Cloud Wars Live with Bob Evans

In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I review the remarks and insights from CEO Marc Benioff and Salesforce from the recent Q3 earnings call.Highlights00:20 — After an approximately three-year hiatus, CEO Marc Benioff and Salesforce demonstrated their growth mojo through the Q3 numbers. While some of the numbers aren't quite as robust as they were in Salesforce's earlier days, in the earnings call, Benioff emphasized growth, innovation, and new things coming that are reflective of where the company was in the past.01:07 — In its first 22 years, Salesforce had unprecedented growth — 20 years of 20% or higher growth. No other publicly traded company has done that. In the last few years, with some pressure from institutional investors, Salesforce had to shift its focus from growth and innovation to margins and profits. During this time, the character of the company has evolved, especially with the AI Revolution and the introduction of Agentforce.01:55 — Something that struck me was the exuberance of CEO Marc Benioff on the call and his excitement about lots of numbers that indicated things are headed in the right direction. He shared details and commentary about their Q3 numbers as well as the vitality and energy around new products.02:58 — Benioff was proud of the stats around Agentforce customers moving into production. The number of those was up 70% sequentially quarter to quarter. This demonstrates how quickly Agentforce customers are able to deploy the technology, get it into use, and start getting the essential business outcomes.03:38 — This is important because the biggest winners are always the customers in the Cloud Wars because they get to benefit from the incredible competition. It further triggers waves of relentless innovation unlike anything the world has ever seen. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I discuss how Palantir’s latest customer wins reveal a shift from point solutions to end-to-end AI strategies.Highlights00:19 — Palantir's got a customer that, very shortly after signing a deal for a fairly limited AI engagement, said it wanted to go enterprise-wide with an investment that's up 8x over what the original one was. This signals where CEOs are driving these AI-centered business transformations to ensure that they go end-to-end here and have enhanced business outcomes as the goal.01:21 — This medical device manufacturer CEO went to the Palantir executive team and said, “What would we need to do to make this an end-to-end business transformation powered by AI, designed to drive greater outcomes?” And very quickly, they rewrote the whole deal. So five months after this initial thing, they had a new deal going on — eight times bigger.02:31 — So again, there we see this notion of Palantir doing some different things and engaging with customers in different ways. So, I think broadly what we're seeing here, overall, with these AI-centered business transformations is: time is the enemy — not your traditional competitors, not necessarily the new ones. It is this notion of time.03:40 — If you're on the customer side here, I think you've got to look at this and take a hard view of what's going on inside your company. Is it a lot of these little disjointed trials that could have a nice little upward bump in efficiency or cost savings? Or are you shooting for the moon here? Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Agent and Copilot Minute, I unpack why Microsoft Copilot will no longer be available on WhatsApp starting January 15 and what users should do next.Highlights00:03 — Starting January 15, Microsoft Copilot will no longer be available to users via WhatsApp. This feature has been offered since 2024, but due to changes in WhatsApp platform policies — which include the removal of all LLM chatbots, Copilot users will need to access the assistant through alternative means.00:30 — Unfortunately, because the version of Copilot used on WhatsApp is unauthenticated, it won't be possible to transfer chat history. Instead, users will need to manually export their conversations using WhatsApp’s exportation tools.01:00 — Microsoft users who have grown accustomed to Copilot will now need to access the tool through Microsoft-controlled environments. In these settings, Microsoft can offer better functionality, enhanced security, and a wider range of use cases outside of a third-party platform. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

Key TakeawaysCommunity involvement: Mary is a member of the programming committee board this year and will be attending the AI Agent & Copilot Summit, taking place from March 17th to 19th in San Diego, California. Working in the real estate industry, Mary acknowledges that, like individuals in all industries, there's a lot of AI transformations happening right now. "Being involved in this broader community is really exciting and energizing," she says.Summit expectations: She reports momentum as it gets closer to the event, like the number of responses to the call for speakers. "There's a big focus on real people figuring out and solving real problems with agents and Copilot," she notes. "Attendees can really expect a mix of hands-on learning and bigger picture conversations." Members of the community are curious, collaborative, and excited to share, so there's a lot for attendees to look forward to.Clear takeaways and diverse perspectives: Whether you're coming from a business team or a technical team, there's something that everyone can walk away with and implement, providing a "clarity of takeaways." The AI Agent & Copilot Summit also provides a "diversity of perspectives," which Mary considers to be very important. "I think we're looking for a mix of developers, business leaders, consultants, power users, and people who are just getting started to really get that diversity of thought and perspective."Overcoming challenges: One of the biggest challenges right now, Mary suggests, is the pressure to figure out how to adopt AI. Many leaders are looking to bridge the gaps between where to start, learning, and taking action. It's not just about teaching the tools or determining how to prompt better. "It's about shifting habits and thinking and mindsets," Mary says. "It's change management and how we make AI feel more approachable." Early adopters are able to pass on their experiences and accelerate the learning curve for attendees. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In this Cloud Wars Live podcast, Bob Evans sits down with Hayete Gallot, President, Google Cloud Customer Experience, to explore how Google Cloud is helping enterprises move from AI experimentation to true business transformation. Gallot describes how her organization unifies engineering, consulting, partners, and learning to accelerate time-to-value and scale agentic AI across every function. Together, they dive into Gemini Enterprise, customer successes like Virgin Voyages, and why human-centered change is the real key to AI’s future.The AI Turning PointThe Big Themes:Customer Experience Built for the AI Era: Google Cloud created a new Customer Experience organization, led by Hayete Gallot, to match the speed and complexity of AI-driven transformation. Instead of treating AI as a pure technology play, the team unifies industry and solutions experts, customer engineers, consulting, partners, and learning into one group that supports the full innovation lifecycle. That means they can help customers go from idea to minimum viable product to production in a consistent, repeatable way.Ecosystem, Partners, and Curated AI Solutions: Google Cloud’s ecosystem strategy is central to scaling AI transformation. Gallot describes deep investment in system integrators — not just training them on technology, but sharing methodologies and scenario-based approaches so they can guide customers toward the right AI choices. At the same time, Google Cloud works with top ISVs to embed AI into their solutions and create compatible protocols for multi-agent experiences.Structuring Tech Teams for Agentic Transformation: AI’s rise is forcing technology organizations to evolve. Gallot notes that CTOs and CIOs are asking how to restructure their teams for an “agentic” world. The demand is no longer just for deep technical skills, but also people who understand user experience, behavior, and business workflows. Technology teams are increasingly expected to co-design scenarios with business leaders, not just implement requirements. Looking ahead to 2026, Gallot sees the priority as scaling agentic transformation across divisions.The Big Quote: "Customers are much more mature on AI … When you meet with them, they're [asking] what's in it for me? What am I going to get? When am I going to get it? How do I scale this? They want production, and they want outcome." Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I explore how Salesforce’s acquisition of Informatica strengthens its foundation for delivering trustworthy, agentic AI.Highlights00:04 — A few years back, when I was covering the cloud data management firm Informatica on a regular basis, the rumor mill was rife with speculation that the company was set to be acquired by Salesforce. It didn’t happen right away, but ultimately, that’s what transpired.00:22 — Now, Salesforce has announced that the acquisition is complete and Informatica is now part of the company — and it makes perfect sense. Informatica emerged as one of the most creative and forward-thinking cloud data management platforms out there.00:39 — The company was quick to adopt generative AI with its CLAIRE GPT tool and soon embedded this enhanced functionality across its Intelligent Data Management Cloud, or IDMC. And now Salesforce has all of this capability within its own ecosystem, and it’s an enviable place to be.00:59 — Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has been quick to highlight how the integration of Informatica will benefit Salesforce customers in their agentic AI journey, saying: “You have to get your data right to get your AI right ... Informatica is the trusted platform that turns fragmented enterprise data into context so every agent can reason, act, and deliver outcomes with precision."01:43 — Benioff is spot-on with that opening line: You have to get your data right to get your AI right. And with Informatica’s tech supporting a scalable data foundation, Salesforce is enabling just that. If, like Salesforce, you can provide not only the tools to develop an agentic AI ecosystem but also the data foundation to support it, you find yourself in a very strong position indeed. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I analyze why Workday’s $26B RPO signals strong future momentum in the face of SAP and Oracle.Highlights00:15 — Very nice Q3 that Workday recently finished here. Great revenue growth for the quarter ended October 31 — up 15% to about $2.25 billion. 17% growth for its total RPO, to about $8.2 billion. It's been cranking up the innovation engine there at Workday. Small AI-specific acquisitions over the last year or two have really been adding to this so customers have more to buy.01:16 — CEO Carl Eschenbach made key points. Broadly, everybody sees the potential of AI, but he said most customers find they're stuck with fragmented systems. He said they have bad data, and he said they're not sure that they have the right platforms to work with. Workday believes that its AI solutions can come in and directly address all of those things.02:00 — He said, "We want to be the new front door to work." He's bringing together three significant components to be able to do that. He said that's enterprise knowledge, a new generation of agents that address some of the most pressing business requirements, and also the HR and financial processes that Workday has helped customers to track for the last 20 years.03:10 — It wants to be AI-first. With everything it's doing, it's making things as open as possible. It's trying to make things as simple for its customers as it can. These are important differentiators for Workday as it's up against two much larger competitors, SAP and Oracle. Its future pipeline is strong. Customer demand is there. Confidence is there. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In this special Cloud Wars report, Bob Evans sits down with Michael Ameling, President and Chief Product Officer of SAP Business Technology Platform, for a deep dive into how SAP is helping customers navigate the fast-moving AI Era. Ameling and Evans discuss how SAP’s Business Data Cloud, partnerships with Snowflake and Databricks, HANA Cloud innovations, and new AI-powered tools and agents are helping SAP evolve from an applications powerhouse into a data-and-AI-driven business platform for the next generation.SAP’s AI Data FutureThe Big Themes:SAP HANA Cloud Becomes an AI-Optimized Database: SAP HANA Cloud is evolving into “the database AI was looking for." As a multi-model system supporting spatial, graph, vector, and document storage, HANA Cloud enables AI workloads to run more efficiently and contextually. Recent additions, like vector engines and Knowledge Graph capabilities, give customers powerful tools for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), contextual reasoning, and advanced analytics.Developers Are 'The AI Revolution': Developers aren’t observing the AI Revolution, they are the revolution. With modern AI tools, developers can innovate faster, solve bigger problems, and directly influence business outcomes. SAP is investing heavily in meeting developers where they are by enhancing IDEs, building business-aware development tools, and providing context-rich assets such as APIs, business objects, and process insights. AI acts as a teammate, not a replacement.SAP: An Applications and a Data Company: SAP must be both an applications and a data company. Customer value emerges when applications, data, and AI converge seamlessly. SAP’s decades of industry expertise give it unparalleled business context, which becomes even more powerful when embedded into AI agents and data platforms. With more than 34,000 SAP HANA Cloud customers and rapidly expanding AI adoption, SAP is positioning itself as the platform where business process knowledge meets modern AI capability.The Big Quote: " . . what we need to understand that AI is our teammate. It's like asking your best friend who has a lot of knowledge, but you can ask multiple friends at the same time. Not everything is always right, but you can ask questions, you can continuously improve. If we understand that pattern, we understand that AI helps us to solve much bigger problems as a developer, and then, of course, having much more impact on real business."More from Michael Ameling and SAP:Connect with Michael Ameling on LinkedIn, or get more insights from SAP TechEd.  Visit Cloud Wars for more.

Information access: While many have Copilot licenses, usage is low beyond basic tasks like email and meeting summaries. The main challenge with adoption is providing guidance within apps like PowerPoint, Excel, Dynamics, and Word so users can access help exactly when they need it. This is something Rehmani's company, VisualSP, and his training platform, copilottrainingpackage.com, specialize in. "I'm a big proponent of giving people 'at the moment need' information," he notes.Training paths: Copilottrainingpackage.com enables users to go down different "training paths," explains Rehmani. Specifically, there are pre-built PowerPoint training modules covering key topics like prompt creation and preventing hallucinations. Additionally, there's learning management system (LMS)-ready video content on Copilot use cases in Word, Excel, and other tools for on-demand learning. Finally, the platform offers optional live training sessions for trainers and power users to ensure effective adoption and ROI from Copilot. "At the end of the day, it's all about making Copilot into ROI and not just an expense layer."What to expect: Rehmani describes the "anatomy" of the program. It uses seven modules to teach trainers and power users how to craft effective prompts, reduce Copilot errors, and apply specific workflows for high-impact ROI. Then, participants share this knowledge internally, enabling time savings and efficiency across their organizations.End-of-year pricing: Users can take advantage of this resource with special pricing through the end of the year. Users can purchase the standalone package for $4,950 or the package and live training for $8,950, all of which could be delivered in 2026, explains Rehmani. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

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