Technology News: Latest Updates from 2026-04-24

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This report summarizes the technology news from 2026-04-24 and is based exclusively on the original texts of the sources.

Amazon Athena Simplifies Federated Queries

According to aws.amazon.com, Amazon Athena now offers managed connectors for 12 data sources. These include Amazon DynamoDB, PostgreSQL, MySQL and Snowflake. The managed connectors are federated connectors of the AWS Glue Data Catalog that Athena creates and manages on behalf of users – without the need to provision or maintain separate connector resources in the AWS account.

Amazon Athena allows interactive querying of relational, non-relational, and custom data sources without having to move or duplicate data. To get started, users create a connection for the desired data source in Athena. The service automatically sets up the connector resources and registers the data source as a federated catalog in the AWS Glue Data Catalog. The data can then be queried alongside Amazon S3 data. Additionally, fine-grained access controls can be configured through AWS Lake Formation.

Federated queries with managed connectors are available in all AWS Regions where Athena is offered – with the exception of the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions and the China Regions. Further information can be found in the Athena User Guide under “Use Amazon Athena Federated Query”. The announcement was published on April 23, 2026.

Fitbit Expands Personal Health Coach

According to blog.google, the Fitbit personal health coach is being expanded with new features in Public Preview through the latest app update and in the coming weeks.

New features include personalized weekly fitness plans (Premium users only) with individual weekly goals and tailored workouts based on personal goals. This update was developed based on user feedback in the Public Preview. It will also be possible to customize plans, goals, and workouts.

The redesigned Sleep Score is already rolling out and is intended to help users better understand their sleep. Those who want to stay informed can check the dedicated community for updates.

Cisco IT: 25% Fewer Incidents Despite Faster Deployments

According to blogs.cisco.com, Cisco IT reduced the number of major incidents by 25% within one year, even as new AI systems and cloud services were rolled out at a faster pace. The company describes an innovation paradox: each new technology brought isolated dashboards, lack of overall visibility, and change-related instability.

As a counterstrategy, Cisco IT relies on a multi-layered observability architecture. Splunk serves as the central platform for logs, metrics, and events across the global infrastructure, while Cisco ThousandEyes monitors network paths and application performance from the end-user perspective. In addition, the service operations team employs AI-powered automation for tasks such as predicting assignment groups, suggesting solutions from a knowledge base, and automatically resolving routine issues.

Beyond technology, Cisco IT emphasizes the importance of the human factor: established processes and proven practices in change management are essential for monitoring software and automation solutions to achieve their full impact. The goal is to make the IT environment so transparent that faster innovation becomes possible with lower risk.

VMware Salt: Continuous Compliance for VCF

VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) receives significant enhancements in automated security and configuration management through VMware Salt. As part of the add-on service VMware Advanced Cyber Compliance (ACC), VMware Salt addresses a key challenge: manual, periodically performed compliance checks are transformed into continuous, automated governance, significantly reducing the mean time to recovery (MTTR) for security issues.

Broadcom continuously contributes to the open-source Salt Project, on which the enterprise version within ACC is built. The active developer community ensures that the project remains robust, secure, and compatible with current operating systems. Interested parties can engage through the Discord community, review the GitHub repository, or participate in the VMware Salt Working Groups, which make technical decisions and define project goals together with the core team.

At its core, VMware Salt provides two key capabilities: First, workloads are continuously checked against strict standards such as CIS benchmarks or internal audit requirements, ensuring that the infrastructure remains audit-ready at all times with minimal manual effort. Second, VMware ACC detects configuration deviations – such as opened ports or changed settings – and automatically restores the defined security state. Thanks to a declarative approach, VMware Salt manages state across thousands of nodes without requiring manual intervention.

A deeper look into practice is provided by an episode of the Virtually Speaking Podcast, in which hosts Pete Flecha and John Nicholson discuss the evolution of automation with VMware Salt and its strategic role within VCF together with Vincent Riccio. Notifications about new compliance packages and security patches can be enabled in the Broadcom support portal under the notification settings for “VMware Salt”.

Databricks and OpenAI Collaborate on GPT-5.5

According to databricks.com, Databricks has announced a partnership with OpenAI for GPT-5.5, OpenAI’s most powerful frontier model. According to the company, GPT-5.5 is designed for agent-based enterprise tasks, complex document analysis, and long-running coding agents. The model now also powers Codex, OpenAI’s coding agent, and offers improved reasoning and execution capabilities for developer workflows.

GPT-5.5 is said to better understand what users want to achieve and, according to Databricks, can independently plan tasks, use tools, verify results, and autonomously complete multi-part assignments – from research and data analysis to creating documents and spreadsheets. This makes the model suitable not only for software development but also for everyday office work on the computer.

Databricks tested GPT-5.5 on its in-house OfficeQA benchmark, which is based on 89,000 pages of U.S. Treasury Bulletins and measures document-heavy, multi-step analytical tasks. The company states that GPT-5.5 achieved new best scores in both test scenarios. GPT-5.5 is expected to be available on the Databricks platform shortly, providing secure, scalable AI capabilities for enterprise data.

Conclusion

Today’s technology news highlights significant advances in cloud infrastructure, AI-powered automation, and health technology. Amazon Athena simplifies federated queries with managed connectors for 12 data sources, Cisco IT reduces incidents by 25% through a multi-layered observability architecture, and Databricks collaborates with OpenAI on the new frontier model GPT-5.5 for agent-based enterprise tasks.

Frequently Asked Questions

What data sources does Amazon Athena support with the new managed connectors?

Amazon Athena now offers managed connectors for 12 data sources, including Amazon DynamoDB, PostgreSQL, MySQL and Snowflake. These are automatically set up and managed as federated connectors of the AWS Glue Data Catalog.

What new features does the Fitbit health coach receive?

New features include personalized weekly fitness plans with individual weekly goals and tailored workouts (Premium users only), an Ask Coach chat function for more natural communication, and a redesigned Sleep Score for greater transparency in sleep assessment.

What is the new GPT-5.5 model from the Databricks-OpenAI collaboration designed for?

GPT-5.5 is designed for agent-based enterprise tasks, complex document analysis, and long-running coding agents. It can independently plan tasks, use tools, verify results, and autonomously complete multi-part assignments. On the OfficeQA Pro benchmark, it achieved an improvement of approximately 13% over GPT-5.4.

📚 Sources

• 🔗 aws.amazon.com: Amazon Athena simplifies federated queries with managed connectors…
• 🔗 blog.google: Fitbit’s personal health coach is now even more personalized….
• 🔗 blogs.cisco.com: The Innovation Paradox: How We Reduced Incidents by 25% While Deployin…
• 🔗 blogs.vmware.com: How VMware Salt Automates Compliance Across Private Cloud…
• 🔗 databricks.com: Databricks partners with OpenAI on GPT-5.5…