Welcome to episode 329 of The Cloud Pod, where the forecast is always cloudy (and if you’re in California, rainy too!) Justin and Matt have taken a break from Ark building activities to bring you this week’s episode, packed with all the latest in cloud and AI news, including undersea cables (our favorite!) FinOps, Ignite predictions, and so much more! Grab your umbrellas and let’s get started! 

Titles we almost went with this week

• Fastnet and Furious: AWS Lays 320 Terabits of Cable Across the Atlantic


• No More kubectl apply –pray: AWS Backup Takes the Stress Out of EKS Recovery


• AWS Gets Swift with Lambda: No Taylor Version Required


• Breaking Up Is Hard to Do: Microsoft Splits Teams from Office


• FinOps and Behold: Google Automates Your Cloud Budget Nightmares


• AMD Turin Around GCP’s Price-Performance with N4D VMs


• Azure Gets Territorial: Your Data Stays Put Whether It Likes It or Not


• AWS Finally Answers “Is It Available in My Region?” Before You Build It 


• Getting to the Bare Metal of Things: Google’s Axion Goes Commando


• Azure Ultra Disk Gets Ultra Serious About Latency


• Container Size Matters: Azure Expands ACI to 240 GB Memory 


• Google Containerises Chaos: Agent Sandbox Keeps Your AI from Going Rogue


• AWS Prints Money While Amazon Prints Pink Slips: Q3 Earnings Beat

Follow Up 

02:08 Microsoft sidesteps hefty EU fine with Teams unbundling deal

• Microsoft avoids a potentially substantial EU antitrust fine by agreeing to unbundle Teams from the Office 365 and Microsoft 365 suites for a period of seven years. 


• The settlement follows a 2023 complaint from Salesforce-owned Slack alleging anticompetitive bundling practices that harmed rival collaboration tools.


• The commitments require Microsoft to offer Office and Microsoft 365 suites without Teams at reduced prices, with a 50 percent larger price difference between bundled and unbundled versions. 


• Customers with long-term licenses can switch to Teams-free suites, addressing concerns about forced adoption of the collaboration platform.


• Microsoft must provide interoperability between competing collaboration tools and its products, plus enable data portability from Teams to rival services. 


• These technical requirements aim to level the playing field for competitors like Slack and Zoom in the European enterprise collaboration market.


• The settlement applies specifically to the European Union market and stems from Microsoft’s dominant position in productivity software. 


• Organizations using Microsoft 365 in the EU will now have a genuine choice in selecting collaboration tools without being locked into Teams through bundling.


• This decision sets a precedent for how cloud software vendors can package integrated services, particularly when holding dominant market positions. 


• The seven-year commitment period and mandatory interoperability requirements could influence how Microsoft and competitors structure product offerings globally.

General News 

08:30 It’s Earnings Time! (Warning: turn down your volume) 

Amazon’s stock soars on earnings, revenue beat, spending guidance

• Yes, we know there’s a little delay in our reporting here, but it’s still important! (To Justin, anyway.) 


• AWS grew revenue 20% year-over-year to $33 billion in Q3, generating $11.4 billion in operating income, which represents two-thirds of Amazon’s total operating profit. 


• While this growth trails Google Cloud’s 34% and Azure’s 40%, AWS maintains its position as the leading cloud infrastructure provider.


• Amazon increased its 2025 capital expenditure forecast to $125 billion, up from $118 billion, with CFO Brian Olsavsky indicating further increases expected in 2026. 


• This spending exceeds Google, Meta, and Microsoft’s capex guidance and signals Amazon’s commitment to AI infrastructure despite concerns about missing out on high-profile AI cloud deals.


• Amazon’s Q4 revenue guidance of $206-213 billion (midpoint $209.5 billion) exceeded analyst expectations of $208 billion, driven by strong performance in both AWS and the digital advertising business, which grew 24% to $17.7 billion. 


• The company’s overall revenue reached $180.17 billion, beating estimates of $177.8 billion.


• The company announced 14,000 corporate layoffs this week, which CEO Andy Jassy attributed to organizational culture and reducing bureaucratic layers rather than financial pressures or AI automation. 


• Amazon’s total workforce stands at 1.58 million employees, representing a 2% year-over-year increase despite the cuts.

06:14 Justin – “There’s a lot of investors starting to question some of the dollars being spent on (AI). It’s feeling very .com boom-y. Let’s not do that again.”

06:46 Alphabet stock jumps 4% after strong earnings results, boost in AI spend

• Alphabet increased AI infrastructure spending guidance to $91-93 billion for the year, up from $85 billion previously, driven by strong Google Cloud demand. 


• CEO Sundar Pichai reported a $155 billion backlog for Google Cloud at quarter’s end, with CFO signaling significant capex increases expected in 2026.


• Google Cloud contributed to Alphabet’s first-ever $100 billion revenue quarter, with total Q3 revenue reaching $102.35 billion and beating analyst expectations by $2.5 billion. 


• The company’s earnings of $3.10 per share significantly exceeded the $2.33 analyst consensus.


• Google Search revenue grew 15% year-over-year to $56.56 billion, indicating that AI integration in search is proving to be an opportunity rather than a threat to the core business. 


• Analysts noted this addresses previous concerns about AI disrupting Google’s search dominance.


• Wall Street analysts raised price targets substantially following the results, with <a href="https://ww