Cloud Wars Live with Bob Evans

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I break down Workday’s strong Q2 results, highlighting how AI solutions, mid-market growth, government expansion, partner-driven value, and global initiatives are fueling momentum. Highlights00:14 — Workday recently posted a very nice fiscal Q2, ended July 31. I pulled out growth factors from the earnings call. Just a quick recap here: for Q2, its subscription revenue was up 14% to $2.17 billion, while their current RPO was up 16.4% to almost $8 billion. So, strong demand for the recent quarter and the pipeline going forward.01:37 — First of all, suites. Workday CEO Carl Eschenbach said 30% of Q2 deals were for full suites, which, in Workday parlance, is both Financials and HCM. These consolidated data sets, he said, are more and more vital to companies. Now they can use all of that data together for some of their AI solutions, and certainly on the AI side, there was strength there.02:05 — Among existing Workday customers, 30% of all deals included one or more AI solutions. For new customers, that number jumped to 70%. In the mid-market, a lot of strength there with a new go-to-market program tailored for the needs of mid-market companies, Workday Go. In the federal government, Workday has created a new subsidiary called Workday Government.03:04 — Partners are now generating, among new annual contract value, 20%. The sharing of data for AI, Eschenbach, over the last few quarters, has been touting the value and how clean that dataset is. There's a new president in India. Workday is building a data center in India to handle local and regional data requirements there—and in Germany and the UK.04:19 — One of the high-growth areas was a recent acquisition of a company called Eversort, in the contract intelligence business. Eschenbach said that for Eversort, revenue grew 100% quarter to quarter. So that's not year over year, but sequentially—it is doubling its revenue from one quarter to the next. Overall, very nice quarter for Workday and CEO Carl Eschenbach. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I break down SAP’s strategic acquisition of SmartRecruiters and what it means for the future of AI-powered talent acquisition within the SuccessFactors HCM suite.Highlights00:03 — SAP has announced that it has agreed to acquire the talent acquisition software provider SmartRecruiters. SAP plans to integrate the company’s comprehensive suite of AI-powered talent acquisition tools into its existing SuccessFactors Human Capital Management or HCM Suite.00:43 — Muhammad Alam, Member of the Executive Board of SAP SE, Products and Engineering, said,“Hiring the right people is not just an HR priority, it’s a business priority. With this planned acquisition, we will help our customers attract and hire the best talent so they can advance their talent acquisition agendas with speed and agility, while lowering their total cost of ownership.”01:08 — Customers will be able to manage the entire candidate life cycle — from sourcing and interviewing to onboarding and beyond — all in a single system, to streamline the experience for recruiters, hiring managers, and, in particular, for candidates. The deal is expected to be finalized in the fourth quarter of 2025, positioning SAP very strongly in this unique, bespoke market.01:37 — It not only modernizes the company’s existing HCM platform by addressing the complexities of talent acquisition in the post-pandemic landscape — issues that have taken many years to develop but are now highly relevant — but it also integrates perfectly with SmartRecruiters’ neat, AI-powered, cloud-based tools. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I explain how Oracle is transforming healthcare with its AI-driven, cloud-native EHR, setting a bold path toward intelligent care.Highlights00:02 — Oracle has introduced an updated version of Oracle Health EHR, or Electronic Health Record, for ambulatory providers in the U.S., built on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. The new system features native AI agents that operate together as an orchestrated system for maximum process efficiency.00:29 — The new Oracle Health EHR, was designed in collaboration with frontline providers and delivers the services that they require in a manner that's most useful to them. For example, it features personalized, streamlined workflows. In 2026, Oracle plans to enhance the system to include acute care, further expanding the reach of this groundbreaking technology.00:50 — Now, this represents a major leap forward for healthcare providers, and Oracle is right to focus significant efforts in this direction, enabling clinicians to cut through the administrative burdens of the healthcare industry. Identified as one of the first major use cases for generative AI, it remains a priority, and Oracle is certainly thinking big in this area.01:13 — In fact, Seema Verma, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Oracle Health and Life Sciences, said the following: "When Oracle committed to transforming the healthcare industry, we knew we had to start with the EHR." Note the commitment to not just supporting, but "transforming" the healthcare industry. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I look at how the four hyperscalers are now spending a billion dollars every day on CapEx to keep up with explosive AI demand.Highlights00:19 — The four hyperscalers — AWS, Microsoft, Google, and Oracle — are now spending, as of Q2, a combined billion dollars a day on CapEx to try to keep up with explosive AI demand. Here's where these numbers come from. And I will say here, I'm calling it Q2, but Oracle's quarter ended May 31.01:00 — But these are very close for the four CapEx spending numbers for the four hyperscalers: AWS, $31.6 billion; Microsoft, about $27 billion. Google Cloud, $22.4 billion. Oracle, $9.1 billion — far more than Oracle has ever spent before. That's a total of $90.1 billion. We had 91 days in the quarter. So yeah, I cheated a little. It's actually $990.1 million per day. But I got a little crazy.02:02 — Andy Jassy, the CEO of Amazon said, “You know, this is a new industry. It's pretty crazy. You know, we've built at AWS a $123 billion annualized run rate business, and we're still in the early days.” All of the business leaders are realizing that to be able to compete going forward, they're going to have to turn their businesses into AI-powered enterprises.03:20 — They don't see this as a one-time seasonal boom that will go back down. They all say, “We think we're going to be spending at these rates going forward.” Oracle CEO Safra Catz, reflecting on the $9 billion that Oracle spent in its quarter ended May 31, said for the coming year, “We are expecting to spend more than $25 billion in CapEx — way more than ever before.”04:05 — CFO Amy Hood gently guided the questioner through this, saying, “That is a lot of money, there's no question about it. But our RPO, or remaining performance obligation — we have future commitments at Microsoft Cloud for $368 billion in customer contracts, and we don't currently have enough capacity to meet that. It's going to continue to go up.” Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I break down a major move by the U.S. government and AWS.Highlights00:02 —The U.S. government is being given access to $1 billion in AWS credits for use until the close of 2028 to help bolster federal cloud adoption and IT modernization efforts.00:38 — We're seeing companies in the Cloud Wars Top 10 and beyond offering the U.S. federal government massive discounts to secure contracts under the administration's AI Action Plan. Companies like DocuSign, Adobe, and Oracle are reportedly providing discounts of up to 70 to 75%. OpenAI is offering ChatGPT at a discounted rate to federal users.01:27 — Secondly, there's a shift we're witnessing. Instead of clashing with the government, these companies are offering significant discounts because they're valuing the opportunity upfront. AI that aligns with the government and private industry will undoubtedly be safer and more reliable.  Visit Cloud Wars for more.

Wei Hu is the Senior Vice President, High Availability Technologies, at Oracle. In today's Cloud Wars Live, Hu sits down with Bob Evans for a wide-ranging discussion on Oracle’s globally distributed database, AI-native workloads, and how Oracle is helping businesses meet data sovereignty requirements while delivering high performance, elasticity, and always-on availability across regions.Where AI Meets Your DataThe Big Themes:Globally Distributed Exadata Database on Exascale: Oracle’s Globally Distributed Exadata Database on Exascale Infrastructure delivers something few cloud providers can: high performance, high availability, and full compliance. Built on Oracle’s powerful Exadata platform, this architecture removes the traditional need to purchase or manage hardware. Organizations can start small and elastically scale compute and memory across multiple regions.Agentic AI and Vector Search at Enterprise Scale: Oracle’s database innovation is designed for real-world AI demands, especially agentic AI. AI agents need massive compute, consistent availability, and extremely fast access to live business data. Oracle’s globally distributed architecture supports in-memory vector indexes for lightning-fast retrieval augmented generation (RAG), making AI more responsive and effective. Additionally, Oracle keeps AI close to the data — eliminating stale data issues and ensuring compliance.Built for a Sovereign Cloud World: Data residency and sovereignty are no longer optional, they’re legal imperatives. Countries around the world are implementing strict rules on where data must be stored, how it can be accessed, and who can process it. Oracle addresses these challenges with policy-driven data distribution, allowing customers to define how and where data lives. Whether it’s for compliance with India’s payment data regulations or Europe’s GDPR, Oracle enables precise control without requiring app changes or replication of the full stack.The Big Quote: “The other thing that's interesting about agentic AI is that it's very dynamic. The work comes in, the demands comes in, like a tidal wave. Then it goes away, right, then a little, then when it comes again, there's another tidal wave. So, what you really want to do is have an infrastructure that is elastic, that can scale up and down depending on the demand."More from Wei Hu and Oracle:Connect with Wei Hu on LinkedIn and learn more about Globally Distributed Exadata Database on Exascale Infrastructure.* Sponsored Podcast * Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I explored why the groundbreaking Oracle–Google Cloud partnership around Gemini AI marks a bold new era for multi-cloud collaboration.Highlights00:14 — It's a brilliant move by Oracle and Google Cloud to form a partnership where Gemini AI is now available on the Oracle Cloud. Gemini on OCI is pretty wild. Both Oracle and Google compete viciously against each other. At the same time, they're both customer-centric enough to say: " ... in this other area, we're going to create new and significant value for customers."01:52 — Too often, I think tech vendors get into this mindset of: "Well, they're a competitor, so I'm not going to do anything with them — even if that might make life better for customers."I think those days are over. That's why I feel this is truly transformative.02:08 — Both executives from Google Cloud and Oracle spoke in great detail about how this partnership will make life easier for customers. They also talked about how this reflects their new philosophy: "We've got to be open. We've got to give choice — regardless of where it comes from."03:05 — Beyond Oracle and Google Cloud, I'd love to see AWS do some things with competitors. Microsoft has done some of this, but I think there's still room for all these companies to do more. It's the best of both worlds for customers: being able to get combinations of technologies and vendor capabilities rolled into single packages.03:41 — You're going to have both Google Cloud and Oracle salespeople now able to sell Gemini on Oracle Cloud. Just like about a year ago with the multi-cloud agreements — where Oracle Database became available on Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud — those hard and fast walls that used to separate vendors from ever cooperating are coming down. And they're coming down quickly.04:12 — What we see here is that tech vendors have to be not only world-class in the technology they're developing, but also in how they're willing to go to market in unprecedented ways to drive new and significant value for customers. That's going to be one of the primary yardsticks by which vendors are measured — not just by the power of their technology. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I take a closer look at AWS’s market positioning and the narrative shared during its recent earnings call.Highlights00:36 — I was puzzled by some of the math and the numbers that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, speaking on behalf of AWS on the Amazon earnings call, used in trying to describe the competitive position that AWS finds itself in.01:28 — We've got AWS, now on a $123 billion annualized run rate, and which grew 17.5% in Q2, which is extremely good for a company that size. The challenge comes in when you compare it with the growth rates, both in recent-quarter revenue, but also RPO, or backlog. AWS is far, far behind the other three hyperscalers on those metrics, or the rate of acceleration as they each grew from Q2 over Q1.02:12 — On the earnings call, Jassy said the second player has revenue that's only 65% as big as AWS. So that has to be Microsoft. So he's saying that Microsoft's cloud revenue is more in the range of $75 to $80 billion, but it's more than twice that — $187 billion. I don't get that. Maybe he's trying to say it's only about infrastructure, but he doesn't say that.03:46 — The issue is that the AWS growth rate is lower than that of Microsoft, Google Cloud, and Oracle, and it has been lower for at least the last eight quarters. Yet on the earnings call, Jassy said, "Sometimes we grow faster than they do, sometimes they grow faster than we do."04:07 — So, perhaps Andy Jassy, who has been an extraordinary executive, I'm not questioning his overall capability, his record stands for itself. But Jassy is choosing to try to play a little bit of a shell game here, trying to say that Microsoft's whole cloud revenue isn't all there, or some is illegitimate — something like that.05:26 — It's something that AWS has to address, own up to, and figure out what to do about it. And I think AWS is a great company. I don't think it helps AWS's cause for Andy Jassy to be using some numbers and representations of the market that seem to clash with reality. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I explore AWS's bold new approach to eliminating AI hallucinations using automated reasoning and formal logic.Highlights00:04 — AWS has announced that automated reasoning checks, a new Amazon Bedrock guardrails policy, are now generally available. In a blog post, AWS's Chief Evangelist (EMEA), Danilo Poccia said that: "Automated reasoning checks help you validate the accuracy of content generated by foundation models against domain knowledge. This can help prevent factual errors due to AI hallucinations."00:38 —The policy uses mathematical logic and formal verification techniques to validate accuracy. The biggest takeaway from this news is AWS's approach differs dramatically from probabilistic reasoning methods. Instead, automated reasoning checks provide 99% verification accuracy.01:10 — This means that the new policy is significantly more reliable in ensuring factual accuracy than traditional methods. The issue of hallucinations was a significant concern when generative AI first emerged. The problems associated with non-factual content are becoming increasingly damaging. This new approach represents an important leap forward. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

 In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I unpack the strategy behind Microsoft’s $368B in contracted cloud business and Q4 surge.Highlights00:39— CEO Satya Nadella explained what was behind this huge growth in Microsoft's Azure revenue in Q4, which ended June 30. Overall cloud revenue for the quarter was up 27% to $46.7 billion. This is the first time it's ever released any revenue figures for Azure.01:14 — Azure was up — I think it was 34% — to more than $75 billion. So, I divided four into 75, got almost $19 billion. It said it was “more than,” so I'm going to go with Q4 Azure revenue of $19 billion. And in Q4, it grew 39%. So 34% Azure growth for the year, spiking in Q4 to 39%. And its RPO (remaining performance obligation) was up an astonishing 37% to $368 billion.02:09 — Nadella pointed to, first, classic migrations from on-prem to the cloud. He cited an enormous initiative that Microsoft undertook with SAP to move Nestlé's huge SAP estate from on-prem to the cloud. He talked about cloud-native applications scaling very rapidly.03:16 — And third, he talked about AI workloads: the investments that Microsoft is making and the progress it is making on building out its infrastructure for Azure to be able to handle all of this new and rising demand. And he bristled a little bit at the notion that some other hyperscalers are doing more in the way of data centers and regions and gigawatt capacity and data center capacity04:22 — So again, an extraordinary quarter there from Microsoft Azure, sort of at the heart of so much of this. We'll have a lot more detail on this in an article that we'll be posting later this morning on Cloud Wars. Visit Cloud Wars for more.