Cloud Wars Live with Bob Evans

The Big Themes: Summit NA: Community Summit North America, the largest independent gathering of the Microsoft business applications ecosystem, is taking place October 10 through 13th in Orlando, Florida, featuring 500+ sessions and 300+ speakers. How to compare cloud vendors: They have different revenue streams, distinct customer bases, and come in a wide range of sizes, but cloud vendors can best...

The Big Themes: "The moment of truth" in retail execution: Wisy is not focused on inventory management issues, but rather on helping brands and retailers optimize the display and pricing of products through AI-powered computer vision analysis and predictive analytics. Reaching a tipping point: Tech solutions that leverage AI for retail execution have existed for a while, but have been overly clunk...

The Big Themes: Big announcements at recent flagship event in Amsterdam: Toni and Mitch talk about the new "vertical product strategy" SAP Fioneer unveiled at its Financial Services Forum, including three new platforms for banking and insurance customers. Trends in the larger insurance industry: At their recent mega-event, the SAP and SAP Fioneer teams gained a ton of insight into what is top-of-m...

The Big Themes: Speaking the Same Language:  Decision-makers accelerate change by embracing industry and vertical cloud with vendors who can understand the transformation of their industries to co-create to grow the business. Buyer Motivations Are Shifting:  Vendors need to understand the expectations of today's companies to fulfill promises to ensure they can deliver on the benefits to customers....

The Big Themes: Events evolved:  As attendees adapt to hybrid shows, understanding what changed enables people to leverage both in-person and online benefits of industry shows. Get creative, opt for flexibility : Hospitality resources may be short-staffed, travel could be affected, or speakers might not be able to attend in person. Event organizers can help vendors increase visibility by going onl...

The Big Themes: Three priorities for hiring: Pat says that the best hires (1) are able to do the job well, (2) help diversify the organization in terms of background, ethnicity, etc., and (3) are a good fit culturally for the company and the role. Recruiting today is too passive and too focused on ops: To find the right person for the role you need to fill, companies need to embrace active recruit...

The Big Themes: A new POV on recent Microsoft announcements: Wayne talks us through his understanding of some key points made by CEO Satya Nadella and CFO Amy Hood on the company's latest earnings call, and how CIOs and CTOs should interpret them. Microsoft's full-stack offering is key competitive advantage: Purportedly lowering costs for customers is part of how MSFT is working to stay ahead of A...

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...