Google flexes its Arm; Metronome runs the meter
Today: Google's first custom Arm server processor is now available, Metronome's new tool could help SaaS companies switch to usage-based pricing, and the quote of the week.
Today: why a cloud spending revival has yet to arrive, Microsoft refutes a security report it helped shape, and the latest funding rounds in enterprise tech.
Welcome to Runtime! Today: why a cloud spending revival has yet to arrive, Microsoft refutes a security report it helped shape, and the latest funding rounds in enterprise tech.
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While it seems like the worst is over, Microsoft and Google weren't able to offer hope Tuesday that a rough year for enterprise tech spending might be finally starting to rebound. Both companies reported cloud earnings that surpassed the reduced expectations of Wall Street following almost a year of belt-tightening among enterprise tech buyers, but cautioned that growth will still be moderate over the second half of the year.
Revenue from Microsoft Azure grew 27% while Google Cloud revenue grew 28%, beating estimates for the quarter. However, both companies warned that customers are still being cautious with their spending plans, which sent Microsoft's stock lower in after-hours trading.
But Microsoft revealed a key detail about Azure revenue for the first time Tuesday, while stopping short of finally disclosing the revenue recorded by arguably the most important business in the company.
For its part, Google Cloud turned in another profitable quarter after years of losses.
Microsoft executives were peppered with questions regarding when the billions of dollars it has invested in AI over the last year will start to bear fruit.
We'll get a fuller picture of enterprise tech spending over the next several weeks as more earnings reports come in, with AWS scheduled to report numbers next Thursday.
Last week security research company Wiz posted a very detailed description of how Chinese attackers took advantage of a stolen authentication key and a flaw in Azure AD to break into government email accounts, ending the post by thanking Microsoft "for working closely with us on this blog and helping us ensure it is technically accurate." Hours later, Microsoft threw Wiz under the bus.
“Many of the claims made in this blog are speculative and not evidence-based,” a Microsoft spokesperson told The Record after the blog was published. Microsoft's beef seemed to be that Wiz described "hypothetical attack scenarios," according to a follow-up statement it sent to The Record, but that's what security professionals do in order to help clients prepare for actual attack scenarios.
Given that so many Microsoft customers did not have the premium logging tools needed to detect this incursion available to them at the time of the incident, Wiz advised Azure customers to update their Azure SDK and cache to ensure the stolen keys can't be used again. And whether Microsoft likes it or not, Wiz is taking this incident very seriously: "We believe this event will have long lasting implications on our trust of the cloud and the core components that support it, above all, the identity layer which is the basic fabric of everything we do in cloud," it wrote.
OneTrust raised $150 million in a down round that nonetheless values the risk-management SaaS company at $4.5 billion.
Solink landed $60 million in Series C funding to bring its cloud-based video surveillance technology to international customers.
Hightouch raised $38 million at a $615 million valuation to build out its customer-data platform technology for business users interested in no-code tools.
AMD released patches for a new vulnerability affecting its Epyc data-center processors that appears similar to the Meltdown vulnerabilities that shook the chip industry in 2018.
The European Union appears ready to take a closer look at the $20 billion Adobe-Figma acquisition deal, following an earlier decision by U.K. regulatory authorities to scrutinize the competitive aspects of the deal.
Nvidia's GTX Cloud, which promises to simplify the experience of using its powerful GPUs for a hefty sum, is now generally available on Oracle's cloud infrastructure.
Coreweave will invest $1.6 billion in a new data center in Texas, adding a fourth U.S. region to its AI cloud.
French defense contractor Thales acquired cybersecurity company Imperva from Thoma Bravo for $3.6 billion, four years after Thoma Bravo bought it for $2.1 billion.
Ars Technica took a deep look at the IBM mainframe, a surprisingly sticky holdover from the 1950s in the modern enterprise.
Thanks for reading — see you Thursday!