Field notes from the edge.
What our engineers learned this week. Hands-on technical deep-dives, postmortems, and strategy frameworks.
AIFrom commit to cloud: Powering what’s next for PostgreSQL
Microsoft is significantly investing in PostgreSQL through upstream contributions (345 commits to the latest release), managed services on Azure, and developer tooling. The company supports multiple deployment models—Azure Database for PostgreSQL for traditional workloads and Azure HorizonDB for cloud-native scale-out scenarios—while contributing core improvements to the open-source project that b
AIAWS Weekly Roundup: Amazon Bedrock AgentCore payments, Agent Toolkit for AWS, and more (May 11, 2026)
AWS has introduced Amazon Bedrock AgentCore payments in preview, enabling AI agents to autonomously pay for APIs, MCP servers, and web content through integrated Coinbase and Stripe wallets with session-level spending controls. Additional launches include the Agent Toolkit for AWS, a production-ready suite for building AI coding agents, AWS MCP Server reaching general availability, and Amazon Work
AIAmazon Redshift introduces AWS Graviton-based RG instances with an integrated data lake query engine
Amazon Redshift has launched RG instances powered by AWS Graviton processors, delivering up to 2.2x faster data warehouse performance than RA3 instances at 30% lower cost per vCPU. The new instances feature an integrated data lake query engine that eliminates the need for Redshift Spectrum, removing $5/TB scanning fees while providing up to 2.4x faster query performance on Apache Iceberg and 1.5x
AIScaling cloud and AI: Microsoft Azure’s commitment to Europe’s digital future
Microsoft is significantly expanding its Azure datacenter infrastructure across Europe to meet surging demand for cloud and AI services, with new regions launched in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Greece, and Finland. The expansion focuses on providing sovereign cloud solutions that offer transparency, operational control, and compliance with local regulations while maintaining access to advanced AI c
AIEnforcing trust and transparency: Open-sourcing the Azure Integrated HSM
Microsoft is open-sourcing its Azure Integrated HSM, a FIPS 140-3 Level 3 certified hardware security module built into every new Azure server, to enhance transparency and trust in cloud cryptographic operations. The firmware, driver, and software stack will be released through the Open Compute Project, enabling independent validation by customers, partners, and regulators. This server-local appro
AIAzure IaaS: Defense in depth built on secure-by-design principles
Microsoft Azure IaaS implements a comprehensive security architecture combining defense-in-depth layering with Secure Future Initiative (SFI) principles across compute, networking, and storage infrastructure. Security is engineered from hardware roots of trust through virtualization boundaries, with protections enabled by default including network isolation, encryption, and DDoS mitigation. The pl
AIModernize your workflows: Amazon WorkSpaces now gives AI agents their own desktop (preview)
Amazon WorkSpaces now enables AI agents to securely operate desktop and legacy applications through managed virtual desktops in public preview, eliminating the need for API development or application modernization. The service supports industry-standard Model Context Protocol (MCP) and integrates with popular agent frameworks like LangChain and CrewAI, while maintaining enterprise security control
AIThe AWS MCP Server is now generally available
AWS has launched the AWS MCP Server, a managed Model Context Protocol server that provides AI agents and coding assistants with secure, authenticated access to AWS services through IAM credentials. The service addresses common issues with AI agents working on AWS, including outdated training data and overly permissive IAM policies, by offering real-time documentation access and a compact set of to