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Google Cloud has a longstanding commitment to partnering with the U.S. government, helping agencies modernize technology systems, and shaping new frontiers in service delivery and mission success. Since establishing Google Public Sector last year, we've witnessed an ever-growing demand for cloud services as agencies leverage AI for critical work including improving cancer detection, transforming city services, and optimizing agency operations. Unlike some cloud vendors, Google has long believed that "GovClouds," isolated and often less-reliable versions of commercial clouds, can hinder the public sector's ability to innovate and scale. President Biden's Executive Order on AI further emphasizes the need for safe, responsible, and secure AI, challenging the viability of traditional GovClouds. To thrive in this AI-driven era, our public sector customers need a modern cloud partner offering unmatched scale, features, and security that GovClouds cannot deliver. Embracing innovation with confidenceThe Office of Management and Budget's recent FedRAMP draft memorandum, which endorses a modern cloud approach based on logical and software-based separation instead of physical separation, is a strong step in the right direction. Google Cloud has pioneered this approach, and believes it empowers customers to scale and innovate securely. In today's dynamic work environment, we’ve been consistent in our message: Building a "digital fortress" isn’t enough. So-called “GovClouds” lack the security, compute power and capabilities that the public sector requires to challenge modern cyberthreats and to harness AI. Public-sector entities need to move beyond the limitations of encasing interactions within a protected perimeter, which is why we are committed to certifying our entire U.S. cloud infrastructure at Impact Level 5. With Google Cloud’s initiatives like Assured Workloads and continuous compliance achievements, we've embedded security into the core of our platform. This is not an afterthought, but a foundational element. We believe that government institutions shouldn't be forced to choose between innovation and security. Assured Workloads offer government agencies access to the full power of cloud while maintaining the highest standards of security and compliance. Zero Trust: A secure foundationGoogle Cloud is built on the bedrock of Zero Trust principles, ensuring the security of the platform, the data, and the algorithms themselves. Every access attempt undergoes rigorous verification, access is granted based on least privilege, breaches are contained through microsegmentation, and advanced analytics provide real-time threat detection. With the continued rise in cyber threats, Google Cloud is committed to enhancing security resilience with AI innovation and threat intelligence. Our acquisition of Mandiant, a leader in dynamic cyber defense, threat intelligence, and incident response services, combined with our Chronicle Security Operations suite, VirusTotal, and general approaches like the use of Autonomic Security Operations, further strengthens our ability to help organizations improve their threat, incident, and exposure management. This robust foundation empowers government agencies to confidently experiment and apply advanced technologies, including AI, knowing their data and operations are safeguarded by a platform built on Zero Trust principles. As the public sector embraces AI to power its work and service delivery, Google Public Sector stands ready to support these transformations. With our innovative approach and unwavering commitment to security and AI, we are confident in our ability to help you achieve your mission goals and create a better future for everyone. Let's build a new era of government transformation, powered by the cloud.

You can now resolve the private Kubernetes API server endpoint of your Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) cluster in AWS GovCloud (US) regions. This allows you to easily connect to an EKS cluster that is only accessible within a VPC, including when using AWS services such as AWS Direct Connect and VPC peering. View the full article

Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) for SQL Server now supports the Microsoft Business Intelligence suite on SQL Server 2016, 2017, and 2019 in the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions. You can now run SQL Server Integration, Analysis, and Reporting Services on DB instances using the latest major versions. View the full article

Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) now supports AWS Graviton2-based database (DB) instances in the regions of AWS GovCloud (US), Asia Pacific (Seoul), and Europe (Stockholm). Depending on DB engine, version, and workload, Graviton2 instances provide up to 35% performance improvement and up to 52% price/performance improvement over comparable current generation x86-based instances for Amazon RDS for MySQL, MariaDB, and PostgreSQL. View the full article

Following the announcement of updates to the PostgreSQL database, we have updated Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL to support PostgreSQL minor versions 13.2, 12.6, 11.11, 10.16, 9.6.21, and 9.5.25. This release closes security vulnerabilities in PostgreSQL and contains bug fixes and improvements done by the PostgreSQL community. This also includes the final release of PostgreSQL 9.5. View the full article

AWS announces the availability of Amazon CloudWatch Container Insights, a fully managed, integrated, and pay-as-you-go container monitoring and analytics service for CloudWatch in AWS GovCloud (US). CloudWatch Container Insights enables you to explore, analyze, and visualize your container metrics, Prometheus metrics, application logs, and performance events through automated dashboards in the CloudWatch console. These dashboards summarize the performance and availability of clusters, nodes or EC2 instances, services, tasks, pods, and containers running on Amazon Elastic Containers (ECS), Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), AWS Fargate, and Kubernetes. View the full article

Amazon Polly is a service that turns text into lifelike speech. Today, we are excited to announce the general availability of all Neural Text-to-Speech (NTTS) voices in AWS GovCloud (US-West) Region. You can now synthesize over 15 NTTS voices, including the Newscaster and Conversational speaking styles. In addition, you can continue to synthesize the over 60 standard voices available in 29 languages in the Amazon Polly portfolio. View the full article

AWS IoT Greengrass is now available in the AWS GovCloud (US-East) Region. AWS IoT Greengrass seamlessly extends AWS to edge devices so they can act locally on the data they generate, while still using the cloud for management, analytics, and durable storage. With AWS IoT Greengrass, connected devices can run AWS Lambda functions, Docker containers, or both, execute predictions based on machine learning models, keep device data in sync, and communicate with other devices securely – even when not connected to the Internet. View the full article

Amazon Aurora now supports T3.large and medium instances as well as R5 class instances in AWS GovCloud (US) Regions. Using T3.large instances with Amazon Aurora is a cost-effective option for smaller workloads such as test, development, and QA, while still giving you the option to use larger class instances for production deployments. View the full article

You can now use AWS Lake Formation in the AWS GovCloud (US-West) Region. View the full article

Amazon Aurora with PostgreSQL compatibility now supports importing data stored in Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) buckets to PostgreSQL tables in AWS GovCloud (US) Regions. A new extension, aws_s3, has been added to perform the import operation. You can import any data format that is supported by the PostgreSQL COPY command, using the ARN role association method or using Amazon S3 credentials. View the full article

Amazon Aurora with PostgreSQL compatibility now supports PostgreSQL minor versions 10.12 and 9.6.17 in AWS GovCloud (US) Regions. These releases contains bug fixes and improvements from the PostgreSQL community, as well as bug fixes and improvements specific to Amazon Aurora for PostgreSQL. View the full article

The new console for Amazon SQS is now available in the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions. The SQS console now simplifies development and production workflows by creating a new user experience. View the full article

Amazon EventBridge is now available in AWS GovCloud (US) Regions. Amazon EventBridge is a serverless event bus that makes it easy to connect applications using data from a variety of data sources. Amazon EventBridge enables you to build event-driven architectures that are loosely coupled and distributed. View the full article

Amazon QuickSight is now available in the AWS GovCloud (US-West) Region. AWS GovCloud (US) Regions are isolated AWS Regions designed to host sensitive data and regulated workloads in the cloud, assisting customers who have United States federal, state, or local government compliance requirements. View the full article

You can now create Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL read replicas for Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL instances in AWS GovCloud (US) Regions. This helps minimize downtime when migrating live workloads from Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL to Amazon Aurora for PostgreSQL, keeping instances in sync until you're ready to move your applications and users to Amazon Aurora for PostgreSQL. View the full article

You can now create Amazon Aurora database clusters with up to 128TB of storage in AWS GovCloud (US) Regions. The new storage limit is available for both the MySQL- and PostgreSQL-compatible editions of Amazon Aurora. Previously, Aurora database instances supported 64TB of storage. View the full article