Cloud Wars Live with Bob Evans

The Big Themes:Looking beyond the walls of IT: As the CIO and VP of IT, Samantha obviously fills a specialized role at Smith, but she says that her "team" is everyone at the college, and that achieving the IT department's goals requires input from many other departments.Continuous iteration as a North Star: Samantha shares a favorite quote of hers, which comes from the center for teaching and learning on campus but that she applies to IT: "There are many ways to teach well, and all teaching is improvable."Prioritizing user experience with Workday: Students today have high expectations for digital experiences, and many academic platforms do not meet those expectations. Samantha talks about how Workday's UX tools are helping her deliver for Smith students.The Big Quote: "I think I and my team are seen as partners in a much stronger way. Partnership isn't just delivering utilities. Partnership is being in conversations, it's bringing people together. It's calibrating, is this a big problem or a small problem? Will this solve something that's been bothering us for three years? So I think that has helped me be positioned as a strategic partner."This episode is sponsored by Workday.

The Big Themes:The biggest enterprise tech M&A in history: The planned $61-billion acquisition of VMWare by Broadcom has implications for Goya Foods, says CIO Suvajit Basu, and many other large global firms, because of VMWare's omnipresence in data centers.The cybersecurity side of the deal: When a company that powers data centers is taken over, questions must be raised about access to the data centers and the data within them. The "risk profile" of VMWare is raised by this acquisition.The responsibility of CXOs in these situations: The Broadcom-VMWare deal has generated a lot of FUD: Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. Whether these feelings are valid and have merit or are unfounded and distracting, is a question that CXOs must focus on answering, ASAP.The Big Quote: "The importance of VMWare permeates to every industry. I'm in food and beverage. Healthcare is running VM. Wall Street finance is running VM. Military is running VM. There is no single industry that I can think of that is not running VMWare today. And that is the cyber threat. We're talking about a heightened level of risk." Want to hear more from Suvajit? Connect with him on LinkedIn and catch highlights from his talk at Cloud Wars Expo 2022.

The Big Themes:Investing in vertical solutions: Oracle's deep engagement in healthcare through the acquisition of Cerner has provided a strategic framework for how the company will invest and expand into other industries, including with new HCM solutions.New platforms and tools: Chris previews the award-winning employee-experience platform Oracle ME, the evolved Oracle Recruiting Cloud, and new offerings that power upskilling and reskilling demands.CHRO priorities in 2022 and beyond: Based on his many conversations with HR executives, Chris outlines what is top of mind for CHROs, including creating inclusive workforces, internal mobility, and more.The Big Quote: "We're going deep in healthcare, obviously, with the Cerner acquisition... In HCM, we're making investments around scheduling, optimization, skills, making sure we can hire and support and schedule nurses at the right time, the right shift, the right bed, all of those things, but we're taking that strategy across multiple industries." Want to learn more about Oracle CloudWorld 2022?Explore content, speakers, and registration options.--This episode is sponsored by Oracle.

The Big Themes:Cloud technology supercharges startups: New companies must focus on scalability, by bringing on new customers, building new features, hitting new markets, and more. The cloud is a game-changing tool in how it helps CXOs scale up and scale down as needed for certain things.The "aha" moment: Each panelist shared stories about how and when they realized that the idea behind their company had legs and could truly address an unmet need or longstanding challenge for customers.The benefits of being a startup amid established competitors: Startups face unique challenges, but can also be more nimble and flexible than large enterprises. The panelists speak about how they've leveraged the startup mentality to connect with customers and grow their businesses.The Big Quote: "First is to understand my role as the CEO. I am the chief everything officer." - Min Chen, WisyWant to learn more about Cloud Wars Expo and the Innovation Path?Check out our plans for Expo 2023.

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 be understood in three dimensions, Wayne says: their layers, their origins, and their coverage.Advice for the cloud buyer: Know what you're buying. Know when you're buying it. Know why you're buying it. And take full advantage of what you bought.The Big Quote: "Remember, digital transformation is driven by technology in two ways: what I can do with my technology, or what somebody else can do with their technology against me. That's what drives the digital transformation. And the cloud products are perfect for that." This episode is brought to you by BMC Software.

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 clunky and thus under-utilized. The Wisy platform, by contrast, is optimized for use by human beings in all sorts of environments.Offline analysis: Wisy just announced a major breakthrough—users will now be able to get instant results and analytics, even if they don't have an internet connection or their cloud has gone down. This will save time and lots of money in terms of processing.The Big Quote: "We don't think AI is going to replace humans. On the contrary, we still need humans for a lot of things. But we want humans to be more productive and do what is more rewarding... We see this as a transformation of a whole industry with a new set of tools."Want to learn more about Wisy and founder Min Chen?Explore Wisy in the Acceleration Economy DirectoryConnect with Min on LinkedIn

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-mind for banking and insurance customers in this time of massive change.What's next: With recent technological advances—including the cloud, AI, IoT, 5G, and more—insurance is moving towards a focus on the individual, a shift that has the potential to dramatically change how consumers engage with insurers' products.The Big Quote: "We announced our platform strategy from an SAP Fioneer perspective... Over time, what you're going to see is specific vertical solutions deployed within each one of these three different platforms from us." - Mitch Bouchard This episode is brought to you by BMC Software.

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.Features and Function, Not Pricing: Not a new concept. However, decision-makers in the marketplace are experiencing a level of change behind technology-driven features for their P&L.The Big Quote: "…I do think if there's a shift in…who actually sits around that, that boardroom table, I think there's a substantial shift there today, and an exciting one actually for a lot of companies, as long as they can adapt to it."This episode is brought to you by BMC Software.

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 online, conference speakers into the event, and holding virtual meetings.Do your homework to lay the proper groundwork: Outline plans on which vendors to see, sessions to attend, and how to divide and conquer with other colleagues attending. Have you thought of social media to amplify your presence as a leader?Bring it home and take it forward: Vendors look at the opportunity to connect with customers in high-quality conversation and seek feedback to achieve solutions and understand experiences while engaging with business leaders.The Big Quote: “It’s those pure insights that are equally as important to watching and making sure that feature function during a software demo is what you need…certainly the vendor relationship is important, but the experience of your peers is going to speak volumes about if that is real.“This episode is brought to you by BMC Software.

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 recruitment done by a talent attraction leader.The most successful companies combine recruiting ops with talent attraction: Hard data about candidates is important to help HR managers make their assessments, but you also need a talent attraction leader who understands soft skills, culture, and other factors like that in order to find the best possible hire.The Big Quote: "You've got a brilliant sales leader focused on customers, customer success, big-deal strategy, how to develop account executives, how to attract them... If you take that person out and put in their sales ops person, that's the same analogy as what's happened to recruiting to talent acquisition leadership over the last several years."This episode is brought to you by BMC Software.