Cloud Wars Live with Bob Evans

Each month, “Lochhead on Different” episodes will explore the need to differentiate people, products, and services in a world that encourages a lot of imitation. A best-selling author, top podcaster, and former tech-industry CMO, Christopher Lochhead is a student of not only business and technology and marketing but also human nature, human folly, human genius, and very human joy.Episode 8In this episode, Chris agrees with me that “Data is the new oil” is stupid. He says data is more valuable than cash. Data can be converted into value in more and powerful ways than cash. He goes on to say that cyberbullying is an epidemic, and that people of all ages are committing suicide as a result.According to IDC, Chris says, there’s going to be a 10X increase in the amount of data on planet earth –163 zettabytes. And according to Statistica, the average person – adults and children – will interact with a connected device nearly 4,800 times a day! Also according to Statistica, the Internet of Things will have 75.5 billion connected devices by 2025.Chris says there’s a company called DribbleUp, and they have created a “smart basketball," which tracks things and gives data back to your phone – and presents you with different and more effective ways of training and using the ball.Chris says there’s a term going around called, the “data flywheel.” Simply stated, the company that has the most data around who their customers are and what customers are purchasing. Chris and his partner Eddie Yoon co-authored a Harvard Business Review article that said the company with the fastest growing data flywheel is most likely the one who is going to be able to dominate that category, because their lead will soon be insurmountable.He says many concert tickets get sold on the secondary market – and are essentially digitally scalped. So Adele said on her recent tour, ”If we don’t solve this problem, somehow only the people who are in the audience are a bunch of rich people. I want to perform for my most enthusiastic fans – some might be rich, but others aren’t. So how do I allocate the tickets?” The solution was an algorithm. It was effective in getting tickets into the hands of fans who actually wanted to come – and that is an example of a data flywheel. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

“Sadin on Digital” episodes explore the fast-changing and high-stakes world of digital business. Wayne Sadin and I focus in particular on what CEOs and boards must do to lead their companies successfully into the Digital Age. Today, we explore how business leaders should hire CIOs. Because the industry is changing, and the role needs to change along with it.Episode 9In this episode, Wayne and I talk about how his Christmas present this year to his clients and potential clients is about what to think about next year. He says that all technology is not good technology – and it’s sometimes hard to tell the wheat from the chaff.He says there are too many things in the market called Fake Cloud. They sound like Cloud, they look like Cloud, but they just add to complexity and cost. And there’s a balloon payment due in the form of ransomware that holds your data for hostage.I tell him that this week Cloud Wars named Thomas Kurian the Cloud Wars CEO of the Year. Wayne says he put Google into the business of supplying Cloud to enterprises – and he says it’s a terrific choice for those of us that see Cloud as a place to put mature workloads.Wayne says everybody who has done a big ERP knows that if you’re not ready for a seven, eight, nine-figure investment, take a look at something else. He says technical debt comes in because clients don’t realize that every year they have to keep spending that. And by moving to SaaS, hyperscale Cloud, and modern ERP they can buy the product, pay their monthly fee, upgrade it maintain it – and not create technical debt.Wayne says blockchain is a solution in search of a problem. He says every problem that’s been brought to him he found a cheaper, simpler, easier way to solve it. Also, he says 5G will one day be a terrific product, but it’s just not ready yet. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Thomas Kurian has been CEO of Google Cloud just one year, and in that time he has transformed the organization.Thomas says Google started the year by focusing on changing to organization to be more customer-centric, and enabling the customer journey. He goes on to say if you’re talking to a financial institution, are there better solutions to do fraud detection, anti-money laundering? If you talk to logistics and manufacturing companies, how can I optimize the location of my fleet? How can I save money doing that better? How can I do scheduling better?He says everybody wants to create that magic moment with a customer.Thomas says there’s a scarcity of talent in AI and machine learning – at least people that do it well. He says Google’s approach has been to create a solution that helps people fundamentally improve the experience that their consumers have when they call the contact center – without having an army of people and expertise themselves. He says Google wants to enable organizations to be bold and brave – and don’t feel afraid of embracing technology.Thomas says there are different kinds of partners that customers have needs for – not just distributors and resellers, but system integrators, solution partners, and managed services companies. And he says they’ve really been pleased with the growth in the partner community.Thomas says Google has had customers tell us, “Hey, I've been told it'll take me 10 years to re-optimize my supply chain infrastructure – and what you guys delivered for me in four months is improving my inventory turns and my supply chain efficiency by 10 times.”Finally, Thomas compares this to running a marathon. He says there’s a great runner called Eliud Kipchoge who ran a marathon in two hours – something that people never thought possible. He says you have to be patient, but you have to have a sense of urgency – and the people who work at Google do both. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Each month, “Ammirati on Innovation” episodes will look at ways that the disruptive-startup mentality is spreading beyond young entrepreneurs to big established corporations. Serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist and Carnegie Mellon B-school professor Sean Ammirati, who sits at the intersection of these high-change dynamics, provides insight.Episode 8In this episode, Sean and I discuss how Disney+ had over 10 million people signed up in 24 hours – and they’re registering 1.2 million downloads a day on the app. He says his wife was one of the 10 million people who signed up for Disney+. And because he has two kids he says you need food, water, and Mickey Mouse.I told him about a guy who used to work for Oracle who said to Larry Ellison, “Hey Larry, we’re doing a lot of stuff here at Yahoo and we got a call from some people at Disney. And they asked if maybe we could discuss the opportunity of doing some things together. I don't know, what should we tell them?” Larry said, “Let’s see, they have the greatest movies in the world, they have theme parks, hundreds of millions of fans around the world, an incredible brand, loyal employees. You know, all these assets you’d die for. What does Yahoo have? Free news and email.”Sean says SAP is reimagining HR the transition from HCM to HXM – in other words, employees first. He says SAP is creating a whole new category, and he thinks that’s not going to be the last thing you’re going to see coming out of SAP.Salesforce and Microsoft were in a bidding war for LinkedIn, and Sean says what felt expensive for LinkedIn now feels awfully cheap with the HCM space heating up.Sean circles back to Disney+ and says the CEO of Netflix should figure out what to do to level the playing field. He says that his currency is down in the last six months, and he has less currency to deals than he did six months ago. Sean knows the history of AOL and TimeWarner. He says the world has changed and you need to scale to play in the game that Netflix and Disney+ a playing out today.The Agile Giants podcast is on all the major platforms. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Each month, Tony Uphoff, visionary CEO of Thomasnet.com, joins Cloud Wars Live for a recurring segment. “Uphoff on Industry” will explore the innovations, upheavals, and breakthroughs reshaping the the world of manufacturing and industrial markets. Join Tony and me as we discuss disruptive new trends in the digital-industrial world. These include how we design, source and manufacture products. And also the new ways in which industrial companies are getting up to speed on marketing, sales and customer experience.Episode 8In this episode, Tony and I begin with his podcasts, which are available at the Thomas Industry Update and on every major platform such as Spotify, Apple Podcasts, etc. Karen Norheim was on Episode 3. She is president and COO of American Crane & Equipment Corporation and Tony said she is doing some really innovative things.He says tariffs are constantly in the headlines, and you can’t predict the impact – we don’t know what’s going to happen. He suggests that companies are identifying localized supply chains as their backup – if not their primary.Tony says upwards of 75% of trading relationships are paid via a traditional purchase order or traditional check, rather than e-invoicing or electronic payments – which seems astounding to him.He goes on to say that, “Boy I outsourced my manufacturing to Vietnam.” If you own the supply chain, he says, you know how long it takes to ship it back – and the loss or breakage along the way.Tony says companies now have dashboards up in a centralized service area, and they will have a physical camera showing all the different components of their supply chain – so if anything were to happen, they can move in real-time.Tony says he gets several emails every day saying, “I stumbled across your profile, and I thought we should connect.” He imagines that if you’re an industry tradeshow and you see the CEO of a customer company and walk over and go, “Hey I just happened to stumble upon you.” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Each month, “Ammirati on Innovation” episodes will look at ways that the disruptive-startup mentality is spreading beyond young entrepreneurs to big established corporations. Serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist and Carnegie Mellon B-school professor Sean Ammirati, who sits at the intersection of these high-change dynamics, provides insight.Episode 7In this episode, Sean and I kick off with a new look at the evolving WeWork and Softbank story. Sean explores what it means that SoftBank chose to invest even more money into WeWork, and now owns about 80% of the business. Plus, the fact that the former CEO is making $180 MILLION during the transition! I think we all can agree, that’s a pretty good consulting package.In our last podcast episode, Sean compared WeWork to a real estate business. Now he says it’s basically a rental car company: they buy expensive fixed assets, and then they rent them out in very short units of time. But there are still reasons for optimism. For example, Sean says, Amazon has 5,000 WeWork desks in New York alone.We also debate whether the SoftBank decision to keep WeWork running is a smart one. Are they following the sunk cost fallacy? Or doubling-down on their belief in WeWork’s ability to lead the transformation of work trend? Sean quotes hedge fund manager Howard Marks, who says, “To be a great investor you need to be two things: you need to be contrarian and correct.” SoftBank is definitely being contrarian. Only time will tell if they’re also correct.Sean and I then jump to a discussion of a few of the Cloud Wars Top 10 vendors. I have some questions for Sean about ServiceNow, which now has Bill McDermott as CEO. You could argue that it’s the #1 most innovative company in the world; it’s growing at 35% and approaching a billion dollars in revenue per quarter.Finally, we have a high-level discussion of innovation. Sean says his employer, Carnegie Mellon, has been ten years ahead of the world in AI – they were using self-driving cars in the aughts. Innovation works differently everywhere. But some recent moves by Microsoft, Amazon and Google to take a leadership position in AI indicate that the time for widespread, non-stop innovation is NOW. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

SPONSORED CONTENTThis episode is brought to you by Cloudera.For this sponsored Cloud Wars Live conversation, I spoke with Mick Hollison, CMO of Cloudera. Mick just came back from a Cloudera customer event in New York City called Strata Data, in which they unveiled the new Cloudera Data Platform to the world. He said customers wanted it to be open-source, open APIs, open compute, and open storage.Mick quotes Peter Levine of Andreesen Horowitz, who says the early phase is dictated by convincing developers and technologists to start programming; the next phase is to get users; and the third phase is how to extract meaningful analytics and insight from the data.He goes on to say that they have a customer, Komatsu, which makes massive mining equipment costing hundreds of millions of dollars. Cloudera put sensors on the devices to ingest the data, analyze it, and then predict what was going to happen to the machines. The machines, by the way, literally sink into the earth.Cloudera recently announced that the Cloudera Data Platform is available on AWS – and coming up shortly, on Microsoft Azure. And early next year, Google Cloud Platform. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Each month, Tony Uphoff, visionary CEO of Thomasnet.com, joins Cloud Wars Live for a recurring segment. “Uphoff on Industry” will explore the innovations, upheavals, and breakthroughs reshaping the the world of manufacturing and industrial markets. Join Tony and me as we discuss disruptive new trends in the digital-industrial world. These include how we design, source and manufacture products. And also the new ways in which industrial companies are getting up to speed on marketing, sales and customer experience.Episode 7In this episode, Tony and I discuss the passing of Mark Hurd, co-CEO of Oracle. He says he could be tough, but Tony had huge admiration for his business acumen.He goes on to say that there’s really cool technology around what’s called “smart warehousing,” where they’re combining man and machine to automate and improve efficiencies.Tony was invited to give a keynote address at the Electronic Components Industry Association (ECIA), and he spoke about data and research. When he got off the stage, somebody used the expression, “You punched us right in the face with the reality of where our buyer’s going – even if we didn’t want to hear it.”Tony was also on Fox Business News, and talked about the state of U.S. manufacturing. Prior to his appearance, the stock market tanked by 500 points. He says it was a fascinating time to go on the show, since the markets were reacting to the ISM survey of manufacturers.Tony says that your prospective customer knows more about your products, your offering, your competitors, and the marketplace than your best sales rep could ever know.Tony has a new podcast called “Thomas Industry Update.” Their first guest is Anne Evans, director at the Department of Commerce, who is helping U.S. companies understand the complexities of exporting. It’s available on all platforms: www.thomasnet.com/update. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

“Sadin on Digital” episodes explore the fast-changing and high-stakes world of digital business. Wayne Sadin and I focus in particular on what CEOs and boards must do to lead their companies successfully into the Digital Age. Today, we dive deeper into a topic we’ve touched on a couple times before: “technical debt.” Through some evocative metaphors, Wayne explains why it matters—and how to avoid it building up.Episode 9In this episode, Wayne and I talk about the CIO. He says the CEO gets the CIO they settled for. If the CIO can’t hit your strategic agenda, and help you become a partner, and move the business forward, you’re setting your sights to low. Don’t settle, he says, for a mediocre CIO.He says the CIO needs to get on the truck if you deliver things. Get in the warehouse if you store things. Get on the factory floor if you make things. Go on a sales call and see what happens when your salespeople get tossed out on their ear.He then goes on to say that most executives work in vertical silos – as in, I’m in charge of department A or B or C. But he says the CIOs who are effective get out of that way of thinking, and start thinking of themselves as the Chief Process Person.He tells the story of how he asked a CIO, “What do you think is your biggest accomplishment.” And the CIO said, “Oh, it’s really simple. My IT budget was 0.91% of sales, and I was able to keep it to 0.88% of sales.” Wayne says that’s just nuts – what if they had given him 0.03% of sales to focus on top line innovation, or process improvement, or customer satisfaction? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Each month, “Ammirati on Innovation” episodes will look at ways that the disruptive-startup mentality is spreading beyond young entrepreneurs to big established corporations. Serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist and Carnegie Mellon B-school professor Sean Ammirati, who sits at the intersection of these high-change dynamics, provides insight.Episode 6In this episode, Sean and I discuss the pain and suffering at WeWork, which had roughly a $50 billion market cap, and is now struggling to do one-third that much. Their CEO, Adam Neumann voted to oust himself amid various scandals, and their “community adjusted EBITDA” he calls a made-up metric.SoftBank, their largest investor, was poised to push for an IPO, but Sean says WeWork was a $10 billion great idea – not a $50 billion great idea. He says this was always, at the end of the day, a real estate business, and he compares it to CB Richard Ellis – although with a 5x valuation. And Sean says it turns out that beer and kombucha on tap is expensive – and there’s a lot of that in WeWork spaces.I tell him about my experience eating seal meat with SoftBank. Sean says I should have moved it around on the plate and hope something else comes along. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.