Cloud Wars Live with Bob Evans

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. 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 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. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

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. 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 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. 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 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. 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 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. 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: 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 6In this episode, Tony and I start off by discussing how there is substantial increase in software products and services in the industrial marketplace – and how software companies really need to focus on customer success. He says he openly will throw rocks – and live in a glass house at the exact same moment.Tony says that in the spirit of eating their own dog food, Thomas has completely reconfigured over 400 seats of Salesforce and added a completely different order entry system. He says they also ripped out the entire financial software backbone – and installed several other systems to support the financial process.He talks of Regis McKenna, who was a hugely influential figure in Silicon Valley. He was responsible for a lot of the things we think about in modern marketing and positioning – including Apple and Compaq. And he talks of Jan Carlzon, who resuscitated SAS airlines in the 1980s. He’s written a book called “Moments of Truth."I mention the remarkable and unexpected changes taking place in the software world, such as the budding BFF relationship between former rivals Microsoft and Oracle. In the interest of driving more value for customers by helping them integrate software from Microsoft and Oracle, Larry Ellison went so far as to say the two companies now have a "great partnership." See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

“Wayne Sadin on Digital Strategy” episodes explore the fast-changing and high-stakes world of digital business. We focus in particular on what CEOs and boards must do to lead their companies successfully into the Digital Age. Today, we talk frankly about the recent Capital One data breach, whether AWS bears any responsibility for it, and how companies of all sizes should be thinking about security and the cloud.Episode 8In this episode Wayne and I discuss technical debt. I ask him is this technical debt in the financial sense of debt – or is it because you haven’t made the investments to keep up with modern technology? Wayne says it’s the latter. He says technical debt keeps you from delivering and executing on all the business strategies that leaders want and need.Wayne quotes a CEO as saying, “My Windows XP computer boots up every day, so what’s wrong?” He compares it to a P-51 Mustang fighter plane from WWII. Yes, Wayne says, you could do that – but if you go head-to-head against a Chinese MiG, who would win? Hackers, he says, are flying MiGs.Wayne goes on to say that Russell Reynolds coined the term “QTE,” which stands for qualified technology executive – an individual possessing a high degree of current technology-relevant domain experience. It was modeled after the Sarbanes-Oxley QFE – a qualified financial expert.Finally, he puts a plug in for the Digital Directors Network run by Bob Zuckis at USC. Membership is free for board-qualified technology and cybersecurity experts and corporate directors who want to develop their digital diversity skills in the corporate boardroom. 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 7In this episode, Chris and I start by discussing September 11. The 9/11 Memorial and Museum in New York is a profound experience that everyone should visit. Chris says he felt anger, emotion, and sadness – but he also felt uplifted. He said the wildest thing is it captures the worst of humanity and the best of humanity at the same time. I quote Virgil from the 9/11 Museum who said, “No day shall erase you from the memory of time.”On a lighter note, Chris says that approximately 50% of marriages originate digitally, according to Pew Research. And couples who meet online tend to communicate better and have longer and happier relationships. Chris says a trend now in marriages is putting pot in the wedding bouquet – and even in the floral arrangements at the dinner table. He then goes on to say that a future Google AI program will be spying on your baby – and that fires up his George Orwell.Chris had Eric Yuan of Zoom fame on his podcast. Zoom is now a $20 billion+ publicly traded company, and he created a tremendous amount of wealth for his employees and shareholders. Eric said, “I think it was a good thing that it was really hard for me to get into the United States, because it taught me as a young man perseverance.” 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: not just how products are designed, sourced and manufactured, but also the new ways in which industrial companies are getting up to speed on marketing, sales and customer experience.Episode 5In this episode: Tony and I discuss self-management, something that he says doesn’t get talked about enough. He says the emotional stamina required to run a business today is infinitely more difficult and more trying than it was even 10 years ago.Tony says there’s been nearly 200,000 robots purchased in the U.S. in the last seven years – and in those same seven years there have been 1.3 million new manufacturing jobs. He says he’s not a huge fan of the work-life balance; it’s not about how many hours do I spend working and how many hours do I spend in my personal life – it’s about how do you stay fresh. And finally, Tony says if you’ve lost your curiosity and passion for the industry, you might want to consider calling up private equity and deciding to get out. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Visit Cloud Wars for more.