On The Cloud Pod this week, Peter is spending the next 12 hours in a rejuvenation chamber like a regular villain straight out of a James Bond film.

A big thanks to this week’s sponsors:

Foghorn Consulting, which provides full-stack cloud solutions with a focus on strategy, planning and execution for enterprises seeking to take advantage of the transformative capabilities of AWS, Google Cloud and Azure.

This week’s highlights

Amazon is on a mission to replace humans so we can go on holiday permanently.
Google is a bit early with the April Fools’ joke.
Azure is, much to our surprise, ahead of everyone else for once.

Amazon Web Services: Battle Bots

Amazon announces Alexa Conversations is now generally available for voice app development. We’re still a bit disappointed in her voice — it would be nice to hear something a bit more natural.
Amazon launches computer vision service to detect defects in manufactured products. Soon we’ll just be sitting around eating bon bons — we can’t wait!
AWS Asia Pacific (Osaka) region now open to all, with three availability zones and more services. We think this is a reaction to the huge cloud growth in Japan.
AWS DeepRacer League’s 2021 season launches with new Open and Pro divisions. Apparently it’s gone virtual and is being dominated by experts.

Google Cloud Platform: A Bit Jealous

‍✈️ Google introduces GKE Autopilot, a revolutionary mode of operations for managed Kubernetes. Autopilot makes it sound like an Oracle product.
Google announces the Risk Protection Program to enhance trust in cloud ecosystems. Google wants you to pay insurance in case its cloud goes down…
Google extends BigQuery BI engine for faster insights across popular BI tools. Pretty cool!
New enhancements for Google Cloud Marketplace Private Catalog including Terraform support. This is pretty good for internal teams managing private catalogs.

Azure: Killing It

Microsoft has announced a trio of new industry clouds. We think other providers will follow very soon.
Microsoft to establish the first datacenter region in Indonesia as part of Berdayakan Ekonomi Digital Indonesia initiative. Justin apologizes for butchering the name of that initiative.
Azure is killing off a bunch of its products. No, the dates aren’t wrong — 2024 is a leap year:

Azure Ignite: Don’t Get Excited

Innovate across hybrid and multi cloud with new Azure Arc capabilities. Bit of an anti-climax.
Azure releases several new capabilities for Azure Data and AI. A mixed bag of capabilities.
Introducing Azure Percept, an easy-to-use platform for creating responsible edge AI solutions. But it still requires a human… so manage your expectations.
Satya Nadella shares the five attributes that will drive the next generation of cloud innovation. Do not watch it! Jonathan has a peg on his nose so he doesn’t have to smell the bullshit.
Introducing Microsoft Mesh, a new mixed-reality platform powered by Azure. Actually kind of cool.

TCP Lightning Round

⚡Saved from watching Satya Nadella’s keynote meant Jonathan hadn’t been bored to death and takes this week’s point, leaving scores at Justin (3), Ryan (1), Jonathan (4).

Other headlines mentioned:

Things Coming Up

107: The Cloud Meshes with Microsoft