Cloud Wars Live with Bob Evans

“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 talk 2020. Wayne shares his predictions, ideas and recommendations for boards and the C-suite.Episode 12In this episode: Wayne begins with the term “Shadow IT,” which are systems built within organizations and used without approval. He says, let’s do a little history lesson: In years past there were only mainframes. And then we had minicomputers, and they begat PCs, and people could say, “I can do stuff on this. I just need this thing on my screen.” And that turned into, “Why don’t I share that nice Excel spreadsheet with this other person?” And then that other person shared it with yet another person, and before long it gets published as one of the corporate financials.Wayne says there is a book by Fred Brooks called “The Mythical Man Month,” and it’s one of the seminal works of managing IT. Wayne says it talks about the notion that if I’m building a system for me it takes X effort. And if I’m building for other people, it takes three times that effort. By the way, Fred Brooks was the architect of the IBM System 360 software package – the biggest software product ever delivered.He says the problem with databases is they are being hit millions and millions and millions of times a day – or maybe billions if companies have an IoT situation. Organizations have machines sending machine messages, he says, and people don’t want to let end users into the database. He says it’s known colloquially as the query from hell.He says companies moving to a SaaS-based ERP, and a cloud-based ERP can get multiple benefits. Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, Workday, and others have what are called “data lakes,” which are structured and unstructured data.Wayne talks about “horses for courses” – if you’re changing something that touches the general ledger or is ever reported in external financials to investors or customers, you have to have a level of control. It’s not a free-for-all, and the system will magically keep you from doing a stupid thing when you’re making a calculation. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

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 10In this episode: Tony believes that 2020 will be the year where industry 4.0 really takes off. The increase he says, of products and services such as robotics, advanced manufacturing systems, additive manufacturing (a/k/a 3D printing), electronic components and sensors, have finally converged.Tony says that 5G will open up packets of information at volumes we haven’t dreamed of before. He says that 5G connected to additive manufacturing will put small manufacturing facilities closer to a company’s customers.Tony says that Apple, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are all manufacturers. But in a different era we would have said, “no, they’re software companies.” But if you actually look at the business they’re in, he says, enabling technologies are allowing us to rethink what is a manufacturing company.He says a Toyota plant in the Midwest did a $1.5 billion upgrade to every system – including AI and robotics. And here’s the kicker: It created more than 500 jobs.Tony says Boeing is struggling to figure out who the company is in today’s world. He says they made some really, really bad decisions. And because of that, Boeing’s very large customers are backing up and saying, “Maybe you aren’t who we thought you were.”Tony says when Steve Ballmer was the CEO of Microsoft, it was all about market share, and about why they were better than the competition. Fast-forward to Satya Nadella, who is now the CEO, and he’s talking about customer behavior and customer needs. And he’s talking about partnering with other corporations like Oracle and SAP.Tony’s podcast is on all the major platforms as well as ThomasNet.com. You can subscribe to Thomas’s daily email newsletter at thomasnet/insights. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

“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 talk 2020. Wayne shares his predictions, ideas and recommendations for boards and the C-suite.Episode 11In this episode: Wayne and I discuss how he works with a lot of manufacturing companies, logistics companies, and construction companies, and their technology stacks are 30, 40, or 50 years old. He says some of them are coming up to Wayne and saying, “What do we do to get started?”Wayne says people who define themselves as buggy whip manufacturers were passed by when the auto industry emerged. But people who define themselves as leather manufacturers switched to driving gloves and prospered. Defining your market really matters.Wayne says the power of AI and IoT is that you can flip a switch and pay a license, and all of a sudden be in the 21st Century. He says the modern ERP vendor says, “Oh yes, we can write that, we can modify that, and we can show you how to customize that.”He says Microsoft has done a terrific job in two areas: One is Active Directory, which shows your security environment and your management of privacy, and that’s now connected to the cloud. And number two is Azure Stack, which can take the code into your data center, and act as though you’re in the cloud.Wayne says 2020 is going to be a terrific year. The economy’s doing well, and his clients are pretty optimistic. Their businesses are growing and now it’s the challenge of keeping up with growth and keeping ahead of competitors. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

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 9In this episode, Sean and I discuss Slack. He says Slack has basically been slashed in half – $42 a share vs. $22 a share. Its market cap is $12 billion. Sean says what would these statistics be worth inside Oracle, Salesforce, Microsoft, or Google. He says that with some of the assets Microsoft has, LinkedIn plus Slack would be a very good combination. Sean says LinkedIn bought Lynda, a corporate education company, for $1.5 billion, but so far it’s been an accretive acquisition.He speculates Walmart has the potential to buy one or two very large companies – including FedEx, which he says would be a good acquisition – and maybe Shopify too. He says we’ll see a further investment in Walmart Labs, including new business models.He then turns to Amazon and AWS. He says he just can’t wrap his head around why Amazon won’t spin out AWS this year. He says he’s seen all the denials from the management team – but it just doesn’t make sense that they don’t want to do this. Sean says how does Walmart feel about cutting checks to AWS? I say that AWS will finish the calendar year with about $38 billion in revenue – placing them among the top seven tech companies.Sean says he’s not an economist, but his conclusion is that often companies are wrong. They often deliver with confidence and that confidence often turns out to be incorrect. The market almost certainly needs to correct in 2020.Sean’s podcast is Agile Giants, and it’s on all the major platforms. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

This episode is brought to you by Oracle.Sponsored ContentFor this sponsored Cloud Wars Live conversation, I spoke with Steve Daheb, Senior Vice President, Oracle Cloud. He starts with the Autonomous Database. Steve says quarter by quarter it’s growing by 100% and thousands of customers are running on it. It eliminates human error and it’s self-driving, self-securing, and self-repairing.Steve says with machine learning and other technologies, you don’t need a room full of PhDs to figure it out. Oracle has done the hard work for you so you can focus on what matters most for your company.He says it’s all about the perimeter and protecting the network. But he says users are the new perimeter and 70% of breaches are still happening internally to a company, and if that data isn’t encrypted – which was the case with one financial institution – you can lose a hundred million records because of internal malpractice. Steve says these breaches wouldn’t have happened on Oracle’s watch: they would have been self-patched. He goes on to say Oracle’s adding a new data center every day. In the last six months, it’s been Seoul, Mumbai, Sao Paulo, Zurich, Sydney and three DOD data center regions. Steve talks about how Oracle Cloud’s ERP is used by some of the biggest companies in the world – like Biogen, Cisco, MGM, Walgreens, and Swiss Post. They are all companies that are using Autonomous and Gen 2 together. He says it’s exciting to go into 2020 with this head of steam around Autonomous – and Steve Miranda, who is executive vice president, applications development – is leading the charge. This episode is brought to you by Oracle. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

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 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 9In this episode: Tony and I begin by discussing our recent experience at Carnegie Mellon University. Our Digital All-Star Sean Ammirati, who founded the Corporate Startup Lab, invited us to participate in a day-long event that touched on Disney+, the industrial IoT, data silos, and a host of other topics.Tony was with a company called Rodon, and they were launching a new product called “SillDry.” It’s for a commercial building where if you’re putting in windows you can make sure they stay dry. They built a rubber unit that goes into the application, and it fits in cleanly and easily.Later, he says he implemented the Harvard strategy of “Jobs to be Done” as a research methodology and formalized process. He says it was exhaustive, and Thomas did five-hundred 90-minute interviews. But, he says, the qualitative analysis is helping ThomasNet put the data into perspective, so they can see the patterns a little better.Tony talks about how workers on the factory floor are looking at real-time data and are better able to make decisions. They’re looking at customer orders, customer needs, and how many orders are shipping and where they’re being shipped. Everyone knows what’s going on.Finally, he says we don’t need managers – we need leaders.You can see the Thomas Industry Update podcast on every major platform – and on Thomasnet.com. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

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. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

“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. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

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. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

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. Visit Cloud Wars for more.