Cloud Wars Live with Bob Evans

The Big Themes: Some background on SAP Fioneer: Falk and Mitch explain how the partnership came to be and offer details about how the two organizations work together while maintaining independence. What makes SAP Fioneer unique in the market: by building the backbone for "the end-to-end business process," SAP Fioneer is more than a point solution or even a vendor, it sees itself as a partner to cu...

The Big Themes: Introducing Task Force Tribute (TFT): Inspired by a group of military veterans in Chicago who walked 13 miles to honor 13 service members who died during the withdrawal from Afghanistan, TFT comprises a small group of people who are traveling 7,054 miles together, to all corners of the country, one mile for every service member lost during the Global War on Terror. Creating a virtu...

The Big Themes: Project success depends on preparation: About half of enterprise software and digital transformation initiatives fail, and Raven Intelligence data points to the fact that many companies simply don't have their ducks in a row before getting started. Inside the Readiness Tool: Bonnie explains that the tool is both free and easy to use. Anyone on the project team can complete it by an...

The Big Themes: The buyer-seller relationship has changed: Customers are claiming more power than ever before, and Jonathan says that companies need to earn the title of "strategic partner," not just throw it around. Telco is transforming around 5G: While recent years have left many telcos in turmoil, the advent of 5G technology is getting the industry its "mojo" back, according to Jonathan. Banks...

The Big Themes: The embrace of vertical approaches is bigger than go-to-market: companies are looking to software not just to address functional problems, but to solve business challenges and transform business models Massive internal reorganizations are coming: in addition to new and surprising partnerships like Microsoft and Oracle on multi-cloud, Tony expects both customer and vendors to deeply...

The Big Themes: What CXOs need to know about hybrid cloud: Wayne walks us through a number different, equally valid hybrid cloud models and explains key security implications when moving to hybrid cloud Look out for "fake cloud" models: CXOs need to be on guard against terms like "virtualization" and "hyper-converged," tactics that might make sense for their company but which are definitely not cl...

The Big Themes: Great software alone isn't enough: For success in a digital transformation project, choosing the right partner to help implement software is just as important as choosing the right software itself. Partner-project fit: The most important factor to consider in picking an implementation partner is project fit, and making sure that the team members assigned to work with you are well v...

The Big Themes: Innovation inspired by disruption: From early 2020 today, the world looks completely different. Boards of directors and other leaders are responding by interrogating the way they've always done things and looking for new, more agile systems. RISE gives customers a team behind them: One of the biggest things SAP has heard is that customers love that the RISE program makes clear what...

The Big Themes: Retail supply chains and OODA loops: Fighter pilots are trained to Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act when engaged in fast-moving environments. Retail business leaders should adopt the OODA approach for supply chain planning. Sustainability is key to supply & demand chains: We should not be looking at sustainability in a vacuum, but rather as integral to the efficient production of g...

The Big Themes: Differentiate in the market: Reflect on business operations. Make decisive moves and decisions, and act in an agile fashion for the future. Supply chain transparency is essential to stay ahead of the curve: Integrated processes from the quotation down to cash management to facilitate those processes are crucial. Companies need to be able to explain the delay and provide alternative...

The Big Themes: The Yext promise: Josh describes the platform as a place for "ingesting data, structuring it, and then delivering it as in the form of answers everywhere that it's needed." Keeping public data in sync: Yext customers want to help their consumers easily find information like hours of operation, product availability, and more, wherever they're searching. Yext helps structure that dat...

The Big Themes: The stats, yet with so little scrutiny: Machine, also referred to as bot-related ad revenue, was $81 billion in 2022 with projections to increase to 100 billion in 2023. Machine or bot accounts inflate financials: If Twitter or Facebook decided to take down all of the fake accounts, they would have to restate their earnings. Dealing with a completely different mindset: Companies an...

The Big Themes: Three tips for the precarious present: As the coronavirus continues to evolve and spread, Wayne says that business leaders need to be realistic about people returning to work (or not) and think creatively about how best to move forward. The CXO Lounge at Cloud Wars Expo: Wayne previews this unique feature of next month's conference, a dedicated space for conversations, debates, and...

The Big Themes: Balancing conflicting responsibilities: Christian's first story takes place during an operation by the Marine Corps when he was a young platoon commander. Reflecting and preparing for big life changes: The second lesson Christian learned came to him after he left active duty, and was struggling with the loss of community and camaraderie. Staying vulnerable and open to input: Lastly...

The Big Themes: ERP as a Service: In the past, business transformations and ERP transformations took years to complete. Today, customers need to get up and running on new platforms much more quickly—so Infosys developed an ERP as a Service offering, a bundle that simplifies and accelerates the process. Industry cloud solutions: Part of how Infosys guides clients through business transformation is...

The Big Themes: The trap of vanity metrics: certain statistics you hear all the time, like "we have 96% customer satisfaction," are not telling the full story. These metrics are easy to come by and make us feel good, but in the end they do not really help us. Metrics that actually matter: in a digital transformation, the stats that you need are those that tie back to business objectives. This mean...

The Big Themes: Massive changes to cloud marketplaces: Amazon and Google Cloud are transforming the ways that companies buy software through their cloud MPs, and DoiT is helping customers respond to those changes Growth requires agility: the standard locked-in discounts of the past aren't working for software companies anymore, so DoiT is taking on the lock-ins with cloud partners and delivering f...

The Big Themes: The "cradle to grave" approach: Pat and Pam worked together for many years to develop creative, advanced programs for talent acquisition and retention. One of their initiatives was to increase the collaboration between talent acquisition and talent management teams. Planning a culture vs. letting one happen: Companies should be in the driver's seat when it comes to HR and company c...

The Big Themes: Netflix's disruptive start: Tony had an "inside baseball view" of the early disruptions Netflix made to the entertainment industry in the early 2000s, and he reminds us of just how innovative the company was A myopic focus on customers matters more than ever: when companies start to "over manage the equity markets" and fail to put the customer at the center of everything they do, t...

Episode 20 The Big Themes: Change management and change agility are often overlooked: Raven Intelligence research shows that customers' most frequent regret after completing digital transformation projects is that they didn't dedicate enough time and resources to change management processes. The Six Es of Operationalizing Change: From a presentation by Josh Bersin, these six steps are absolutely...

The Big Themes: How silos impede product innovation: Ray describes "a chasm" that has traditionally existed between product teams and their counterparts working in sales and marketing. Given that every person in those departments has a hand in bringing a product to market, closing that gap is necessary to make better products, and make them faster. Industry-specific solutions are the future: Custo...

The Big Themes: How Ulta grew 40% amid Covid-19 disruptions: Omar talks about the company's innovation department and the remarkable 4-week turnaround it achieved for introducing curbside pickup at all physical locations. Merging the physical and digital: Ulta aims to dazzle customers with a seamless experience, no matter where they're shopping. Omar describes what that would look like from the cu...

The Big Themes: An update on the sale of Thomas to Xometry: Tony describes how the two companies are fitting together and creating a new kind of on-demand manufacturing marketplace. What's the true ROI of technology these days? Following the acquisition, Tony's been on a bit of a listening tour, having lots of conversations with other business leaders, and a theme that's emerged is uncertainty aro...

The Big Themes: Data-first modernization: the return of the Chief Data Officer in many organizations goes hand-in-hand with an increasing effort to streamline data landscapes and eliminate technical debt. Opportunity at the edge: compute power at the edge has strengthened, allowing companies to push real-time analytics out of the edge with a relatively small footprint and transforming how business...

The Big Themes: Modernizing without compromise: every customer is going to have vastly different needs and different use cases, but HPE is adamant about meeting the specific requirements of each one. Putting the platform next to the data: giving customers the ability to access their data in its native form helps them avoid running through hoops in terms of compliance, governance, operations, and m...