Cloud Wars Live with Bob Evans

The Big Themes:Microsoft has said that for every $1 of software they sell, partners make $9: The opportunity for channel partners in this time of cloud growth is huge.It should mirror the customer base: Software vendors should make it easy for customers to know who their partners are.Effective onboarding and training programs: These ensure that partners have the domain expertise to work any given software and ongoing programs.A level playing field: Not cherry-picking partners for customers based upon name brand or because they fund the top sponsorships.The Big Quotes:“This is really a summary of the last three years of research.”“Just because somebody was great one year doesn't mean that they're going to be great the following year.”This episode is brought to you by BMC Software.

The Big Themes:Taking a victory lap: When you look at those lists, these are technology companies that have figured out how to partner and work within the industry.New Carnegie Mellon masters program: I believe the first masters level joint business degree is to help students prepare to be a product manager.The enemy of my enemy is my friend: But the other part of that is true as well. There’s a lot of moving pieces on the chess board right now.Rockefeller breaking up Standard Oil: After the breakup, he got significantly wealthier. Could the same happen with Amazon and AWS? The Big Quotes:“I think that the other thing that's going to be interesting as I kind of look into the back half of 2021 and 2022 is I do think we're going to start to actually see a lot more innovation around healthcare.” “The vaccine rollout is nothing short of a miracle.” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software. 

Oliver Bussmann is a world-renowned expert specializing on the intersection of technology and business with particular expertise in financial services, and is now CEO of Bussmann Advisory AG. Having been both a CIO and a COO, Oliver has held senior positions at UBS, SAP, Allianz, Deutsche Bank and IBM.I had a great chat with Oliver Bussmann, who's a strategic advisor and board member for corporations and software companies, as well as startups in fintech, payments, and blockchain. Having been CIO at not only one of the world's top software companies – SAP –but also at some leading financial institutions – UBS and Allianz – Oliver shares compelling insights on digital transformation, new business models, the impact of technology on strategy, and the ongoing battle for talent.The Big Themes:State-of-the-art technology: How they connect to the ecosystem, so there are two worlds coming together.Bringing data into the cloud: There’s a price tag to that too. It’s not only an efficiency play, by the way, meaning which application you want to test drive.It’s a never-ending story: The next one is already waiting around the corner. You have to adjust how you work together, and the level of collaboration has changed dramatically over the couple of years.My weekly newsletter: In total almost 40,000 subscribers. I have a huge community of a hundred thousand followers on LinkedIn.The Big Quotes:“The most important asset that you have is your people. And how you take your people, your organization on that journey, get them excited, motivated, help them to learn more new skills and capabilities.”“And we are at the beginning of a marathon. It's not a sprint.”This episode is brought to you by BMC Software.

The Big Themes:Why isn’t big data producing big insights? In our last episode we tee’d up the idea that while we have seen extraordinary advances in big data, data analytics and data science, it’s harder to find examples of extraordinary insights of the use of big data.How should business leaders factor human judgement: In his latest book, “Noise,” Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize winning economist suggests that the issue is about human judgement and not data.The era of augmented intelligence: We are seeing some remarkable advances in AI and ML learning — and there are wide ranging implications for business, politics, and society.Many companies are rethinking what “return to office” means: As major companies announce return to office, employees have seen the benefits of remote work. The Big Quotes:“We're spending a lot of time watching artificial intelligence takeoff in the industrial marketplaces and manufacturing marketplaces.” “So this is a human element and there is an X factor oftentimes in human interactions that is very difficult to articulate.” “And this is a truly extraordinary time. We are at an inflection point where the enabling technologies and our ability to understand how to use them.” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software. 

The Big Themes:Wake-up call for boards and C-Suites: What do we hear from victims? “We didn’t think we’d be a target.”In our emerging acceleration economy: Firms can’t afford the lost time, the lost revenue/added costs, the hit to reputation a successful attack causes.Firms must do six things well: Robust prevention, quick detection, defense in depth, keeping secrets secret, effective repair/restoration, and not keeping your eggs in one basket.Manage systemic risk, not just cybersecurity: If someone can waltz in and unplug the firewall, are you secure? The Big Quotes:“There's a John Chambers quote that I've used before. There are two kinds of companies: those that have been hacked, and those they don't know that they've been hacked.” “And if you're an executive and you had trouble understanding that, listen again, because nothing I said is very technical.” “If your systems are cruddy and 15 years old and not connected, you might be in a full-time hygiene mode.” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software. 

The Big Themes:Fundamental and important to the model: Data lakes, data hubs, data warehouses, data marketplaces – that’s a lot of data.Snowflake has popularized the concept: Other vendors are latching onto it – you could argue it is kind of revolutionizing that whole model.Google announced Dataplex: A data fabric for integration, and they also announced an analytics hub for data sharing and analytics, and sharing insights into the data stream.A definition of cloud computing: Still holds up to the light of day after 13 years – including databases and data sources across an enterprise. The Big Quotes:“So my working headline here is, ‘What is a data cloud?’ I've been hearing the term ‘data cloud’ a lot recently.” “I think that plumbing is involved, but it's less about plumbing and more about business strategy.” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software. 

The Big Themes:Where these two circles intersect: You could offer a core set of applications, and the ability for you to pick and choose some of these other applications that are available.We set up Lifion to build our Next Gen HCM: We had to build it not for just the up-market U.S. space, but we were also targeting U.S. HQ at MNCs and international companies.The numbers may vary: I’m just going to use that standard rule of thumb we follow is the 80/20 rule. Enterprise software is about 80% of the use cases.How do you operationalize that mission: I think the way we’re coming into the market is we are saying, “We all want to be there, and we truly believe that this is a tool that can help you get there.” The Big Quotes:“Now, the best part of working within the ADP ecosystem, is we can truly leverage some of these third-party applications via our marketplace.”“We probably do not give enough credit to some of the products that have come before us. They have been the ones who have done it for a while.”

The Big Themes:Plotted on a bell curve: Some are amazing, and some are terrible – and some are in the middle.Stability is not the issue: There’s capital behind these companies that give you the same amount of runway you could expect from any of the other kinds of companies.The term unicorn was coined: You needed to raise money at least a billion dollar valuation from one company in your portfolio to make that portfolio be a top performing venture portfolio.Microsoft and Nuance: You have the sales, the partnership, and the marketing muscle that a company like Microsoft can provide. The Big Quotes:“But the more interesting thing to me was that in the first five months of 2021, there were 187 companies that for the first time raised money at over a billion-dollar valuation.” “The thing that's more concerning to me is I think there's a lot of reflection we, as an industry, need to do on the right way to create healthy corporate governance among these companies.” “And I think it's time for CFOs to stop worrying about just doing the logistics.” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software.

The Big Themes:Abe Lincoln: Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four hours sharpening the ax.No analysis paralysis: As you prepare to lock down your decision, you must be sure that the core problem you’re trying to solve is clearly outlined in your statement of work.Don’t boil the ocean: Our magic number is around three alternatives that you’re shortlisting before making a final decision.These trusted partners: When you find a partner that can challenge your ideas and make you think outside the box, that’s definitely a sign of somebody that could really be beneficial for your project. The Big Quotes:“Certainly Raven Intel is a great place where you can get peer review information written by other customers.” “Celebrate your success in the end – and then do a look back and see what worked what didn’t.” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software. 

Just over a year ago, Howard Boville left his job as CTO at Bank of America to join IBM as senior VP of hybrid cloud. Boville joined Cloud Wars Live to discuss the big changes he’s been driving at IBM Cloud, the booming market for industry clouds that he’s been aggressively championing within IBM, and the colossal market for industry-specific solutions. A recurring theme for Boville throughout our conversation is the opening of Chapter 2 in the cloud story, where large enterprises that have been caught up in purely technology conversations have flipped the topic to the one that will drive real and meaningful transformation: business outcomes. Boville has not only some great insights to share, but he’s also a gifted speaker who employs colorful language and humor to drive home essential points.In this conversation, Boville shares his thoughts on the ongoing power of the IBM-SAP relationship, which is almost 50 years old, and on the essential need for deep industry knowledge.The Big Themes:We’ve done 6,500 projects: We’ve got 38,000 SAP practitioners. But we've actually got now the regulated cloud capabilities that allow customers to move forward with their projects.They will run on different types of silicon: We have x86, we have Power, we have Z, and we also have Quantum, and that will become fully onboarded beyond research institutions onto our cloud at the end of this year.You can start your digital transformation immediately: There are a lot of cases where we’ve taken two, three, four year projects down to two, three, four months. The Big Quotes:“But one other point I would make, which is again very important, is we don't see ourselves as competing head-to-head against the other cloud service providers.” “The case of cybersecurity is that threat factor never stops, so you always need to be thinking through different ways to actually protect through breadth and in depth.” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software.