The US Justice Department and FCC have announced an agreement that gives them each a role to play in potential antitrust investigations against the biggest players in the AI market. NVIDIA, Microsoft, and OpenAI were named in the agreement specifically according to insider reports. This follows reports that antitrust investigators have big concerns about AI and how companies developing it get their data to train the models. This agreement is modeled on a similar one from 2019 that eventually saw lawsuits brought against Meta, Amazon, and Google for antitrust violations. Back in January the US FTC had asked many companies to provide investment information as well as partnerships with generative AI companies.
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0:57 – Broadcom Axes AWS Elasticity
Another day, another change to licensing for VMware by Broadcom. This time the change is to VMware Cloud on AWS. In an email sent late last week, Broadcom told customers that they were moving to a subscription-only model for the product and no longer supporting the on-demand model. This means that in order to use the elastic functions of VMware Cloud you need to have a yearly license instead of paying per-instance. The deadline for purchasing the new license is August 1. As of today, the licensing options for Microsoft Azure and Google GCE remain unchanged.
Read More: Broadcom ends easy elasticity for VMware Cloud on AWS
2:38 – Snowflake’s Security Continues to Melt
You can add LendingTree to the list of Companies Running Snowflake that have been breached. The loan comparison site announced that one of their subsidiaries, QuoteWizard, was impacted by the massive data breach. Snowflake is still sticking to the story that it’s not a problem on their side and that customers that are affected did not have multi factor authentication (MFA) enabled. Per reports, one of the entry points was an active demo account that was not MFA protected. Other entry points include leaked credentials stolen by malware infections. Snowflake maintains these attacks are targeted at organizations that are not using MFA.
Read More: What Snowflake isn’t saying about its customer data breaches
5:53 – Intel halts $25B fab investment in Israel
Intel is mothballing a $25 billion semiconductor plant in Kyriat Gat, Israel. Although the company claims its commitment to Israel, there is no visibility on future plans for this project.
Read More: Intel interrupts work on $25B Israel fab, citing need for ‘responsible capital management’
7:15 – FCC Plans to Require BGP Security
The US FCC has announced a notice of proposed rule making that would require companies to create and keep updated a plan to secure Border Gateway Protocol, or BGP, from attack. The Internet routing protocol is vulnerable to being hijacked, as we saw back in 2008 when Pakistan took over all of YouTube’s traffic in an attempt to filter it in their country. The proposed rule would require companies to file quarterly reports about their efforts to use certificate-based measures to keep the routes secure and prevent takeover.
Read More: FCC takes some action against notorious BGP
11:09 – Citrix Follows Broadcom Steps?
In a move that surprised partners and has been compared to Broadcom’s 80/20 approach, Citrix announced that only top-tier Platinum partners will now have access to “Partner Use” and “Demo” licenses. Furthermore, Platinum partners will now get these only “On Request”.
Read More: Citrix Global Channel Programs and Execution
13:20 – Fortinet Ties Up Plans for Lacework
This week Fortinet announced plans to acquire Lacework. The move is seen as a way to bolster their SASE platform with cloud intelligence and security. Lacework’s primary offering is CNAPP, their cloud-native application protection platform. It allows customers to collect data about emerging threats and provide responses based on the Polygraph machine learning engine. Lacework had raised $1.8 billion in funding and was valued at one point over $8 billion before the acquisition. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Read More: Fortinet Expands Cloud Security Portfolio with Lacework Acquisition
17:30 – NVIDIA, Microsoft, and OpenAI Face Potential Investigation
The US Justice Department and FCC have announced an agreement that gives them each a role to play in potential antitrust investigations against the biggest players in the AI market. NVIDIA, Microsoft, and OpenAI were named in the agreement specifically according to insider reports. This follows reports that antitrust investigators have big concerns about AI and how companies developing it get their data to train the models. This agreement is modeled on a similar one from 2019 that eventually saw lawsuits brought against Meta, Amazon, and Google for antitrust violations. Back in January the US FTC had asked many companies to provide investment information as well as partnerships with generative AI companies.
Read More: U.S. Clears Way for Antitrust Inquiries of Nvidia, Microsoft and OpenAI
30:25 – The Weeks Ahead
The Six Five Summit – June 11 – 13
Cloud Field Day 20 – June 12 – 13
Networking Field Day Experience at HPE Discover – June 17 – 19
Networking Field Day 35 – July 10 – 11
Gestalt IT and Tech Field Day are now part of The Futurum Group.
The Gestalt IT Rundown is your look at the IT news of the week. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.
