS). 
• Telecom is so hot right now, says AWS, because the industry is “eagerly embracing” generative AI through an identified 17 use cases. 
• Amazon Bedrock, which is not the jungle version of the Flintstone’s world but instead a solution that plays a major role in the AWS AI strategy, is now generally available—along with a few other AI innovations. 
• Dell has launched APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure, making them the first MSFT partner in the cloud provider’s Premier Solutions for Azure Stack HCI category. 
• Are you a gigantic company? Do you want Microsoft 365 Copilot to supplement your core productivity apps? Congrats, it’s here for you. 
• Microsoft has unloaded some new generative AI tools for the advertising industry. 

Wheelin’ and dealin’ 

• IT solutions giant Infosys is partnering with Microsoft to meld their AI capabilities as a way to “lead the generative AI revolution.” Thanks for the specifics, I can’t wait to see the results of whatever you didn’t say you’re doing. 
• Build Your Own Lake (BYOL) is a new part of the expanded partnership between AWS and Salesforce. It lets customers infuse AWS AI-centered services like Amazon SageMaker through Salesforce’s Einstein Trust Layer and unify Salesforce Data Cloud with AWS data-centric services like Amazon Redshift. 
• AWS and Cloudera signed an agreement that allows the Cloudera Cloud Platform to integrate directly with AWS services. Cloudera will also build all its generative AI stuff on AWS. 
• And then (a lil’ late to the party) Oracle says it wants to form multi-cloud agreements with Salesforce, AWS, Workday, and every other major cloud app. This article has some pretty interesting takes from Larry Ellison.  
• The biggest AWS news to grace our media-overloaded brains is Amazon’s $4B investment in Anthropic AI, an AI safety and research company. In exchange, AWS gets partial ownership and will be Anthropic’s primary cloud provider. Anthropic will also use Amazon’s AI chips. Cute! 
• Of related interest is this Q&A with Diya Wynn, the responsible AI lead at AWS. 
• There’s a healthcare system called Mercy. Literally that’s the whole name. And they’re partnering with Microsoft to use AI to “lighten the load” on healthcare employees. The two are exploring more than four dozen mercy-packed uses of AI to transform care experiences for patients and employees. If I were in charge of marketing, the slogan would be “Have Mercy” and the logo would be Uncle Jesse’s face.   
• And Accenture is helping New York’s Mount Sinai Health System move to Azure. 
• Oracle is expanding its deal with Microsoft and will co-locate Oracle’s Exadata database-optimized server and Real Application Clusters in Microsoft Azure data centers. Why does Oracle remind me of the roommate who said no to takeout but then when yours arrives they want to know if you’ll split it with them?  
• Sports gaming company FanDuel is further moving its operations to AWS to “support…millions of simultaneous players as they place bets…” If that’s not critical societal innovation, I don’t know what is. 
• Application software security platform Contrast Security now integrates with AWS Security Hub. This will allow customers to address security concerns before their apps are deployed. So I guess Microsoft won’t be using it. 
• Mission Cloud, a managed cloud services provider and AWS Premier Tier Partner (they get a free drink in first class), signed a collab with AWS to develop the consulting firm’s data, analytics, ML, and generative AI solutions on AWS. 
• Cloud-based remote monitoring and management company Atera has launched a new AI-powered IT suite with Microsoft Azure Open AI. 
• Every day is Earth Day for KPMG and Microsoft, who will jointly release a new educational platform on environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG). 
• Cloud connectivity company Cloudflare is collaborating with Microsoft to make it easier for companies to run AI in the location of their choice. I don’t mean, like, the snack kitchen. I mean like on networks and stuff. 
• In finance, Finastra announced it would modernize its trade platform using a microservices architecture on Azure.   

World domination 

• British banking and insurance company NatWest group is partnering with AWS to accelerate the use of generative AI. The two will co-create responsible AI products using Amazon Bedrock as part of NatWest’s new AWS Generative AI Innovation Center. 
• I swear to god the EU is just going down the list of Microsoft products one by one—they are now scrutinizing the Teams Video app. Did an American Microsoft person cut their spaghetti with a knife or something? Try to speak French in France? Say they were vegetarian in Greece? Show up 10 seconds late for a meeting in Germany? Geez… 
• On the topic of Germany: Deutsche Telekom unveiled the commercial availability of a full-stack private 5G network service that rides on Azure’s private multi-access edge compute (MEC) platform. 
• Two companies from the two biggest oil producers in the world are screaming “sustainability now!” so it must be legit. Saudi Arabian business Abdul Latif Jameel has selected AWS as its preferred cloud provider and in turn will provide AWS with clean energy capacity via solar in Spain.   
• Also, Amazon got permission to plan three new data centers in north Dublin to which a group called Friends of the Earth, Not Here Not Anywhere said the projects would increase the country’s emissions. The government was like no, you’re wrong. And then the resistance group was like, no, we’re actually right because we did the math, we got receipts. And then the government was like, that’s nice we like money, byyyyeeee.  

Gossip (for nerds) 

• Jeff Bezos is still worth more than OpenAI. But we’ll see how long that lasts now that OpenAI is launching ChatGPT Enterprise, which offers enterprise-grade privacy and security, advanced data analysis, and a longer context window. Some of the money will pay for lawsuits, which may be straining the relationship between Microsoft and OpenAI. 
• AI uses a lot of water and energy, and there is only so much to go around (unless you’re Coca Cola in which case they’ll just let your crops die because you know what helps distract from hunger? A nice cold coke). For this reason, Microsoft is considering nuclear energy. 

Ma’am, I’m going to have to call security 

• A Chinese hacker stole 60,000 emails from 10 U.S. State Department accounts thanks to a flaw that let the hacker improperly use an Azure Active Directory key. And then another flaw led the key to not even be detected. So, in short, we’re doing real good.  
• This is a Microsoft news update so we all know there was going to be more than one security problem. And maybe if they didn’t force people into the new Teams I’d be nicer about it, but what’s done is done. Microsoft AI researcher exposed terabytes of sensitive data on GitHub; the data included two of Microsoft employees’ entire workstations. 
• On the plus side, GitHub Advanced Security for Azure DevOps is now generally available LMAAAOOOOOO. 

Best Friends Forever 

• MSFT:  
  • New to Azure Marketplace are CGI’s All Payments solution; LeapXpert’s Communication Platform; and Lightbits’ Cloud Data Platform. 
  • ECS is now a solution partner in three designated areas: Azure Infrastructure, Digital & App Innovation, and Data & AI. 

• AWS: 
  • Arduino, an open-source electronic prototyping platform—otherwise known as the kit my husband bought two years ago and still hasn’t touched but insists he will—has joined the AWS Partner Network to assist customers in industrial and commercial sectors deliver enterprise-grade Arduino products. Arduino Cloud has run on AWS infrastructure for the last three years. 
  • SequenceShift earned AWS Travel and Hospitality Competency and TCS achieved AWS Automotive Competency. 
  • New to AWS Marketplace: Veriff, a global identity verification provider; Contentful’s Composable Content Platform; Bright Security’s Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) scanner; MixMode’s Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) for AWS; and IRONSCALES (they don’t have to yell!), a cloud email security solution.  
  • Tray.io, which offers a platform for generating money-making AI content, is now an AWS APN member. Its platform is also available in AWS Marketplace. 
  • Ripcord, which offers a document intelligence as a service (DIaaS) platform, has joined the AWS ISV Accelerate program. 

Miscellany 

• You have until 2025 to say your goodbyes to Azure Database MariaDB. 
• AWS has selected 13 tech startups to be part of its first GovTech accelerator, which will provide cloud support for businesses focused on criminal justice and public safety. Prisoners will be able to see which color uniforms best compliment their skin tones using an AI-powered filter. 

By Nora Bright

Image by Julianne Medenblik

The economic environment is still slow, and many companies are in a hiring freeze. If you’re thinking about hiring but not sure about making the commitment, bringing a new teammate on through a consulting or staffing agency could be a smart choice! Below are a few considerations to decide if an agency is your best bet. 

Go in-house 

You have a certain, long-term need. Hiring in-house is a great route if you need someone for the long haul and have the budget to support them. Once you train an in-house employee, you get to keep their knowledge within the organization, whereas a consultant is likely to move on more quickly. 

You want a transferable skillset. Even if you’re just hiring for a project or short-term need, it’s possible the person you bring into the organization may have a valuable skillset that can be used elsewhere in the organization. For example, if you’re bringing on a data analyst to evaluate the efficiency of your digital ads spending, there are likely other initiatives or programs where they could apply their skills. 

Your team has the bandwidth to support interviews. Hiring can be time-intensive for you and anyone else sitting in on interview loops. If you go in-house, make sure your teams have the capacity to meet candidates and participate in multiple interviews. 

You can wait a while. An FTE hiring process can take weeks to months, but can be worth the time and effort to find your long-term candidate. If you don’t have an immediate need—and can wait a while before the position is filled—going through the process in-house makes sense.  

Call up the experts and use a consulting agency 

You have a short-term need. If you need help with a quick project, hiring a temporary teammate through an agency can be a great option. You can skip a lengthy recruiting and interview process that might be overkill for a short-term role, and get someone started ASAP. Plus, your agency handles the  vetting process for you to save you the effort. 

You need a specialized skillset. Even in this labor market where employers have an upper hand, it can be a challenge to find someone with a specialized skillset. This is especially true in our world of marketing and creative roles, where motion designers, video editors, or marketing analysts may be hard to track down. An agency that specializes in your industry or function will have experienced talent ready to go for even hard-to-find skillsets. 

You’re in a pinch. Need someone, like, yesterday? Working with a consulting agency is going to be a lot faster than going through the typical in-house hiring process. You can skip the legwork of sifting through hundreds of resumes, emailing back and forth with candidates, and setting up loops with your team.  

You want to try before you buy. Whether you have an open role that’s hard to fill, or you want to work with someone before making a long-term commitment, a consulting agency is a great option for you. Most agencies offer a temp-to-hire option if you’re impressed with your consultant and want to keep them on for the long haul. If they’re not a fit, the consulting agency can find you a replacement quickly. 

Want to learn more about what a consulting agency can offer? 

2A’s Embedded Consulting practice matches tech industry clients with top-notch marketing, creative, and program management talent. Our superior employee experience and benefits put people first—and attract the best talent in tech. Learn more about our EC practice or get in touch. 

By Jane Dornemann

Image by Evan Aeschlimann

Gossip (for nerds)

• NVIDIA chips have become a hotter item than black market kidneys as companies “go to extreme lengths” to remedy the GPU shortage. In response, AWS is promoting its own AI chips and the adoption of Amazon Bedrock, which bakes chip needs into the offering. Meanwhile Microsoft is offering refunds to customers who curb their GPU usage.
• If you don’t want to return to the Amazon office then get ready to like government cheese. Andy Jassey said that employees should forget about the Amazon mantra of “disagree and commit” for leadership’s push to return to soul-sucking cubicle life. This message was delivered in the bravest of fashions using the good old pre-recorded session.
• SAP’s new global head of AI was previously the Microsoft VP of AI for the business and application platform group. She has a PhD from MIT…how mid.
• A shake-up may be coming to the AWS Partner program. The cloud giant teased changes to partner-to-partner engagement and AWS Marketplace in relation to generative AI. I actually know about one of these changes and while I don’t have a PhD from MIT, I did major in KEEPING SECRETS at life university with a weighted GPA of 4.18.
• Microsoft has changed its policy to allow customers to use Microsoft 365 on Amazon WorkSpaces. Why such a big licensing change now? The report speculates that the move may be a result of pressure from large customers and the EU’s ongoing examination of anti-competitive practices. Amazon WorkSpaces is on a shortlist of software that can now run on Microsoft 365, leaving other big firms, like VMware, to ask when it will be their turn.
• AWS has hired two new executives to its senior leadership team, one for AI and one for EC2 (the third is for Amazon, check out her amazing profile here).
• The whole “I’ll patch it in two years, MAYBE” security approach that Microsoft has had over the years is not flying with customers anymore, including the federal government. A mounting number of infosec professionals and vendors are getting loud about Microsoft’s lack of transparency, lack of urgency, and increasing occurrence of security issues. It’s gotten to the point where the US Department of Homeland Security has opened an investigation into Microsoft’s handling of a major attack on its Azure cloud infrastructure. This will definitely hurt the cloud company’s attempt to position itself as a cybersecurity leader.
• It’s rumored that Google plans to release its contender to OpenAI’s GPT-4, Gemini, this fall.
• More people with a 1.7 GPA in keeping secrets: Microsoft is planning to start selling a new version of Databricks software that helps customers make AI apps for businesses.
  

World domination

• Africa: AWS opened its first international AWS Skills Center in Cape Town, South Africa. It offers free training to help people move into cloud careers. And startups from six African countries have been chosen to participate in a boot camp run by AWS and Harvard Innovation Labs’ NextGen Accelerator. 25 Black-led startups were selected in total, with founders from U.S. HBCUs also in the cohort.
• Asia: AWS APJ is tapping Korean startups to be part of its six-week-long Generative AI Accelerator program. And AWS debuted a new Dedicated Local Zone in Singapore, which will help organizations in the public sector and regulated industries meet regulatory standards.
• Europe: Finland’s Savings Bank Group is moving all of its data and systems to Azure. Boring news from a boring country. I love you Finland, but you are not the Friday nights of countries!

New stuff

• AWS introduced HealthImaging, a HIPAA-eligible service that lets healthcare providers store, analyze, and share medical imaging data at scale. Wait, so I can just…get images? You’re saying, AWS, that I don’t have to call up my old neurologist at NYU and request my brain MRI only to be told I have to make the request in person, so I fly to New York City, sign a release waiver, wait two days, go to pick it up only to find out my other doctor needs it in a different format, then fly back to NYC again, except this time the front desk tells me oh sorry that lady you spoke to was new, we no longer provide imaging in that format anymore and then I just, I dunno, die?
• AWS wants to teach its healthcare customers and partners in Latin America, Canada, and the Caribbean how to build solutions. It will do this through its pilot of AWS Industry Quest: Healthcare, which sounds a lot like you’ll be playing Tomb Raider instead of developing apps.
• Microsoft feels like the one thing missing from this world is another male voice, so it added one to its Azure AI Text to Speech tool.
• AWS launched an EC2 service powered by custom Intel Xeon Scalable processors, otherwise known as Sapphire Rapids.
• Microsoft has announced the general availability of its Azure Operating Nexus for telcos. The explanation of what it does is a real snooze fest and my workday ends in 15 minutes so you’ll have to go without.
• In its ongoing love letter to startups, AWS has unveiled AWS Build, a global program meant to help early-stage startups get their ideas off the ground.
• Can’t leave frontline and shift workers out of the Copilot revolution. It must be high on their list of must-haves, well above cost of living pay raises and sick days, for sure. Fret not field service workers because now there’s a preview of Copilot in Dynamics 365 just for you.

Wheelin’ and dealin’

• Are DDoS days the new snow days? Cyberattacks have increasingly led to lost learning in K-12 schools, so AWS has pledged $20M in grants for cybersecurity resiliency efforts in education. This is part of the White House’s increased federal support for school cybersecurity.
• Digital pathology provider Paige has teamed up with Microsoft to build the world’s largest image-based AI intelligence model for identifying cancer.
• AWS has announced that its Service Catalog now supports HashiCorp Terraform Cloud. This facilitates self-service provisioning with governance so that developers don’t have to wait on cranky IT folks to set their shiz up.
• BMW chose AWS as the platform on which it will develop its next-gen driver assistance system, set to launch in 2025. Qualcomm will also play a role in development.
  • Separately, Qualcomm is touting its growing influence in the automotive sector, including a strategic partnership with AWS.
• Microsoft and AI startup Synthetaic are working together to analyze data from space and air sensors. This was the same company that independently tracked the Chinese spy balloon, something that was on my shortlist of Halloween costumes but is now too obscure.
• Aptos, a blockchain platform developed by a former Facebook employee (I bet it’s a GREAT place for women to work), is partnering with Microsoft to bring AI to blockchain. That includes building tools to help banks explore blockchain on Azure.
• EVERYBODY AND THEIR MOTHERS are helping businesses accelerate AI adoption:
  • LeanIX, which sells a transformation platform that helps companies with visibility and governance, has partnered with Microsoft to launch LeanIX Assistant. The press release goes on to say it’s the first of its kind, but I’m gonna spoiler alert you and let you know that it’s not.
  • IBM Consulting is helping clients implement and scale Azure OpenAI Service. It will guide businesses in defining an adoption strategy and identify use cases.
  • AWS has “let me show you how to use this thing” collabs too! HCLTech will help AWS customers adopt AI using AWS services such as Amazon Bedrock and Amazon CodeWhisperer.
  • And government modernization facilitator CACI struck a deal with AWS to help the Department of Defense, the intelligence community, and law enforcement use AI to do things like share sensitive data to generate insights. SOUNDS LIKE A GREAT IDEA.
  • IT infrastructure services provider Kyndryl is working with Microsoft to launch an AI-readiness program that will enable the ethical adoption of enterprise AI solutions.

Miscellany

• Have you ever offered to do something for somebody, and as soon as it came out of your mouth you were like, why did I just offer to do that? That’s Microsoft this week after saying it will accept liability for any customer’s copyright infringement over material generated by its AI software! The idea is to get more people comfortable with using the software. This applies exclusively to paying customers of GitHub Copilot, which creates computer code with generative AI, as well as Microsoft 365 Copilot, which applies AI to products including Word, Teams, and PowerPoint.
• Amazon has acquired Fig, a startup that produces tools to assist developers. It will be folded into AWS.
• Microsoft has ended unlimited storage for OneDrive business plans because you can never have too much money. It’s also ended Windows support for Cortana in favor of focusing on Copilot.
• AWS is ending its low-code Honeycode service. The end-of-life announcement drew only six replies from customers. Is this like when Phish announced they were retiring in 2004?
• Another reason why Europe offers a better quality of life: Microsoft will stop forcing Windows 11 users into the Edge browser.

Best Friends Forever

• New to Microsoft Azure Marketplace:
  • Globalgig’s Orchestra platform, which helps businesses manage global network services.
  • DeskConnect, an AI/ML solution that extracts and analyzes text from documents, including handwritten ones. I know a former president who hates to read but loves documents who would have liked that about a year ago.
• Red Hat OpenShift for the U.S. Intelligence Community is now available in AWS Marketplace. It will help the government innovate while also maintaining stringent security. Both of those things are new concepts to the government, so take ‘er nice and slow there guys. Also new to AWS Marketplace:
  • SOCi, which offers a platform that helps multi-location enterprises employ automation tools and data management to drive customer engagement.
  • Outreach, an AI-powered sales execution platform.
• PingSafe, a CNAPP provider, has joined the AWS ISV Accelerator and so has ComplyAdvantage, a financial crime intelligence company.
• Alfa, a finance software provider, joined the AWS Partner Network after passing the technical review.
• HashiCorp has joined Microsoft’s Intelligence Security Association.
• Consulting firm Protiviti earned its AI and ML specialization from Microsoft.
• Data science and AI solutions provider Tredence has achieved its AWS Service Delivery designation for Amazon EMR and Amazon RDS. Analytics company SAS achieved AWS Digital Customer Experience Competency. Onebeat, which provides AI-enabled supply chain solutions for retailers, was awarded the AWS Retail Competency. And Zero Trust company Netskope earned its Security Competency status in the Infrastructure Protection category.

By Richa Dubey

Image by Rachel Adams

The first meeting with Kate leaves you with the sense that she is not just deliberate in her choice of words, but secretly polishes each one to a high shine. She holds it up to the light, and only then, with the satisfied, tiny nod of a true expert, does she slot it into its proper place.  

As a language expert, Kate is 2A’s own lexical chef. With a master’s in linguistics, Kate has developed (and trained actors on) an authentic Dust Bowl accent for a play based on Steinbeck’s novel, Of Mice and Men; taught English as a second language in both Japan and the US at the university level; worked in academia; and simplified complex scientific and technical research into a comprehensible read for the layperson. All of this, of course, is in addition to excelling at 2A as an in-house storyteller on the agency side and an embedded consultant for Microsoft. As a former employee of both Microsoft and Amazon Web Services (AWS), she continues to dive into technology and produce stellar copy.    

Braiding stories from different threads 

When it comes to storytelling, Kate pulls three key threads to weave a tale. First, is connection. She knows how to string the right words together to make a good story great. She can connect directly with the reader, so the message makes a place in their mind and heart. And while the message may be interpreted a little differently by each reader, Kate searches hard for the nugget that strikes relevance.

Another strand in the craft of Kate’s storytelling is precision. “How can you use a word so there is no room for ambiguity?” she asks. “Different people use words and concepts differently, so I work to make sure that we’re on the same page with respect to what they’re trying to say, and I’m focused on using direct language.”  

The last strand is Kate’s imagination. “I think of things that might not have been considered with respect to the story,” she says. Drawing on the rich diversity of her expertise, she pulls disparate elements together, coaxing them to play nicely, and finally, buffing them to produce a finished product like this piece on AI and mixed reality for Microsoft.   

From tech to the deep sea  

When she’s not creating marketing content, Kate is kayaking, volunteering for the arts, or walking dogs at the Seattle Animal Shelter. Lately, she’s been settling into her new role as pet parent to her adorable three-year-old Havapoo, Charlie, a rescue who accompanies her on her adventures.  

By Jane Dornemann

Image by Alejandra Maria Photography

Feedback is the cornerstone of the creative process at 2A, whether it’s an internal discussion on the best way to revise an introduction or debating how to integrate client feedback about a design. That’s why we asked Michaela Ayers of Nourish to lead a workshop on navigating “creative conflict” and constructive feedback at our company retreat this year. Here’s what we learned.

The Thomas-Kilmann Model is a great way to understand conflict management styles. Have you ever had someone steamroll your idea, and you stayed quiet? Or have you and a colleague experienced tension over opposing ideas you were championing, but tried to find a happy medium?  

We all have certain habits when it comes to navigating sticky situations based on our personality and preferences.  Understanding how you and your collaborators instinctively respond to conflict can help you be more efficient in your approach to delivering constructive feedback. (This writer NEEDS the compliment sandwich.)

The Thomas-Kilmann model below states that the way we work with others tends to fall into different behavioral patterns: competing (high in assertiveness, low in cooperativeness); compromising (high in both assertiveness and compromising); accommodating (low in assertiveness, high in cooperativeness); and avoidance (low in both assertiveness and cooperativeness). At the center of this graph is the golden ticket, collaboration. Often, our management styles will shift depending on the context of whom we are working with and what we are working on.  

Image adapted from the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict model

Each of these styles has pros and cons. None of these styles is better than the other, they are simply different, encompassing various “light” and “shadow” traits. For example, an accommodating team member may be able to resolve conflict faster and keep the peace but can later harbor resentment over their unheard opinions. A competing team member is a decisive, efficient problem-solver—but they can be ego-driven and dominating. (Hey, stop thinking of that person. Stick with us for the rest of this.)

What does collaboration look like? True collaboration is about working toward a win-win in which everyone feels heard, valued, and uses creative problem-solving. But even collaboration has a downside: it’s time intensive. And effective collaboration requires something that research has shown to be highly important in the workplace, which is psychological safety. Aligned with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, achieving psychological safety builds upon itself through stages—so fostering growth of these elements at work is crucial to effective collaboration based on well-delivered (and well-received) feedback.  

So…how do you build psychological safety? It’s not simple or overly prescriptive, but the overarching idea is to connect with the people you’re providing feedback to; observe their work and feelings; communicate the impact of the recommendations; listen to their thoughts, and then iron out a mutually beneficial solution. In our open discussion, we found that the collegial relationships we’ve nurtured with each other have laid a strong foundation for mutual respect and safety in expressing ideas (which might be why we have five stars on Glassdoor). 

After another successful retreat on the books, we’ve noticed that we’re already putting what we’ve learned into practice. And we bet our clients will notice, too. 

If you’re interested in hosting a workshop like this for your teams, reach out to Michaela. 

By Jane Dornemann

Image by Evan Aeschlimann

Wheelin’ and dealin’

• Multinational IT company Capgemini is collaborating with Microsoft to build an Azure Intelligent App Factory. It will help businesses develop responsible and sustainable generative AI capabilities that will generate “tangible outcomes.” Do they know what “tangible” means? Is the office building going to be smoother? Will the CEO’s skin get softer?
• Occidental, an international energy company, is migrating to AWS. One of the things it plans to do is develop a system for its large-scale carbon dioxide capture plants…HURRY IT UP WE’RE ROASTING/DROWNING/STARVING OUT HERE!!!
• Tackle.io, an end-to-end solution for B2B software companies, is co-selling a solution with AWS that will help ISVs accelerate their move to the cloud. It includes everything from training to system integration.
• “Nonprofit” insurance provider Blue Shield of California has partnered with Microsoft to build a new data hub on Azure. It’s called the Experience Cube (sounds like a weird secret medical experimentation thing). It will bring together provider, patient, and payer data in real time so that services are more personalized. “In the Experience Cube, we want to see how many medical procedures people can withstand without anesthesia, while also remaining alive, so we can personalize approvals and billing,” one Blue Cross employee said, citing pain control for invasive surgeries as a “largely unnecessary” practice.
• Trend Micro has seen sales soar since entering AWS Marketplace. Good for them I guess.
• In a mutually beneficial arrangement, professional services firm Genpact will use Azure OpenAI to offer new capabilities to clients. This includes applications such as “transition management” in which an AI-generated likeness of Gary Busey tells you you’re fired. Anyway, I went through the release to see where Microsoft wins in this, but no dice.
• Observability platform LogicMonitor has expanded its monitoring coverage across AWS services.
• Caylent, a cloud services company, signed a strategic agreement with AWS to expand data and generative AI solutions for its customers. Caylent plans to use this collaboration to scale its Canadian presence, which will include requiring all employees to constantly say thank you, please, and sorry, as well as consume at least 5 pounds of maple syrup and Canadian Bacon (known as “bacon” in Canada) daily until they’re in good with our northerly neighbors.
• Hitachi Vantara, a subsidiary of Hitachi, released its Unified Compute Platform for Azure Stack HCI. It helps businesses manage different environments and hybrid cloud setups.
• The federal government has approved the use of Azure OpenAI service for projects involving highly sensitive data. LOL see you in the security section of this newsletter next week.

World domination

• AWS launched a Local Zone Edge location in Phoenix. It has already melted.
• And then it launched a new infrastructure Region in Tel Aviv, Israel. But that also melted!!
• Brazil’s B3 stock exchange, one of the world’s leading financial markets, is migrating to AWS. AWS is one of the exchange’s three cloud providers (the others being Microsoft and Oracle).
• Feel-good story time! An amazing 13-year-old in Nigeria just wowed the tech world by becoming Africa’s youngest Certified AWS Developer. He studied up to five hours every day for six weeks to pass the certification test. The youngest person in the world to achieve this designation to date is Karthick Arun, a ten-year-old based out of Arizona. Who has his own LinkedIn profile. Sorry about your melted Local Zone, Karthick.
• UK-based Telecom giant Vodafone is expanding its work with AWS (primarily using AWS Wavelength) to bring low-latency services to several locations in Spain.

Gossip (for nerds)

• Google is doing more poaching than a restaurant kitchen at brunch. It has recently hired a total of five big execs away from AWS and Microsoft. See who they are here.
• European Commission has opened a formal investigation into claims that Microsoft breached EU competition rules by bundling together Teams to suites such as Office 365 and Microsoft 365. It’s not so much a bundling as it is more of a…hugging. They’re hugging each other. Don’t be a patriarchal Ken.
• The former Enterprise Executive Strategic Advisor at AWS has jumped to digital transformation services firm GFT, where she’ll be SVP, Global Head AWS Sales and Strategy.
• Amazon’s earnings saw 12% growth YoY in Q2—beyond what analysts expected—largely driven by its AWS division. CEO Andy Jassy said the revenue is coming less from cloud migrations, which many companies have already done, and more from those looking to innovate in the cloud. The other money maker was the release of Amazon Bedrock, which simplifies AI model deployment.
• Meanwhile, Microsoft saw 8% growth in Q2 and a 20% rise in profit. However, it’s never enough for some people, so shares fell 2.1% after investors expressed disappointment about Azure’s slower than desired growth. (Wow this takes me back to 12-year-old Jane at the pediatrician’s office.)
  • Even still, Microsoft says it’s proud of the growth its Salesforce rival, Dynamics, has seen. Dynamics is growing faster than any of the company’s other major product categories. To drive even more sales, it is offering subsidies to potential customers.
• In response to government concerns, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and other large tech firms made a commitment to meet a set of AI safeguards. If this promise to the White House is anything like the promises coming out of the White House, we are in trouble.

New stuff

• Do hyper-productive Oompa Loompas work at Microsoft? Because the company has announced a bunch of new products, short of a chocolate river flowing through Redmond:
  • Microsoft announced the preview of Azure Application Gateway for Containers and the public preview of Azure Deployment Stacks.
  • It’s also previewing Microsoft Azure Boost, which will improve the performance of virtual machines.
  • Microsoft introduced TypeChat, a library that enables large language model development.
  • It announced a more secure version of its AI-powered Bing chat. “We really need to protect the 17 people who use Bing chat worldwide,” a spokesperson said.
• The “we can do it better than Google Maps” triad of Microsoft, AWS, and Meta has released its first “open map” dataset, which includes four layers: transportation networks, geopolitical boundaries (can’t WAIT to see what they put for Taiwan), buildings, and places of interest.
• In the last cloud cover, I mentioned that Microsoft was partnering with Teladoc to do transcription things. Well, looks like AWS is doing it, too, with the announcement of HealthScribe.
• While AWS and Microsoft have both opened education centers around AI for IT and developers, there is still more ground to cover. Which is why AWS has unveiled its free Skill Builder program for executives on its YouTube channel. Since it’s for executives the first step they cover is how to turn on your computer.
• AWS has unveiled AWS Entity Resolution, which sounds like it’s an exorcist. But it just matches and links disparate records to create a 360-view of customers. This can be used for industries from finance to travel.
• Amazon EC2 P5 instances for AI/ML and HPC workloads is now generally available. A result of the company’s collab with NVIDIA, the solution reduces latency and makes scale-out performance more efficient.

Ma’am, I’m going to have to call security

• Zenbleed, which sounds like a Buddhist monk with a papercut, is a new vulnerability that could touch 62% of AWS environments. AWS is working on fixing it, but in the meantime, Google has released patches.
• Tenable’s CEO is calling attention to Microsoft’s four-month-long process of releasing a still-nowhere-to-be-found patch for a vulnerability in Azure. He had some choice words for Microsoft, which you can find here. Cage fight!
• Bad people have been controlling AWS System Manager agents by using a separate, maliciously owned AWS account. I feel like I maliciously own things, like my Brita that always, always needs to be refilled. Forever, until I die.
• Check Point Research says Microsoft is THE most imitated brand used for phishing attacks (we’ve all danced with Microloft, haven’t we?). In a highly American move, Microsoft said it’s Russia’s fault, as it crushed a Bud Light can against its forehead while riding a tractor that mows down poor people. But one Senator disagrees, and is calling for a Justice Department investigation into Microsoft’s “negligent cybersecurity practices”—citing the company’s role in a recent disastrous attack by Chinese hackers.
• Hacker group TeamTNT started targeting AWS environments before it expanded to Azure and Google Cloud. The TeamTNT has been improving their attack scripts over time to do everything from mining crypto to conducting straight up data theft. There are suspicions that the hackers are preparing to release an “aggressive cloud worm.” I WANT AN AGGRESSIVE CLOUD WORM. I’d dress him up in a little scarf and coat and he could sleep on a flower and maybe then he’ll turn nice.

Best Friends Forever

• AWS has named CrowdStrike the 2023 US ISV Partner of the Year.
• AWS needed more Cowbell and that’s what it got. SMB cyber insurance provider Cowbell (they HAD to know what they were doing) is now part of the AWS Cyber Insurance Partner Initiative.
• ML tooling company Edge Impulse has joined the AWS ISV Accelerate Program while data protection and management solutions vendor Commvault has joined the AWS ISV Workload Migration Program.
• Aquia, a SaaS company headquartered in the well-known and often-talked-about city of Millsboro, Delaware, has achieved Advanced Tier Services Partner status within the AWS Partner Network.
• Skyflow, a data privacy vault company, has joined the AWS Partner Network and is now in AWS Marketplace.
• Digital transformation firm Grid Dynamics has become a member of Microsoft’s Azure Migration and Modernization Program.

By Richa Dubey

Image by Suzanne Calkins

Equal parts passionate and intentional, Felip centers everything he does around building community and cultivating a shared understanding. “When I think about my profession, I don’t really think in terms of content or interactions with clients. It’s more about how I can use the skills and experience I have to align with their goals. This helps me better support their organizations and initiatives.” 

And it’s easy to find something to relate to when you’ve had such eclectic experiences. While still in school, Felip cared for dying Benedictine monks in Bavaria. He also co-started a tech education nonprofit for kids of color in Seattle.  

As a trade unionist, his father advocated for worker rights, and that helped inform Felip’s career trajectory. Working in economic development for the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan, Felip focused on diversification and training local startups in technology and entrepreneurship. “I see the results of that effort in the culture there today, and I am grateful to have played a small part in developing it.” 

From there, his next step was helping to navigate change at Microsoft. Felip worked with Microsoft 365 to review product changes with security and communication teams before rolling them out to millions of users. It was challenging, but it was core to the person that Felip feels he has grown into. “It’s a big part of who I am now. It taught me how to bridge cultures, navigate differences, and build empathy. That mindset is crucial for creating plans and roadmaps to move projects forward.” 

That emphasis on empathy and diversity anchored one of the biggest wins of Felip’s professional life: co-leading strategy at Purple Group. At this multicultural marketing agency, Felip and his team collaborated with multiple stakeholders to execute a five-year communication and outreach plan for the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA). At over $2 billion, the Red and Purple Modernization (RPM) Phase One Project is the largest capital project in CTA history.

Whether working with the community or within the technology industry, Felip excels at finding a common ground across peers and stakeholders. It’s no surprise we love having him at 2A, and the feeling is mutual. “I love the people here. Everyone is very capable, and that pushes me to be better. And it’s beautiful to see that capability buttressed by empathy and collaboration.”