Cloud Wars Live with Bob Evans

Gary Miller, Executive Vice President and Customer Success Officer, Oracle, talks to Bob Evans about how Oracle is helping customers navigate their AI journeys — whether they're just starting out or scaling enterprise-wide adoption. He shares how Oracle is embedding AI across its entire technology stack, aligning partner and customer success strategies, and empowering organizations through tools like Cloud Success Navigator, Innovation Studios, and democratized AI training to deliver real, measurable business value.AI-Powered Customer WinsThe Big Themes:Embedding AI Across the Entire Stack: Oracle is not just adding AI as a feature — it’s fundamentally integrating AI into its entire technology stack. Gary Miller notes that many customers are surprised to discover that large language models are being trained and deployed on OCI, and that hundreds of AI capabilities are embedded directly into Fusion Applications and Oracle Database. Once customers understand this depth of integration, they quickly shift from curiosity to action, asking for guidance on how to adopt AI now, what use cases to prioritize, and how to define success.Cloud Success Navigator Is Central to AI Adoption Strategy: The Oracle Cloud Success Navigator has emerged as a pivotal tool for AI and cloud adoption. What started as a promise in a previous conversation is now a robust, free digital platform that helps customers and partners create innovation roadmaps, prioritize features, and accelerate time to value. With over 6,000 customers and 235 partners using the platform since March, the tool enables organizations to track over 11,000 adopted features — including 450 AI-specific ones.AI World 2025 Will Spotlight Real Customer Outcomes: At the upcoming AI World 2025 event, Oracle plans to go beyond product announcements to highlight customer success stories. Miller will host a keynote titled “Bold Outcomes,” featuring innovative customers and partners sharing their journeys. Oracle is also gamifying the learning experience with “AI Industry Adventure,” a theme-park-style game in Customer Success Central. Attendees will solve real-world industry challenges using Oracle Cloud AI solutions, making learning both interactive and fun.The Big Quote: “Customers are often unaware of how Oracle has embedded AI capabilities across the whole stack. Once they understand that, then they ask us for expert guidance on how best to achieve their transformation goals using Oracle AI solutions. I had one CEO, he said, after he saw this, he said, 'Well, don't let us fumble around in the dark looking for value. You know, where it is, point us there.' And so they asked, how can I start adopting AI in my current environment? . . . How do I define AI, success metrics, and realize AI value? That's the key thing."More from Gary Miller and Oracle:Connect with Gary Miller on LinkedIn or learn more about Oracle and AI. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I’m sharing why Revolut’s decision to scale with Google Cloud shows the power of AI-first infrastructure in fintech.Highlights00:03 — While I'm almost 100% certain that everyone is very familiar with Google Cloud, perhaps fewer are aware of Revolut. This fintech company, started in the UK in 2015, now serves 60 million people globally with a range of financial products. Revolut and Google Cloud have announced the two companies are significantly expanding their strategic partnership.01:01 —Tara Brady, President of Google Cloud EMEA, said: "Revolut is consistently pushing the boundaries of the financial sector. Google is proud to provide the secure, scalable, and intelligent infrastructure powered by our leading AI to fuel this ambitious global expansion and help it deliver the next generation of financial services to a new audience."01:26 — This is a great example of how AI-enhanced infrastructure is enabling companies to achieve incredibly ambitious targets—such as increasing a customer base from 60 million to 100 million users. Not only does it support the existing tools that companies already rely on, like data storage, access, and security, but it also allows them to think bigger. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

Highlights00:12 — Now on the Cloud Wars Top 10 growth chart, this is one of the great representations of this greatest growth market the world has ever known, and for about the sixth or seventh straight quarter, Google Cloud emerges as the world’s hottest major cloud vendor, 32% growth, but Oracle and Microsoft were also rocking recently, and it overall shows a picture of enormous growth here.00:37 — Of the Cloud Wars Top 10 companies, only one, that was SAP, reported declining growth rate from Q1 to Q2, all the others went up. So let’s take a look at those. As I said, Google Cloud up 32% to 13.6 billion, Snowflake, the smallest company on the Cloud Wars Top 10, also up 32% to 1.1 billion. Oracle was up 28% to 7.2 billion.AI Agent & Copilot Summit is an AI-first event to define opportunities, impact, and outcomes with Microsoft Copilot and agents. Building on its 2025 success, the 2026 event takes place March 17-19 in San Diego. Get more details. 01:03 — Those are nice numbers. But the big thing for Oracle is it has had just an absolutely explosive RPO. Oracle’s RPO is $455 billion. Microsoft, another remarkable quarter growth rate of 27% of $46.7 billion. Now it’s interesting that the quarter before that, Microsoft’s growth rate was 20% so it went from 20 to 27. Google Cloud over the last two quarters, went from 28% to 32%.02:09 — Then if we look at AWS, 17.5% to 30.9 billion, excellent numbers, and in any, just about any other industry that would be seen as by far the best. But look at this growth rate, 17.5% for AWS, 27% for Microsoft, one of its major competitors, 32% growth rate, almost twice as high as AWS for Google Cloud. Yes, AWS is big, but it doesn’t account for almost like a 2X difference there.03:47 — I think what we see with Google Cloud now that it’s established themselves as a very high flyer here, but I think we’re going to see Oracle to keep moving up. Microsoft, at the size of its revenue base, to grow 27% is extraordinary. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I unpack how Oracle’s $455B RPO surge signals a massive shift in cloud leadership.Highlights00:15 — We see across the Cloud Wars Top 10 an incredible sense of demand from businesses across the world — to help those businesses create their futures. And in fact, we've now got, just among the four hyperscalers, a pipeline totaling $1.1 trillion. We've got Oracle in the top spot there at $455 billion. Microsoft is number two in the RPO race, $368 billion.01:17 — So here, I've got the four hyperscalers with RPO and the RPO growth rate, then quarterly revenue and quarterly growth rate. Oracle is on the top, its RPO now sits at close to half a trillion dollars, with a growth rate of 359%. Microsoft: $368 billion in RPO, up a whopping 37%, off that huge base. Quarterly revenue for the Microsoft Cloud — almost $47 billion, up 27%.02:25 — AWS' RPO is now $195 billion, up about 25%. That's coming off its Q2 revenue of almost $31 billion, up 17.5%. AWS is growing more slowly than the other hyperscalers. Google Cloud: backlog $106 billion, up 38%. For Q2, Google Cloud revenue at $13.6 billion, up 32%. So it was the fastest-growing in Q1, doing very well here.03:33 — Now altogether, this adds up to $1.1 trillion. I'm just not used to saying “trillion.” Got to get more used to that as this market gets bigger. Oracle CEO Safra Catz said that there were multiple huge deals that Oracle signed for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, and more coming. Catz said that, “We anticipate that in the near future, Oracle's RPO will reach $500 billion — half a trillion.”04:32 — Going into the future, as AI comes along and changes so much, RPO — or backlog — gives us a great idea of who the hot companies are coming up. And right now, undisputedly, that is Oracle. The other three companies are doing quite well, but I think AWS has become the “slowpoke” in this sprint that the others are undertaking. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I break down how Microsoft is redefining the agentic AI landscape with Copilot Studio Lite and Full Experience, offering tailored tools for both low-code creators and enterprise-grade developers.Highlights00:03 — Microsoft has announced the launch of Copilot Studio Lite and Copilot Studio Full Experience, two versions of Copilot that, in the words of Principal Solution Architect Rémi Dyon, "empower everyone from information workers to developers to build intelligent agents tailored to their needs."00:23 — Microsoft Copilot Studio is a low-code platform that enables users to build and customize AI agents to operate across Microsoft 365 and LOB (line-of-business) systems. Now, Copilot Studio provides two ways to operate: a Lite experience (formerly Agent Builder), which is integrated directly into the Microsoft 365 Copilot app, or a Full Experience, as a standalone web portal.01:17 — When choosing which option is right for you, Microsoft suggests acknowledging four key criteria: audience, deployment, scope, functionality, and governance needs. Dyon describes the changes as a "clarity upgrade," which is significant.01:34 — The AI Wars have evolved into the Agentic AI Wars. One defining trend is the emphasis on clarity. This clarity applies to how tools are operated, the range of users who can access them, and marketing strategies. A simple name change like this may not seem like a huge leap, but Microsoft is defining a category focused on agent development rather than just agent deployment. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I break down how Oracle’s $455 billion RPO surge is being driven by Larry Ellison’s bold vision to lead not just in AI training — but in the even larger market of AI inferencing.Highlights00:46 — First, Ellison talked about AI training. Then, he discussed AI inferencing, which will be much, much bigger than AI training. Ellison said that AI inferencing will be used for everything — from robotic cars, robotic factories, and robotic greenhouses, to biomolecular synthesis to come up with new drugs.01:20 — He said, “We think Oracle is particularly well-positioned to go after this because of Oracle's history.” He said AI inferencing is the key, and Oracle is going to succeed because it's going to be able to provide data of multiple types for businesses that they can then use with these AI-trained models to be able to answer any sort of questions.02:33 — So Ellison thinks, therefore, business customers using Oracle Database and Oracle AI, Oracle inferencing, will be able to get any question answered they want, and that will also help them develop the AI agents that Oracle goes deeply into. Ellison and Oracle are redefining the whole nature of what data means, what AI means, what's possible.03:42 — CEO Safra Catz said she thinks that it won't be long before Oracle has RPOs above half a trillion dollars. So they're doing some remarkable things. Larry Ellison has always been a master of the long game. We're really seeing this play out here, and it's, I think, very interesting to see how he perceives these two multi-trillion dollar markets04:15 — The Oracle way is to go after them both, AI training and AI inferencing. No doubt there'll be lots of competitors. It's going to be a great market — great opportunities for businesses. And as we always say, the biggest winners in the Cloud Wars are always, always the customers. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I discuss Oracle's amazing Q1 results.Highlights00:17 — Oracle yesterday released its fiscal Q1 results for the quarter ended August 31. And while its revenue figures for those three months were nice, the killer here was its RPO: remaining performance obligation. Oracle reported remaining performance obligation up 359% to $455 billion.01:24 — Microsoft's cloud revenue is almost seven times bigger than Oracle's. Who's winning the most business out into the future? Several weeks ago, Microsoft reported its RPO was up 37% to an astonishing $368 billion, the biggest RPO number I had ever seen. Several weeks later, we see Oracle blow that away. It's got an RPO nest egg out there that is 25% bigger than Microsoft's.02:35 — Now, Oracle CEO Safra Catz, in perhaps the understatement of the year, said, "Oracle is off to a brilliant start in FY26." My point there is, I've just never seen anything like this. Astonishing. And we can point to the OpenAI deal that's due to start in a few years, where OpenAI has contracted with Oracle to pay Oracle $30 billion a year for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.03:09 — Catz referenced a number of gigantic contracts that Oracle has signed, and they'll be talking about more soon. Catz did take the unusual step of projecting future revenue for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure — OCI — and its growth over the next five years, including the current year we're in. And I want to emphasize: These numbers don't include Oracle's cloud applications business.03:50 — So, for this year — FY26, ending May 31, 2026 — OCI revenue will grow 77% to $18 billion. Then next year, up 44% to $32 billion. Then it's going to take a spectacular leap — up 128% to $73 billion. I believe that's when the OpenAI revenue starts to kick in. Then 56% to $114 billion for fiscal '29. Fiscal '30, up 26% to $144 billion. Again, I've never seen any numbers like this.05:06 — It's a very different approach Oracle has taken. These numbers show just an astonishing future for Oracle, and I think it's fair to say too that these results from Oracle — and the indication of its future success — have definitely, completely rattled — turned upside down — the balance of power in the Cloud Wars. Oracle is the hottest hyperscaler in the world now, by far and often. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I dive into the growing debate between SaaS and agentic AI, sparked by Satya Nadella’s December 2024 remarks suggesting that AI agents could spell the end of SaaS.Highlights00:32 — We've all been hearing a lot about SaaS dying — the demise of SaaS — triggered by AI, an opinion expressed in December of 2024 by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who said that the rise of AI and agents is going to lead to the collapse of SaaS, the hollowing out of it, to become little more than a third-tier support product.01:18 — Well, Marc Benioff said basically that this view, it’s just so much nonsense. And Benioff even went biblical. He said, we've got to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff, and we need to be able to determine what's going on here with SaaS, what's going on with AI, and what's going on with agentic AI. How are they going to play together, along with Data Cloud and so on?02:26 — And he said, that's very much not the right question. He used some pretty tough language in explaining this. He said we've got thousands of customers who are very happily using Salesforce applications along with our Agentforce platform, to drive better business results. It's very beneficial to believe both in the future of SaaS and the future of agentic AI.04:02 — And on the earnings call, he went into detail about how many customers now are investing heavily in Agentforce. And the number of new business deals coming in — or repeat business — on agentic AI and Agentforce coming from existing customers. The Data Cloud that underpins this and Agentforce, he said, are now on a $1.2 billion run rate.04:32 — I wish that there would be a point at which Satya Nadella could say, with the experience of nine months now of feedback in the market and from people he's talked to: “Hey, I'm going to double down on what I said in December 2024.” Or he could say, “You know what, maybe I was a little too aggressive on that.” I'd love to hear that. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, ServiceNow’s push into CRM meets Salesforce’s expansion into ITSM (IT Service Management), powered by agentic AI.Highlights00:14 — While I'm focusing here on Salesforce and ServiceNow, and some changes each is making to get into markets dominated by the other, the larger point here is about how agentic AI is triggering new competition and new approaches. Today, I'm going to share about five repercussions with you.01:15 — On Salesforce's Q2 earnings call, Marc Benioff said, “Hey, we're going to get into IT Service Management.” Salesforce is changing from being an apps company to a data company. It just so happens that ServiceNow and CEO Bill McDermott have been making it very plain that they intend to move aggressively into the CRM business, which has been Salesforce’s prime area.02:34 — So, I'm going to mention big implications. One, these companies are looking for new hunting grounds — new areas to help customers do more and to allow these vendors to make more money. Agentic AI is also blasting out boundaries, because agentic AI, I think, optimally works on an end-to-end basis.03:36 — Benioff, on the earnings call, said Data Cloud and agentic AI — Agentforce — are "at the heart of our company strategy", not their applications. Which leads into this: I don't think, as Satya Nadella said, “apps are dying,” or “SaaS is dying,” but I do think that agentic AI is going to change profoundly what apps do, how they work, and how customers can extract value from them.04:44 — We are seeing agentic AI knock down a lot of boundaries. You're going to have more wide-ranging tools that let [customers] see all of their data, be able to develop end-to-end processes that are more effective, more successful, and give them better insights — and, mostly, better business outcomes. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

Highlights00:03 — Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman has published a blog post that criticizes the notion of seemingly conscious AI. He argues that the pursuit of this idea, particularly regarding AI model welfare, is misguided.00:19 — Suleyman explains that these concepts are already causing mental health issues among users. He is growing: “more and more concerned about what is becoming known as the psychosis risk and a bunch of related issues. I don’t think this will be limited to those who are already at risk of mental health issues.”00:56 — Suleyman argues that we should “build AI for people not to be a person.” He is adamant in his neglect of this previous approach, saying that: “The arrival of seemingly conscious AI is inevitable and unwelcome. Instead, we need a vision for AI that can fulfill its potential as a helpful companion without falling prey to its illusions.”AI Agent & Copilot Summit is an AI-first event to define opportunities, impact, and outcomes with Microsoft Copilot and agents. Building on its 2025 success, the 2026 event takes place March 17-19 in San Diego. Get more details. 01:18 — Meanwhile, companies like Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google DeepMind are actively pursuing AI consciousness or welfare research. Now, while there are complications and not everyone is on the same page, here, it is clear that the evolving scenarios and possibilities presented by AI are increasingly reaching into the realm of the surreal and in some cases, they’re fantastical.01:42 — This is largely because, for the first time in human history, we have a tool that is evolving at a pace beyond which we can conceive. While some of these ideas may sound far-fetched, the warnings accompanying them are serious based on real concerns coming from leaders in the AI space, the ones leading this new AI revolution.02:04 — What everyone must do, and though it will be challenging, is to start imagining the unimaginable. Once you accept the vast possibilities of AI, both good and bad, you can begin to take the warnings that come with them seriously. Visit Cloud Wars for more.