Cloud Wars Live with Bob Evans

The Big Themes: • Cheaper, faster, better: Technology is making all of our companies much more agile. And that’s what’s allowing all our companies to reshore. • Great jobs in manufacturing: There are great jobs out there, but people don’t seem to be taking them – perhaps because they are what Tony calls “new collar jobs” and people aren’t ready for them. • The gift of speed: CEO Marc Benioff of Salesforce says the big thing customers ask him for is the gift of speed. • Renaissance in apprenticeships: In the US there are more and more trade schools, but we’re still catching up with the rest of the world. For countries like Germany and others the idea of apprenticeships is a big deal. The Big Quote: “You look at Apple, you look at Amazon, you look at the most valuable – or at least perhaps the second most valuable car company in the world, Tesla. They’re all manufacturers.” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software.

The Big Themes: • The new, new normal – and the new abnormal. How many meetings have we had where somebody had a cat sitting on their head? • CIOs must drive speed, flexibility and innovation across their companies—Sense and Adapt at warp speed! • REI just built a huge new headquarters – and they’re never going to occupy it. The notion of work, is changing and we have to get used to it. • Not so long ago, a mainframe was lowered by a helicopter into the 35th Floor of an NYC bank building. At the time, it was pretty much normal. Now you have Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Oracle to do it for you. • Wayne Sadin is #2 on the Rise Global “IT Leader Power 100” list. “When you outgrow your IT strategy, call me!” The Big Quote: “I am a believer in science. I’m a believer in engineering. I believe in the human spirit.” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software.

The Big Themes: • Six months ago, would anyone on the planet believe that 20% of incoming Harvard freshmen would defer? Great example of the crazy times we’re in! • Sean’s message to those and other would-be college freshmen choosing to take a gap year: “Why don’t you spend that time starting your own business?” The course and content Sean’s developing for that are drawing a great deal of interest. • Disney purchasing TikTok makes a lot of sense – even Twitter purchasing TikTok makes a lot of sense. But Oracle or Microsoft? Crazy! • Ten years ago, when Oracle founder Larry Ellison bought Sun Microsystems, some people thought it was a brilliant move, but many that it was insane. But TikTok is the next level of crazy! The Big Quote: “TikTok is an incredibly popular social media platform, especially for the very young demographic.” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software

The Big Themes: • Bob poses the challenge: “My CFO is a real hard ass, and I think he or she is gonna really put me through the ringer. How do I turn her/him into a passionate advocate?” • On big projects, you have to put your best people on top. Assigning an average person to lead a project you are calling “essential” is a sure sign you’re not fully committed. • An emotional appeal and an aspirational appeal to the CEO and the CFO: Help *me* help *you* make the company better! It has to be personal as well as data-driven. • There's always going to be some bumps in the road. But if you have the right framework in place, you’re going to avoid those unexpected twists and turns. The Big Quote: “It's not even just getting at parity, you want to do something that's truly groundbreaking.” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software

The Big Themes: • Taken as directed, you should see a change in your digital transformation in a few weeks – as long as you read the message on the bottle. • It seems like a parlor trick, but with a facsimile of “Bob Evans” people can use AI and not have any idea that you’re an algorithm. • As a master storyteller and as digital leader you need to be crafting a vision of the future – and you need to get it right. • The movie “I Robot” is more prescient than you think. Maybe you should invite the hologram for Happy Hour; they’re great coworkers and not at all judgmental. The Big Quote: “And that's what I encourage every digital leader to be. They need to be a futurist.” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software

The Big Themes:The industrial sector realizes customer service is not enough—customer experience is the new priority.Everybody codes: some business executives are finding that a base level of coding expertise is helpful in steering digital strategy. Data literacy is rising across all job functions – being able to manipulate and analyze data is becoming a core competence.Where data makes a difference: today, only one in 10 molecules developed by the pharmaceutical industry ever make it out of clinical trials and into the marketplace.It's a wasted opportunity for online learning to be nothing more than a video image of a professor lecturing away. (Tony was raised by academics so he is a huge fan of higher education.) The Big Quote:“Apple is one of the most valuable manufacturers in the world, and so are Microsoft, Google, and Amazon.” This episode was brought to you by BMC Software  

The Big Themes: • If you’re a CEO, CFO, CIO, or board member – how “natural” and “normal” are your video meetings? Some suggestions on excellent and inexpensive gear to optimize effectiveness of video meetings. • You wouldn’t fly on a cropduster to meet a big client in person—so don’t use crappy video/audio gear to meet them online. • Embrace the OODA Loop: fighter pilot Colonel John Boyd invented the notion of an OODA loop – we Observe, we Orient, we Decide, we Act. That’s an ideal model for today’s sense-and-respond world. • As budget season approaches, some helpful hints on how to strategically set IT budgets to align with our always-on digital world. The Big Quote: “So over the years, I've amassed a whole bunch of toys that helped me work in what used to be airports. I remember airports.” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software.

For this episode of Cloud Wars Live, I talked with Oliver Schabenberger, EVP, COO, CTO at SAS.The Big Themes:· SAS and Microsoft have an important strategic partnership. Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization. SAS’ vision is to transform the world of data into a world of intelligence.· Digital transformation combined with increased connectivity is driving how to automate and simplify. The deluge of data is all about that.· It's always a technology problem – but it's never just a technology problem. It's a technology, people, and process problem.· Dr. Goodnight, the CEO and founder, will make no layoffs or furloughs during the pandemic, and that will never change.The Big Quote:“What we're seeing right now is a growth of data in two places – in the cloud and on the edge.”This episode is brought to you by BMC Software See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Big Themes:· The New York Times ad begins, “Dear Microsoft, big news and congratulations on today’s announcements. We’re genuinely excited to have some competition.”· The ad reeks of arrogance. And Slack is saying to the European Union, “it’s just not fair the way Microsoft is treating us.”· It’s time for Slack to be part of a different enterprise company, and maybe it’s Oracle, Salesforce – or maybe Microsoft will have pity on them and gobble them up.· The cloud space is only going to get more interesting over the next 12 months, as we rush to reinvent these industries and businesses and reimagine them.· Slack and Microsoft Teams are not anywhere near the same. Sean says, “when I get a link from a company that I’m working with, I grimace. It’s an absolutely terrible product.”The Big Quote:“The sad reality is Slack is worth more inside somebody else's enterprise today than it is alone.”This episode is brought to you by BMC Software See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Big Themes:· It’s a great time to connect with your customers and employees. Try new ideas, try innovation, try creativity, and don’t waste these opportunities.· Jamming 300 people into the same footprint is a myth. There’s not a shred of evidence that the open office makes people more productive.· Bill McDermott, CEO of ServiceNow said there will be times some people choose to work remotely – with childcare, parents, etc. – and sometimes you need to use the office as a “productivity tool.”· Thomas.net is now in the fourth wave of a monthly survey, and a surprising number of manufacturers are reshoring back to North America.· This is going to reshape global manufacturing for decades to come – and not just the areas we think about.The Big Quote: “What we're seeing is more robust hiring than we would have anticipated. Close to 40% of the companies are actually hiring right now.”This episode is brought to you by BMC Software See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.