Cloud Wars Live with Bob Evans

The Big Themes:Extremely unique in the industry: It’s not just about verticalizing one aspect of the cloud service – it’s bringing verticalization across the cloud services in a unified and seamless way.Tech intensity: That is about having the tools at hand to build a strong digital foundation, to allow you to be resilient and future-proof.The digital factory of the future: How do you have a rapid response for the supply chain – bringing together Azure HoloLens, as well as Dynamics 365.The end game: What you want to provide for your customers, and then what are the set of processes that you need to develop for that outcome. The Big Quotes:“This is a multi-year strategy, because we've heard from our customers that they need us to be a digital transformation partner and to help them continue to rapidly evolve and be future-proofed.” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software.  Visit Cloud Wars for more.

The Big Themes:Heading back to the office: The pendulum is swinging back in the other direction, and B2B or B2C becoming artificial boundaries.That’s part of our DNA: We’re a company that’s built around the notion of flexibility – and we can talk about it from a fan’s perspective.The CIO’s role has changed: My role is a leader first, and a businessman second, and a technologist third.Maintaining a culture of care: People really want to be here and they deliver excellence. This is not soft and fluffy – this is really the hard stuff. The Big Quotes:“And if you want to talk about culture and relationships and partnerships, this'll be a 14 hour podcast.” “We call them QuickFlex Walls and they can be assembled and disassembled in minutes, literally, with no tools, literally, and you can move them.” “We essentially took about 70% of the people in this building and moved them to a different part of the building, and we do that a few times a year.” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software.   Visit Cloud Wars for more.

The Big Themes:Turnover in a post-pandemic world. It appears that we’re going to see a higher level of turnover in companies as we come out of the pandemic. A year of forced locked down, a strong economy emerging and a sense of “a need for change” is driving this increase turn over. This is both a problem as well as an opportunity for business leaders today.Industry cloud: Market transition or marketing hype? The major tech players are jockeying for position to dominate the emerging position of vertical industry clouds. This is far, far more than simply new marketing nomenclature and positioning.Manufacturing is the next big tech market. Reshoring, the Buy American Act, the Berry Amendment have accelerated investment in technology and a pent-up economy are creating a massive sustained resurgence in manufacturing.This is also creating a massive opportunity for tech vendors: Many of whom have yet to really understand the depth of the market opportunity that manufacturing represents today. The Big Quotes:“We have a division called Thomas Industrial Data – now that we're selling data into hedge funds and private equity firms.” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software.  Visit Cloud Wars for more.

The Big Themes:Tens of thousands of people working in our vertical business: They have deep vertical knowledge and apply to some of our horizontal products, like ERP and CX.General contractors and subcontractors: 88% of users are small- to medium-sized businesses that make up the contractor/subcontractor community. It’s an easy and painless way to go to a pure click technology.We announced a partnership with Microsoft: For Oracle and Microsoft, we have exactly these types of scenarios, and we have interoperability among the cloud – both on the horizontal and vertical level.Self-healing, self-securing, self-patching: I think when you put those things together, the application is fully autonomous. The Big Quotes:“Our [industry] cloud business today is bigger than our traditional [industry] license business.” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software.  Visit Cloud Wars for more.

The Big Themes:We launched the Cloud Database Report in February: Sign up now via the Cloud Wars website.Moving data to the cloud is more complicated than it seems: Will your next database migration project take one year, or one click? Snowball, Snowcone, Snowmobile: Snowmobile is an 18-wheeler. It’s a tractor trailer that they back up to your data container and upload a hundred petabytes at a time.InterSystems has been around for 40 years: They have deep expertise and proven technologies, and they’re expanding into new spaces. The Big Quote:“I think of Snowflake as the Robinhood of databases.” This episode is brought to by BMC Software.  Visit Cloud Wars for more.

The Big Themes:Roaring 20’s redux: Fed Chair Jerome Powell said that the economy was at an inflection point: 6%-7% or more growth, and unemployment 4%-5%.Two books on strategy: “Post Corona: From Crisis to Opportunity,” by Scott Galloway. And “Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick” (McKinsey).Technical debt can sink you: But a due diligence approach can save you. The Forbes article by Noah Barsky offers great insights—as do Wayne’s comments.Board governance of technology: A certified board of directors spends 5% on cybersecurity – and hardly a word on other technology risks or opportunities. The road to perdition!The Big Quotes:“How intense is the war for talent? My number one trend over the last 30, 45 days is this: recruiters—the people doing recruiting every day for search firms or manufacturers or high-tech firms—are being recruited themselves to help find great new talent.”This episode is brought to you by BMC Software.  Visit Cloud Wars for more.

The Big Themes:$5 billion building and rewriting modern cloud apps: In the last few years we’ve really had all the ingredients, the products, the market, the technology – and so we’ve pushed it hard.We’re private and extraordinarily well-funded: That’s actually given us an advantage on that front. We are truly thinking in decades.Last mile functionality, last mile content: The solutions have to be architected in a way to address an adjacent set of industries.One throat to choke: We’ll have our services teams to partner with Deloitte or Accenture, or a typical SI. We’re clearly a part of this and are answerable to any issues. The Big Quote:“It does feel like companies want a return on their investment a lot more quickly because they're facing much more material business issues and disruption.” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software.  Visit Cloud Wars for more.

The Big Themes:Pet peeves: Not every manager is a leader. When you need a leader but hire a manager, you quickly realize that you’ve either hired the wrong person, or the wrong team—and it’s usually the wrong person.A culture of fear: What kind of culture do you have? How are you leading and how do you assess whether you’re courageous or not. You have to embrace the notion that everybody in your organization is a leader.We teach the Marine Corps how to be a leader: In bootcamp, I remember standing at attention in a chow line about half a mile long reading the Marine Corps book on leadership. So leadership can definitely be learned.Jack Welch is a classic example of someone who led with intent: You do not have to agree with the intent. That's not the point of this, but he said we would be number one or number two in every single market or segment we participated in. The Big Quotes:“It's not a 60-minute meeting for crying out loud. We have enough of those in our days, right?” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software.  Visit Cloud Wars for more.

The Big Themes:We’re getting back to normal – which is awesome: But the markets are crazy and the blank check companies – or SPAC as they’re often called – are red hot.Private schools are expensive: Do you want to get that Gulfstream or not?These magical moments: A lot of these companies want to delight their customers. They absolutely do make these companies more efficient.There’s a bigger mountain over there: We’re looking over there and saying it’s a ton of fun right now. The Big Quotes:“I think they will both be fabulously successful – great companies that are here to stay.” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

The Big Themes:Manufacturing is hot again: In this country there’s a Renaissance, I love it because I joined Thomas four years ago with the idea it is going to get white hot again.The millennial generation: Young people in particular are starting to imagine what their future might look like, and what manufacturing provides for them that other technology doesn’t.The Dollar Shave Club: The technology enabled the ability to create a subscription business out of razors into a retail outlet of my brand of razor.If you're a horizontal player: At some point you’ve got to understand that your entry into a marketplace needs to be vertical. The Big Quotes:“So the idea that a computer company could be a car company and a car company could be a computer company is not a reach today. It's a reality.” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software. Visit Cloud Wars for more.