The current economic climate is leading companies, including tech giants, to prioritize cost-cutting measures, particularly when it comes to cloud expenses. The cloud skills gap remains a significant challenge for many organizations, but automation solutions can help alleviate this issue by streamlining manual configuration and reducing costs. Some notable companies, such as OpenX and Netflix, are leveraging automation to optimize their cloud operations, while others, like DocuSign and Patreon, are facing challenges due to the economic downturn. Meanwhile, cloud providers like Microsoft Azure have introduced new features, such as virtual machines running on Ampere Arm-based processors, to improve efficiency and scalability. Additionally, there is a growing trend of hiding phishing attacks behind AWS resources, highlighting the need for improved security measures, including the development of a bill to assess and reduce risk in systems that rely on open-source software.