Cloud Wars Live with Bob Evans

The Big Themes:• Every industry: Think about how each one of them accelerated or propelled what they would have taken years to get to in a very, very short period of time.• Some businesses have opened, some have closed: But one thing it's really taught us is we're able to touch billions of people in meaningful ways, across a broad spectrum.• Constantly engaging with your customers: And the more you own your customer’s success, the more rewards you will see for your engagement.• That's what you purchased: Today, you purchase a car that's convenient and that meets your sustainability, and is the next generation and it's driven through software.The Big Quotes:“But it's incredible how human beings have been able to cope with this and continue to cope with the scenarios around it in every place around the world.”“And so we have to work every day, really hard to make our customers successful.”

The Big Themes:• IBM support is a differentiator: Upstart cloud vendors are in an IaaS arms race. Legacy enterprise IT clients have been with IBM clients for 50+ years.• Board of duty of care: The board’s overarching mandate is to protect shareholders over the long term. Boards have two main fiduciary duties: Loyalty and care.• Cybersecurity and obsolescence risk: What is the age of IT components vs. current – years matter less than generations.• The right CIO: The CEO gets the CIO they settle for. And CEOs should lobby for QTE—qualified technology expert—on the board.The Big Quotes:“We can't get people. We can't get stuff. We can't get network capabilities added because everybody's out of everything.”“We are now 20 months into a pandemic where we sent the office workers home. Microsoft just the other day said, ‘We're not coming back for a while.’ ““So you can be a higher margin, higher stickiness, higher customer satisfaction in a company and survive for the long run.”This episode is brought to you by BMC Software.

The Big Themes:• This thing called fog of war: And the fog of war is you don't know everything. And then as soon as the bullets start flying, you actually know less because it's like this aperture shrinks.• Half the Fortune 500 will be replaced by other companies: We have the highest churn rate in the history of the list.• Most of our corporations are run by terrible leaders: They have the technical background, but just look at our firms, look at how tone deaf they are.• It's a fantastic world: It's the standards that you have to live up to. And in the exploration of this conversation, we can get to the heart of why leadership is so difficult.The Big Quotes:“I think we've lost the societal grit to do good leadership to the extent that we need to, because it's so freaking hard.”“When you learn leadership, there's fundamental principles that are at play here, and sometimes they're in conflict.”“Not the placards that the typical HR department puts on the walls, which are meaningless and senseless. A waste of print dollars.”This episode is brought to you by BMC Software.

The Big Themes:• The Ambassador: Excited about the project and are telling everyone about it. They’ll be the first ones that post their go-live badge on LinkedIn. They’re also rolling-up their sleeves to contribute.• The up-and-comer: Might not have previous experience but see the project as an opportunity to grow in their career and add a successful digital transformation to their resume. Great attitude.• Debbie Downer/Don Downer: “We’ve always done it this way” is their MO. They have a problem for every solution.• I’m only here for the snacks: Quiet and non-participatory in meetings and email. Demotivate the team and get credit where credit is not due.The Big Quotes:“The success of a project is going to boil down to good people management.”“You want to make sure that you're hand picking the team.”“A lot of these problems can be solved through good documentation and a good project blueprint where people have known exactly what they're needing to contribute and buy one.”This episode is brought to you by BMC Software.

The Big Themes:• It just doesn’t magically happen: It’s not the data you already have, this is one of the hard lessons that lot of folks think.• DataStax fits into that equation: And this is one of the things that I think goes back to what you talked about in terms of agility.• Everybody has S3 compatible APIs: You've got your storage now that is just scale out via very simple APIs. You've got your compute now that's been standardized on top of Kubernetes.• You may have some rock stars: But majority of code written even at these internet companies is written by good developers. And I guarantee you, you've got good developers.The Big Quotes:“And so Cassandra was what enabled a number of retailers, many of the major retailers in operation today built critical parts of their e-commerce stack on top of Cassandra.”“The starting point for most folks is you start talking about saying, ‘Okay, you need to collect and log and interpret all of these streams of data.’”“And so the open data stack is about trying to make data catch up to where Kubernetes is in terms of giving you that agility.”

The Big Themes:• You've got great leaders at the top of the house: In both those companies you really understand innovation.• One of our venture companies: We sold a company to a publicly traded company that when that transaction happened, I got a lot of congratulations.• That ship has sailed: I also think though that speaks to another thing that we expected to happen when you plug into an organization – like in this case of Salesforce or Oracle.• Very fast moving dynamic: So we need to keep in mind not to get locked into an idea that will surely be obsolete in a matter of weeks or months.The Big Quotes:“But that doesn't mean that the $27 billion was a fair price. I think it probably was not unfortunately for the shareholders.”“The game was how many times could you say synergy in a windowless conference room for 30 minutes?”“I think in enterprise tech you're really seeing something of this happening now in Slack.”This episode is brought to you by BMC Software.

The Big Themes:• A fascinating cultural shift: The millennial generation’s increasing dissatisfaction with “knowledge work” and the increasing interest in wanting to make things.• The cultural legacies of the US manufacturing industry: This is why so many industries are disrupted by outsiders.• Technology continues to advance dramatically: It’s time to transform and upgrade how technology is positioned, explained, and sold.• Many scheduled office re-openings have been pushed back: We’re seeing some companies announce full remote plans in perpetuity. What will this push-back do to the tentative office re-opening plans?The Big Quotes:“I think I shared with you in New York City that there's over 8,000 small manufacturers that are generating over $7 billion a year in revenue in New York City.”“We hit a really interesting inflection point where the number of millennial managers were in the workforce and at the same size as the Baby Boom managers.”“The US manufacturing industry is close to a $3 trillion industry—there are not of industries of that size walking around.”This episode is brought to you by BMC Software.

The Big Themes:Accenture ransomware: Accenture’s response – they quickly detected, defended, and repaired. So far, it appears to be only a low-value material leaked.The New Digital Edge: McKinsey article rethinking strategy for the post-pandemic era. “By 2023, most companies will need to build new digital businesses to stay economically viable.”Talking to CFOs: After talking with several CFOs since the last episode, I think it’s time for some changes. Why does IT report to the CFO at so many companies?What should happen: CFO should tell the CEO, ‘no thanks!’ CFOs and the CIOs make a more powerful team – even better as peers. The Big Quotes:“Accenture also said none of our confidential material was leaked.” “And you know that whole 19th century model of the green eyeshades and the rolled-up sleeves at the desk – that world has changed, and we've got to recognize it.” “So go back 50, 60 years, the first people that put technology and the first computers went in the 1950s – that's 70 years ago.” “Walter Wriston, the founder of the organizer of Citibank, said information about money is as valuable as money itself.” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software. 

The Big Themes:The “T” in Teamwork: Why employees with breadth and depth are imperative for harmonizing organizational goals and culture. We call this the acceleration economy.We are launching a brand-new program: August 19th to be exact, and it's all content driven to what is the future role of the office of the CFO.Tie in the future effects of the office: What’s the difference between data digitization – and why organizations should care.I think develops a richer culture: It also helps for those people who are in those decision-making roles to better understand what you're doing.The Big Quotes:“A lot of organizations are needing to be adaptive and changing on a dime.”“I think more roles are going to be a little less tactical – a little more visionary and strategic.”“Check out our podcasts, The Wrap, that is one of my highlights of the week, and it's a time that we can share what we've heard through the week.This episode is brought to you by BMC Software. 

As President of SAP S/4HANA, Jan Gilg oversees development of SAP's flagship ERP product, digital supply chain, and industry solutions. In this conversation, Jan discusses how the shift to a digital economy is driving unprecedented changes in how businesses operate, and the new types of software solutions businesses require to thrive in such an environment. In the midst of all that upheaval, SAP itself has changed in significant ways, and Gilg shares his perspectives on the benefits those changes are driving for customers. The Big Themes:Across all 25 industries: Now moving into the cloud we are really following the old modularization strategy on the one hand side – and blurring much, much more.Much better visibility: I probably want to have more visibility into multiple tiers of my supply chain. The Big Quotes:“This will be a steering dimension for every company in every industry.” “And we capture the data from the sensors and feed it again into the context of the vehicles.” “The shift to Office 365 was massive from our perspective.” This episode is brought to by BMC Software.