Cloud Wars Live with Bob Evans

The Big Themes:Process geeks rejoice! Reimagining business process is the next frontier: New technologies; especially in AI and Machine Learning are enabling a complete reimagining of business processes, way, way beyond simple process improvements. They hold the potential to catapult business performance but require new ways of thinking about business process and how employees work with technology.“Nothing can happen for decades. And then decades happen in weeks.” Quote attributed to Scottish MP George Galloway. The COVID-19 pandemic has radically and irrevocably accelerated pre-existing trends. Eight weeks after the pandemic reached US shores eCommerce grew to 27% of retail, which represents a decade of growth in eight weeks. In essence business leaders are now running against 2030 expectations. This has huge implications for business leaders across most every industry.The pandemic will create a revolution in healthcare: 99% of people accessed healthcare during the pandemic, without setting foot in a doctor’s office, much less a hospital. This forced embrace of telemedicine will drive an explosion of innovation and holds the potential to materially change the burdens of the beleaguered US healthcare system. The Big Quotes:“The data shows maybe I don't need to go to from point A to point B to point C. Maybe I just go from point A to point Z.” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software. 

The Big Themes:The end of Silicon Valley: Elon Musk and Larry Ellison of Oracle are pulling up their tents and going to Texas.Eric Yuan, founder and CEO of Zoom: 2020 entrepreneur of the year: Eric Yuan. This one’s really obvious – he gave Zoom to the schools, and he had the biggest B2C growth stories in the history of the technology industry.Fender’s fabulous fret-filled adventure: Fender thought at the time that there would maybe be 100,000 people. The company set its sights on over 1,000,000 million people. Seven million PR impressions, 1,300 powerful stories, and 140 artists in social shares have resulted in a 150% increase in paid subscriptions.Don’t let them go on CNBC looking like a dork: The bottom line is to make your executives look good – not bad. The Big Quotes:“There's never been a greater time in history than right now – this moment right now to be in the information technology industry.” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software. 

The Big Themes:Strategic planning: Strategic planning is a lot about what you want to do – but also about what you’re able to do.True cloud-native ERP: That includes business intelligence, low-code, data lake – and is different from old-style on-prem ERP. Clients who haven’t seen this are just getting used to it.5G and other advanced networking: The bandwidth is terrific, but latency is the game changer for IoT apps, and other simplified “edge computing.”There are no stupid questions: If someone on CIO’s team makes a CEO or board member feel like he or she has asked a dumb question, get rid of that IT person. The Big Quotes:“How are you enabling? How are you empowering? How are you teaching them to think differently?” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software.  

The Big Themes:General contractor and owner: Eternal truth: it all comes down to motivating people – from high-tech to one of the most basic human activities, which is building a home.Men and women in uniform: Military members and veterans are great leaders and achievers. Can be enormous assets to businesses looking for character, achievement, team players.Fear kills: The only thing that sells better than sex is fear. Fear of being left out, and fear of not being in the group.The wooly mammoth: Sorry to say but some companies are wooly mammoths from bygone era—they’ve got 2 legs in the tarpit and don’t even realize they’re doomed. The Big Quotes:“You can avoid a lot of the chaos by simply understanding what makes people tick, and how to get the very best out of people.” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software. 

The Big Themes:Apple and a thousand Intel employees: The M1 chipset Apple wanted was a billion-dollar investment in 5G, which they did in 2019. Will Apple use M1 to go up against AWS?The 800-pound gorilla: Microsoft has a culture that looks less transactional and more collaborative. They are a Trojan Horse – and an 800-pound gorilla.Oracle and SAP are back at it again: They’re both creating elegant and powerful new apps for industry-specific solutions in what promises to be a huge new market.Transform the industry: How we can be business partners to transform healthcare, manufacturing, automotive, and mobility – and how to adjust those businesses over the next 12 to 18 months.The Big Quotes:“I literally can't come up with anybody other than potentially Jeff Bezos, who just wants to be CEO of this whole thing, who this isn't a win for spinning out AWS at this point.”This episode is brought to you by BMC Software. 

We spoke with David Trice, Honeywell Forge Chief Product Officer and General Manager Connected Buildings, in a Cloud Wars Live Perspectives. Here is our conversation.The Big Themes:Honeywell Forge: Enterprise performance management is bringing a new solution to the table – eliminating the barriers of complexity.Transforming into a software company: Honeywell is going to be a software company – and an industrial company.Mobile first software company: How you engage with the customer, how a building operates, how the supply chain operates, and what we do in the next step of our transformation.Reinventing everything: Honeywell’s business is to reinvent everything – from on-premise hardware driven-control systems to virtualized capability to digital transformation.The Big Quotes:“We understand, there's a lot of complexity. That's why we purpose-built Honeywell Forge to rethink the problem.”

The Big Themes:Mix of old school and new school: Know that there are different types of recruiters, just like there are different types of CXO executives and HR executives.The virtual employee: Bill Gates, Chairman and Founder of Microsoft is saying 50% of employees going forward will work from home – and 30% of office space will diminish.A huge gap in the industry: Bringing in diversity is a huge priority. Retaining talent so that they stay for 10 or 20 years is another goal.Looking ahead to 2021: The head of talent needs to be much more focused on earning the right to be a strategic partner and trusted advisor. The Big Quotes:“The head of talent acquisition really needs to have a seat at the table too.” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software. 

The Big Themes:A project leader: Who has enough political capital to see the effort through to the end – and people who are culturally aligned with them.Projects with poor technology succeed because of great teams: Projects with great technology fail because of bad ones. You choose which one.An experienced technical person: One who’s deeply and intimately familiar with the product idiosyncrasies and pitfalls – and is willing to take that chance.Commitment: Project team members who can stay throughout the duration of the project – both from the systems integrator side and the customer side. The Big Quotes:“I'm from Chicago. You always think of Michael Jordan, but really, and truly that was Phil Jackson that I would call the project leader.” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software.

The Big Themes:Seeing a shift from hyper-specialization: What are the implications for recruiting, retaining, and developing talent in today’s market? Will the era of collaboration give way to a more structured approach to building teams and organizational structures?Digital transformation is blurring the boundaries between domains: Technology is asking questions about finance. Finance is asking questions about sales. Marketing is helping to define core financial metrics.In a world where everyone has access: Same data, and same information. What sources can leaders turn to seek an advantage?The role curiosity plays: Business success will grow exponentially in the next decade. Leaders can see the patterns and the connections between various disciplines and functions. And data sets will become highly prized.The Big Quotes:“I think Steve Jobs took a lot of inspiration from just the relentless curiosity that Walt Disney had.”This episode is brought to you by BMC Software.

The Big Themes:A sprint to the finish line: Digital transformation doesn’t just mean changes in our business models. We’re seeing a fundamental change in our culture.Truly engaging with customers: Not only you are benefiting yourself, but you are also benefiting others – and that’s true empathy.Seven and a half billion people on this planet: We all want to be happy, and that journey to happiness is not a bad thing.Amazon makes zillions of dollars with Prime: If they say it’s going to be delivered on November 6th, and it shows up on November 5th you go wow!The Big Quotes:“Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary said, ‘If I had known that being nice to customers would have worked so well, I would have done it a lot sooner.’” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software.