New for This week

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• AWS re:Invent Las Vegas show summary
• CES 2026 Show guide has been updated.
• 2026 is going to get expensive! DRAM prices triple. Read paper on what to do!
• Microsoft EoL section published to see what's EoL'ng up to December 2026
• 3 New vendors ITGlue, verint & thinkcell added to FirstMarketplace
• O365 and M365 Pricing update - the official Microsoft announcement!
• Dynamics Licensing guide updated for December.
• Mimecast feature misused! Massive phishing attack misuses legitimate feature.
• Dummy's guide to being safer online. Maybe share with your loved ones?
• OPenAI launches GPT 5.2. It is more expensive, but better
• Cloud First to Cloud Smart - Time to get smarter!
• Leaked Panther Lake Benchmarks Impress - You may not need a GPU!

DRAM prices have already tripled, Dell & Lenovo announced price increases
Read this paper on what to do as 32Gig is the new minimum!


ITGlue, verint and thinkcell have been added for this week.
There is now a LinkedIn Page for you to follow as well.

Get all the releases for the next 4 weeks in South Africa.
AVATAR: Fire and Ash for 19 December

In January: 
28 years Later: The Bone Temple

Summary of what to know up to December 2026.
Detailed document available for download

Microsoft News This Week

O365 and M365 pricing update

Following on the price increase announcement in last weeks TOP STORIES #144, Microsoft has published a detailed update on the increases which expands on what is included in Microsoft 365 suites for 2026.
Office 365 E3 and Microsoft 365 E3 will now include Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Plan 1, and Microsoft 365 E3 and E5 gain added Intune endpoint management capabilities
Microsoft 365 Business plans also pick up an extra 50 GB of email storage.

Please contact your First Technology account manager to connect you with our licensing experts to help assess the licensing implications AND our hardware specialists to start planning for what is now going to be a very expensive 2026 when you also factor in the price increases related to the hardware that been explained in detail in the paper above: "DRAM price Increase".

Dynamics Licensing guide updated for December

Microsoft has increased the default Dataverse storage entitlements across Dynamics 365 apps, and for the ERP stack, Dataverse capacity plus the Dynamics 365 finance and operations store entitlement are now treated as one shared, tenant-level pool, with updated tables reflecting the new consolidated totals.

Please contact your First Technology account manager to connect you with our Dynamics specialists in the CRMTeam to assist in understanding the implications for your Dymanics implementation.

Security

Phishing attack through a legitimate mimecast feature

Mimecast Secure Link is being used as a smokescreen for mass phishing.

Attackers have been pushing large volumes of SharePoint and e-sign style phishing emails by hiding the real destination behind Mimecast’s legitimate URL rewriting feature. so the link looks like it belongs to a trusted Mimecast Protect domain, not the attacker’s site. Over 40,000 phishing emails sent in roughly two weeks, aimed at 6,000+ organisations. Lures built to look routine, SharePoint document notifications and DocuSign style signing prompts, complete with familiar branding and “review document” style buttons.
Heavier targeting is reported in consulting, technology, and real estate..... with spillover into healthcare, finance, manufacturing, and government.


Please contact your First Technology Group account manager to connect you with our training partners to update your staff on how to look out for these attacks that leverage legitimate features to reach the users allowing them to be tricked.

Dummy's Guide to online safety

Endgadget has published a nice guide on what to look out for when it comes to online safety. I really recommend you review it, and it may be a very good idea to share with your family. Even though some of these points may appear to be really simple, sometimes it is a good idea to share even the obvious with everybody in your circle as a reminder to be careful.

Contact your First Technology Group account manager to connect you with our specialist partners, who are experts in helping you train your users to stay abreast of the latest attack methodologies. This guide does NOT replace professional training!

Cloud & AI

OpenAI launches GPT 5.2

OPenAI has released GPT 5.2 in response to recent advances from Google and Anthropic. There are improvements across the board, which you will also see rolled out in Copilot. GPT 5.2 also heralds the era of autonomous agents capable of completing complex tasks.

Please contact your First Technology account manager to connect you with our AI experts to see how these new upgraded Agents and models in 5.2 can make a difference in your business.

Shifting from Cloud First to Cloud Smart

Organisations are moving away from blanket “cloud-first” mandates and toward “cloud-smart” decisions that pick the best platform per workload, based on value, cost, performance, and risk.
Cloud spend waste is real..... one cited study estimates 21% of enterprise cloud infrastructure spend is wasted, about $44.5bn in 2025

Another CIO.com analysis references a VMware report where around one in three IT leaders say cloud waste exceeds 50% 

Better on-prem tech, longer refresh cycles, and “surprise” costs like migration and data egress are pushing firms toward hybrid-by-design rather than cloud-by-default.


“AI without cloud-smart thinking becomes an invoice generator”
Please contact your First Technology to connect you with our specialists who can help turn AI into a controlled programme with clear workload placement, governance, and cost discipline, not just experimentation 

Your next Intel Laptop may not need a GPU