Cloud Wars Live with Bob Evans

Bonnie Tinder is the founder and CEO of Raven Intelligence, an independent B2B peer review site that amplifies the voice of the customer. She focuses on software customers, consulting partners, and software vendors and helps identify the best partners for their needs. In this episode, Tinder joins Bob Evans to break down what's next for Oracle and SAP, exploring AI-native applications, agent ecosystems, and data openness, while offering sharp, practical insights into how enterprises can extract real value from AI innovation.Episode 55 | Oracle, SAP, and the AI ShiftThe Big Themes:Oracle's Upcoming AI Agent Marketplace: One of Oracle's most anticipated announcements is the launch of an AI Agent Marketplace. This platform will act like an app store for AI-powered agents, opening new monetization paths for partners and developers. It will enable third-party vendors to sell industry-specific agents and tools, further enriching Oracle's AI ecosystem. This move reflects a broader strategy to position Oracle not just as a cloud provider but as a facilitator of innovation across its partner network.SAP's Bold Vision: SAP is preparing to reveal its most radical AI shift yet—positioning AI as the primary user interface across its suite. Powered by Joule, SAP's AI assistant, users will be able to interact with software through natural language instead of traditional menus or clicks. Tasks like requesting time off or checking budgets will be handled conversationally. This paradigm shift moves SAP from system-of-record software to intelligent systems-of-action.AI Recruitment Tools Rise: Both Oracle and SAP are doubling down on AI-enhanced recruitment tools. SAP's acquisition of SmartRecruiters and Oracle's industry bundles for talent management signal a strong push into AI-driven hiring. AI is being used to streamline candidate engagement, improve matching, and personalize outreach. While some fear AI may displace roles, enterprise vendors are positioning it as a tool to find the right people faster.The Big Quote: ““The hardest part of any of these transformations is the change management piece, and if AI can help make that change easier, faster and more comfortable for all the stakeholders—that's the name of the game." Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I look at what the launch of Microsoft Marketplace means for frontier firms and innovation at scale.Highlights00:09 — Microsoft has announced that it's combining the separate marketplaces for AI business tools into a single offering called Microsoft Marketplace. The aim is to deliver these solutions as an extension of Microsoft Cloud to support what Microsoft describes as "frontier firms" — firms that blend human ambition with AI-powered technology.00:37 — Microsoft Marketplace combines Azure Marketplace and Microsoft AppSource, enabling users to quickly and easily test, purchase, and deploy cloud solutions, AI applications, and crucially, agents. Now currently available in the U.S., the new marketplace is expected to launch for global audiences soon.01:01 — By combining the offerings from Azure Marketplace — which focuses on cloud-related infrastructure platforms and SaaS — with Microsoft AppSource — its marketplace for business applications, productivity tools, and applications built on the Microsoft technology stack — enterprises now have access to a comprehensive range of tools.01:24 — This is just the latest in a series of moves by Microsoft to simplify AI adoption and implementation for its enterprise users. Similar to its decision to make Copilot Studio a two-tier service, Microsoft isn't reinventing the wheel. Instead, it continues to provide services tailored to AI innovation while using familiar tools for users. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I examine how Christian Klein's stance could shift the entire European tech economy away from imitation toward AI-driven transformationHighlights00:20 — A few months ago a lot of countries within Europe were saying, “What we need to do is build hyperscalers to match the ones based in the U.S.” Now, SAP CEO Christian Klein stood up and said, “That's nuts. Let's not do that. There's a very different way to go on this.” And over the past few weeks, we've seen some significant investments coming from SAP.01:12 — The investments are great, and all those ideals about wanting to have data privacy, data security, all valid in the AI Revolution. What really stood out here, more than these investments, was: think about what might have happened had the European Union spent trillions of dollars to keep up with the hyperscalers.02:10 — SAP has a whole new plan for the sovereign cloud. Its Executive Board Member Thomas Saueressig has been involved in this. He said, “We want to have a sovereign cloud that gives the greatest safeguards and compliance to customers, and also gives them a great deal of choice. We want to keep this open for lots of partners to work with us.” But that's the direction it's taking. 03:13 — So, we've got SAP pledging to invest, over the next few years, $22 billion in its sovereign cloud. Just the other day, I noted something about how Oracle, Microsoft, and OpenAI—now it's about a trillion dollars that they're pumping into these AI data centers. That's really not the place for the European economy to go. And I give Christian Klein credit:.04:14 —SAP partner AWS has now pledged about $8.5 billion for the AWS European Sovereign Cloud. I also thought it was interesting that SAP Chief Technology Officer Philipp Herzig came said, “We've got cloud sovereignty, we've got data sovereignty—now we need to be sure that SAP is a leader in AI sovereignty.”05:00 — So, fascinating time here on the technology front. I think SAP is going to continue to do very well with its sovereign cloud efforts. But I think even more than that, its CEO, Christian Klein, really stood out. He did a great service by getting them off of this idea of imitating what's already been done. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I explore Microsoft's new Facilitator Agent in Teams and how it's quietly revolutionizing meeting collaboration through agentic AI.Highlights00:07 — Microsoft has added a Facilitator Agent to Teams. This new agent can create agendas, take notes, help keep discussions on track, create follow-ups, and even pressure-test discussion points. There's a difference between this agent and other note-taking and summarization tools already available. The Facilitator Agent participates in the discussion, as a silent partner.00:41 — It can alert users when time is running out and ensure that participants don't stray too far from the core discussion points. It can even answer open-ended questions during a chat.Now, as someone who has a lot of online meetings, I can really see the benefits here — not only from a time management and efficiency perspective, but also from a collaborative standpoint. 01:22 — It's important to highlight innovations like these that, at first glance, don't seem particularly new or exciting — especially when we think we already have the capabilities that they are presenting at our fingertips. Instead, this demonstrates the incremental progress happening in the agentic AI space. It's encouraging to see refinement in core use cases. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I explore how Microsoft and Oracle are battling for AI data center supremacy.Highlights00:15 — I want to talk about a couple of high-disruption companies — actually, three: Microsoft, Oracle, and OpenAI. And I think right now, it's safe to say that those three companies, together with SoftBank, are pursuing investments upwards of a trillion dollars in what they're calling AI data centers. I think this is a great thing for them to do.01:19 — Microsoft has become more vocal about its role and leadership in these areas. Oracle, OpenAI, and SoftBank are jointly building what is called Stargate, sort of the infrastructure brand for OpenAI. Now, Microsoft has introduced its own brand for its AI data centers, Fairwater. It's in the final stages of building what it is calling the world's most powerful AI data center.02:18 — And I have no doubt that fairly soon, we're going to hear from Google Cloud about some of its plans. I am less sanguine, in some ways, about what Amazon and AWS might do. I know that runs contrary to what a lot of people like to say — that AWS is still the king of the cloud. I haven't — you know, I just haven't taken that seriously in the last two or three years.03:14 — So, Microsoft is doing very well with AI. Now, OpenAI, led by Sam Altman — they're still doing some work with Microsoft on the cloud and AI. But it's putting — starting in a year or two — a $300 billion investment with Oracle to build a chain of just absolutely staggeringly big, powerful data centers under the Stargate name.04:09 — It'll work with Oracle very closely on that. They're also — in concert in some places and separately in others — pursuing some new data center deals with SoftBank. So OpenAI is working with Microsoft, working with Oracle, working with SoftBank — all in different ways. Oracle also has its own data center network for its rapidly growing cloud and AI business.05:01 — So lots of talk right now, lots of action, lots of investment going into this. But ultimately, the beneficiaries of all this incredible — what I think is unprecedented — competition, will be businesses and regular individuals like you and me. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I look at how Oracle's new co-CEOs plan to blend AI, OCI, and industry expertise into a powerful growth equation.Highlights00:13 — Big things happening at Oracle. Safra Catz has stepped over and up to the role of Executive Vice Chairman, opening the door for two new CEOs at Oracle: Clay Magouyrk, the leader of their Oracle Cloud Infrastructure business, and Mike Sicilia, the leader of their industries business. I thought it was fascinating.01:00 — Mike Sicilia, co-CEO, said in this discussion with financial analysts that AI enables new opportunities across industries, not just within an industry. With AI and better sets of data and being able to use OCI's computational power of OCI, new operating models and relationships can be created across industries like banking and healthcare and many other combinations.02:25 — And so he said the foundation on the technology side — which Clay Magouyrk has been leading so much — is to enable all the leading large language models to work with enterprise-level data in a highly private and secure, fully compliant way. That's why the Oracle Database 23AI was specifically designed for that.03:22 — Now I think this is one of those cases where we see companies pushing a vision. In this AI revolution, it's important for that vision not just to be a slightly better version of what we've done in the past, but something completely different. I think big vision, big imagination, and big risk-taking are called for here.04:34 — Then, closing out the call, we had comments from Magouyrk and Sicilia, and in a longer article today on Cloud Wars, I go into some detail on that. I allow Sicilia to explain with a lot more color how these cross-industry ecosystems will work, and Magouyrk also offers some perspective on that. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I dive into how the U.S. House of Representatives is reversing its ban on Microsoft Copilot, signaling a major shift in government AI adoption and a strong endorsement for Microsoft's AI capabilities.Highlights00:07 — Last year, staffers at the U.S. House of Representatives were prohibited from using Microsoft Copilot with official documents. This was due to concerns about House data security. Now that decision has been overturned. Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House of Representatives, said that technology could unlock extraordinary savings for the government, "if we do it right."01:10 — This news has two key takeaways. First, as Speaker Johnson stated, the U.S. government wants to win the AI race. To achieve this, it must lead by example. This approach not only helps to instill public confidence in the technology, but also demonstrates direct support for the companies it hopes will drive U.S. dominance in AI.01:39 — Secondly, this serves as an excellent advertisement for Microsoft — in particular, for Microsoft Copilot. With the House of Representatives selecting Microsoft Copilot as the first widely implemented AI technology to be rolled out to staffers — I say first because more initiatives are in the pipeline — they couldn't provide a more authoritative endorsement.  Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I analyze Larry Ellison's decision to appoint Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia as the company's new co‑CEOs.Highlights00:21 — Oracle's entering a new era now with two new co-CEOs being named to replace Safra Catz. On Monday, Oracle announced that Safra Catz, is going to be stepping out of the CEO role and becoming executive vice chairman. She clarified in a follow-up call that she's still an Oracle employee.01:10 — She'll still be there, eager to work with the two new CEOs along with Larry Ellison, as they've done, but that it's time for her, she said, to hand over the reins of CEO. Both Catz and Ellison appear to be extremely confident and bullish on the capabilities of the two new CEOs, Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia. Why these two? Why now?02:15 — Magouyrk has been the leader of OCI, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. He's been the one behind a lot of the plans that has made OCI one of the fastest-growing businesses the tech industry has ever seen. The other executive, Mike Sicilia, came in as part of Oracle's industry solutions unit through the Primavera acquisition, focused on project management.03:07 — Sicilia has gotten deeply into the business models of various industries: the way they use technologies, the way they want to use technologies, and how AI can be a true game-changer for their revenue models. They've been picked because Ellison believes that they can pull off his ultimate vision: hardware and software engineered together to drive incredible performance.04:10 — They become indistinguishable, so their performance gets much greater, and that is going to be so important here in the AI Revolution. Also, Oracle wants to build this notion of fully integrated, end-to-end industry suites — not just, you know, complementary suites for HR or finance or ERP, but rather industry-specific solutions.04:46 — Why is the co-CEO model appropriate here? I have not been a fan for a long time of the co-CEO model, but here's why I think it makes sense. Somebody had to come in and replace the legendary Safra Catz. That's huge shoes to fill. I think it's good for the two of them, Sicilia and Magouyrk, to know that neither of them is going to be expected to be a one-for-one replacement for Safra Catz.05:24 — Larry Ellison, as always, has set a wildly ambitious technology agenda for the company. So, in addition to running the technology parts of their business, they're going to have to handle all the other things that a CEO has to handle — from finances and Wall Street investors to more. They've also got to fill what is rapidly approaching a half-trillion-dollar pipeline.06:01 — I think Larry Ellison said in the press release announcing this, “I look forward to spending the coming years working side by side with Magouyrk and Sicilia.” Ellison is signaling he's not going anywhere. And Catz said again, she's not disappearing. We'll be talking lots more about this and related issues in the weeks to come, leading up to Oracle AI World, October 13. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I break down Microsoft's historic $30 billion investment in UK AI infrastructure — and what it really means for the balance of power between global tech giants and national innovation.Highlights00:05 — Microsoft has announced plans to invest $30 billion in AI infrastructure and ongoing operations in the UK. The investment includes $15 billion for capital expenditure to expand Microsoft's data center footprint in the UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Microsoft's landmark investment is a powerful vote of confidence in UK leadership in AI and cutting-edge technology.01:07 — This announcement was made during Donald Trump's second state visit to the UK. Accompanying him during this journey were Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. The U.S. tech industry holds significant bargaining power. A collaboration like this is incredibly important for a country like the UK.01:35 — However, I'm also reminded of comments made by Siemens CEO Roland Busch and SAP CEO Christian Klein, who urged the EU to reconsider its AI legislation, arguing that current laws were causing Europe to fall behind. There's a risk that countries like the UK, despite financially benefiting from AI investment, will ultimately serve as a conduit for U.S companies. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I explore how the long-dismissed "legacy" giant Oracle continues to defy the odds and outperform expectations — particularly in the cloud database space.Highlights00:14 — It's interesting what a little bit of time reveals to us. I was looking over Oracle's numbers last week. It made me think back not too long ago, 10–12 years, we heard about all the Oracle Database killers, these startups with different companies that were going to knock Oracle off. So that whole fantasy fizzled.01:42 — There were some wild fantasies that some high-level executives were willing to attach their names to publicly. So here's a good one: The Oracle killer, was supposedly a new project by AWS — a database service 10 years ago, a database migration service brought out by AWS. It had been out for one week, and Business Insider called it the Oracle killer.02:26 — The former MongoDB CEO, in multiple articles, prophesied Oracle's doom. He said they'd lost the heart and soul of the developers, that they were legacy, that they couldn't keep up. I wonder what this guy's doing now — see if he's got his storyline a little bit more tightly fastened to what reality is doing.03:02 — We see that Oracle's cloud database services for Q1, which ended August 31, were up 32% to almost $700 million — so getting close to a $3 billion annualized run rate. And its multi-cloud business — where they've got the Oracle Database that wasn't killed, now being sold by Microsoft, AWS, and Google Cloud — that revenue was up over 1,500%.05:10 — I love these startup tech companies — they're creating lots of new value. It's when one, two, three, or four of those startups start chirping about how they're going to rule the world soon, and they're going to be the “so-and-so killers.” That, to me, is a good sign that you should look elsewhere to give your business. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I explore Workday's bold entry into the ERP space and share insights from my interview with Gerrit Kazmaier on how AI and data are reshaping enterprise software.Highlights00:24 — Last week, 30,000 people were at Workday's big Rising event in San Francisco. I had a chance to sit down with Product and Technology President Gerrit Kazmaier to talk about his views on how the Workday approach to ERP is going to be different from what we see from other players.01:08 — Kazmaier brings enterprise applications, data, data cloud, hyperscale — all those different backgrounds, expertise, and experiences — to Workday. And now he's taken a very aggressive agenda in these first six or seven months, leading up to this notion of ERP. Workday moved into the ERP space with a lot of new introductions, agents, and more at last week's Rising event.01:48 —And a couple of things that Kazmaier talks about: Kazmaier believes the ERP concept is right — giving business leaders a chance to see what's going on inside their companies from multiple perspectives with fully integrated applications. But he feels that the tools have been outdated, too difficult, too slow, too fragmented.02:08 —So Workday, although for its first 20 years had avoided getting into ERP, now feels that the time is right to give huge value to customers. Also, for the Data Cloud, it's now got partnerships to enhance the way it's able to give customers better use and value from the data they have. These include partnerships with Databricks, Snowflake, Microsoft, and Salesforce.02:54 —So that full interview with Gerrit Kazmaier, President of Products and Technology at Workday, is coming up here. It's got not just him in a new role, but also Rob Enslin, over the last several months, as Chief Commercial President and Chief Commercial Officer, and a new Chief Technology Officer, Peter Bayless, who came to Workday from Google Cloud. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In this episode, Bob Evans chats with Gerrit Kazmaier, President, Products and Technology, Workday. They explore how Workday is evolving into a platform company, the role of AI agents in reshaping enterprise workflows, and why trust, accuracy, and extensibility are key to future-ready business solutions. Kazmaier also discusses Workday's approach to ecosystem innovation and composable ERP.Workday's AI FutureThe Big Themes:AI at the Core: Workday is reshaping how enterprises operate by embedding AI into the core of their business processes. This isn't about slapping AI onto legacy systems as a side panel or assistant. It's about redefining how people work, with AI-led experiences, purpose-built agents, and intelligent orchestration. From onboarding to payroll, Workday is transforming each layer of the enterprise with tools that understand business context.Open Platform and Data Integration: Customers demand flexibility and interoperability. Workday is responding by making openness a foundational principle — not just a tagline. Through partnerships with Snowflake, Databricks, Microsoft, and Salesforce, Workday ensures that enterprise data is not locked away but is seamlessly integrated across platforms. Whether you're building a forecasting model in Snowflake or enriching financials in Workday, the data now flows freely.Workday's Focus: Kazmaier referenced a quote: “Technology evolves from primitive to complex to simple.” Today's ERP systems sit in the “complex” phase — bloated, hard to manage, and expensive. Workday's goal is to move ERP into the “simple” era. That means intuitive, intelligent systems that just work — powered by AI, open by design, and personalized for each user. The aim is to empower CEOs to drive outcomes, and employees to thrive at work, without wading through process chaos or outdated tools.The Big Quote: “I frankly think that today, the default is that vendors have a slew of generic agents, they hand them over to their customers, and wish them good luck in figuring out how it's supposed to work. When we say, open AI platform, I talk about purpose-built frameworks and tools like our new Agent Builder . . . so that you can seamlessly compose, you know, workflows in the definition and context of your business and expect them to work with high accuracy and reliability, without becoming an AI expert yourself."Learn more:Follow Gerrit on LinkedIn, and read more about Workday and agentic AI. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I look at Microsoft's decision to bring Copilot into the living room through Samsung TVs and monitors.Highlights00:02 — Copilot will be launched on select Samsung TVs and monitors. David Washington, Partner and General Manager of Microsoft AI, stated, “Copilot on Samsung TVs and monitors brings AI out of your pocket and into the heart of your home."00:37 — Interestingly, Copilot will not just appear as a logo or button on smart TVs and monitors. Instead, it will take the form of an animated character that reacts and lip-syncs while conversing with users. The small responses will not be limited to just text and voice; they will also be represented through flash cards, including ratings and other important details.01:17 — As users begin to encounter Copilot in multiple places throughout the day — whether while writing in a Word document, using their phones, or ultimately switching on their TVs or monitors — the presence of Copilot will become normalized. For me, this is the most important takeaway from this significant extension to Microsoft's existing partnership. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I look at Workday's bold pivot into the ERP market — after 20 years of steering clear.Highlights00:14 — Workday has been having a lively week here in San Francisco at its big Rising event. But I think the biggest news here is that Workday says that after 20 years of saying, "Hey, we don't do ERP," now Workday's going into the ERP market. But they say it's ERP for the AI Era, it's going to be powered by agents and AI.01:05 — It introduced a fleet of new agents that will become available later this year or into 2026. Workday introduced its own Data Cloud. Workday is striving, it said, to be the most open platform company, the most open agents-and-applications company. They're applying more AI into all parts of their core platform and their existing applications.01:59 — They're making it easier for developers to jump into this new AI and ERP world, where they are leveraging very aggressively 20 years of HR and financial data. And of course, now, with their Agent System of Record, Workday says it can not only help you manage your people and your money, but also your agents. So again, all of this is bound into their new approach to ERP.03:06 — Now, Snowflake calls itself the AI Data Cloud. It's had a partnership with Workday. It's expanded that so Snowflake users can easily access all their Workday data and vice versa. Workday will make it as easy as possible for customers to take full advantage of its data, to tie processes together, to get agents to work together in seamless ways, and more.04:06 — It's always been moving in this direction, but with its full embrace now of ERP, rather than in the past, when it either tried to pretend ERP didn't exist, or that it was above that, and they were leaving that to what they always referred to as the legacy players, or the dinosaurs.05:00 — The good news is, with all of this, ERP continues to be — in its new modular form — agent-driven. It continues to be an essential force for companies to run their businesses as well. Glad to see Workday get into this. The competition is going to be great for Workday. It's going to be great for its competitors. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

Gary Miller, Executive Vice President and Customer Success Officer, Oracle, talks to Bob Evans about how Oracle is helping customers navigate their AI journeys — whether they're just starting out or scaling enterprise-wide adoption. He shares how Oracle is embedding AI across its entire technology stack, aligning partner and customer success strategies, and empowering organizations through tools like Cloud Success Navigator, Innovation Studios, and democratized AI training to deliver real, measurable business value.AI-Powered Customer WinsThe Big Themes:Embedding AI Across the Entire Stack: Oracle is not just adding AI as a feature — it's fundamentally integrating AI into its entire technology stack. Gary Miller notes that many customers are surprised to discover that large language models are being trained and deployed on OCI, and that hundreds of AI capabilities are embedded directly into Fusion Applications and Oracle Database. Once customers understand this depth of integration, they quickly shift from curiosity to action, asking for guidance on how to adopt AI now, what use cases to prioritize, and how to define success.Cloud Success Navigator Is Central to AI Adoption Strategy: The Oracle Cloud Success Navigator has emerged as a pivotal tool for AI and cloud adoption. What started as a promise in a previous conversation is now a robust, free digital platform that helps customers and partners create innovation roadmaps, prioritize features, and accelerate time to value. With over 6,000 customers and 235 partners using the platform since March, the tool enables organizations to track over 11,000 adopted features — including 450 AI-specific ones.AI World 2025 Will Spotlight Real Customer Outcomes: At the upcoming AI World 2025 event, Oracle plans to go beyond product announcements to highlight customer success stories. Miller will host a keynote titled “Bold Outcomes,” featuring innovative customers and partners sharing their journeys. Oracle is also gamifying the learning experience with “AI Industry Adventure,” a theme-park-style game in Customer Success Central. Attendees will solve real-world industry challenges using Oracle Cloud AI solutions, making learning both interactive and fun.The Big Quote: “Customers are often unaware of how Oracle has embedded AI capabilities across the whole stack. Once they understand that, then they ask us for expert guidance on how best to achieve their transformation goals using Oracle AI solutions. I had one CEO, he said, after he saw this, he said, 'Well, don't let us fumble around in the dark looking for value. You know, where it is, point us there.' And so they asked, how can I start adopting AI in my current environment? . . . How do I define AI, success metrics, and realize AI value? That's the key thing."More from Gary Miller and Oracle:Connect with Gary Miller on LinkedIn or learn more about Oracle and AI. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I'm sharing why Revolut's decision to scale with Google Cloud shows the power of AI-first infrastructure in fintech.Highlights00:03 — While I'm almost 100% certain that everyone is very familiar with Google Cloud, perhaps fewer are aware of Revolut. This fintech company, started in the UK in 2015, now serves 60 million people globally with a range of financial products. Revolut and Google Cloud have announced the two companies are significantly expanding their strategic partnership.01:01 —Tara Brady, President of Google Cloud EMEA, said: "Revolut is consistently pushing the boundaries of the financial sector. Google is proud to provide the secure, scalable, and intelligent infrastructure powered by our leading AI to fuel this ambitious global expansion and help it deliver the next generation of financial services to a new audience."01:26 — This is a great example of how AI-enhanced infrastructure is enabling companies to achieve incredibly ambitious targets—such as increasing a customer base from 60 million to 100 million users. Not only does it support the existing tools that companies already rely on, like data storage, access, and security, but it also allows them to think bigger. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

Highlights00:12 — Now on the Cloud Wars Top 10 growth chart, this is one of the great representations of this greatest growth market the world has ever known, and for about the sixth or seventh straight quarter, Google Cloud emerges as the world's hottest major cloud vendor, 32% growth, but Oracle and Microsoft were also rocking recently, and it overall shows a picture of enormous growth here.00:37 — Of the Cloud Wars Top 10 companies, only one, that was SAP, reported declining growth rate from Q1 to Q2, all the others went up. So let's take a look at those. As I said, Google Cloud up 32% to 13.6 billion, Snowflake, the smallest company on the Cloud Wars Top 10, also up 32% to 1.1 billion. Oracle was up 28% to 7.2 billion.AI Agent & Copilot Summit is an AI-first event to define opportunities, impact, and outcomes with Microsoft Copilot and agents. Building on its 2025 success, the 2026 event takes place March 17-19 in San Diego. Get more details. 01:03 — Those are nice numbers. But the big thing for Oracle is it has had just an absolutely explosive RPO. Oracle's RPO is $455 billion. Microsoft, another remarkable quarter growth rate of 27% of $46.7 billion. Now it's interesting that the quarter before that, Microsoft's growth rate was 20% so it went from 20 to 27. Google Cloud over the last two quarters, went from 28% to 32%.02:09 — Then if we look at AWS, 17.5% to 30.9 billion, excellent numbers, and in any, just about any other industry that would be seen as by far the best. But look at this growth rate, 17.5% for AWS, 27% for Microsoft, one of its major competitors, 32% growth rate, almost twice as high as AWS for Google Cloud. Yes, AWS is big, but it doesn't account for almost like a 2X difference there.03:47 — I think what we see with Google Cloud now that it's established themselves as a very high flyer here, but I think we're going to see Oracle to keep moving up. Microsoft, at the size of its revenue base, to grow 27% is extraordinary. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I unpack how Oracle's $455B RPO surge signals a massive shift in cloud leadership.Highlights00:15 — We see across the Cloud Wars Top 10 an incredible sense of demand from businesses across the world — to help those businesses create their futures. And in fact, we've now got, just among the four hyperscalers, a pipeline totaling $1.1 trillion. We've got Oracle in the top spot there at $455 billion. Microsoft is number two in the RPO race, $368 billion.01:17 — So here, I've got the four hyperscalers with RPO and the RPO growth rate, then quarterly revenue and quarterly growth rate. Oracle is on the top, its RPO now sits at close to half a trillion dollars, with a growth rate of 359%. Microsoft: $368 billion in RPO, up a whopping 37%, off that huge base. Quarterly revenue for the Microsoft Cloud — almost $47 billion, up 27%.02:25 — AWS' RPO is now $195 billion, up about 25%. That's coming off its Q2 revenue of almost $31 billion, up 17.5%. AWS is growing more slowly than the other hyperscalers. Google Cloud: backlog $106 billion, up 38%. For Q2, Google Cloud revenue at $13.6 billion, up 32%. So it was the fastest-growing in Q1, doing very well here.03:33 — Now altogether, this adds up to $1.1 trillion. I'm just not used to saying “trillion.” Got to get more used to that as this market gets bigger. Oracle CEO Safra Catz said that there were multiple huge deals that Oracle signed for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, and more coming. Catz said that, “We anticipate that in the near future, Oracle's RPO will reach $500 billion — half a trillion.”04:32 — Going into the future, as AI comes along and changes so much, RPO — or backlog — gives us a great idea of who the hot companies are coming up. And right now, undisputedly, that is Oracle. The other three companies are doing quite well, but I think AWS has become the “slowpoke” in this sprint that the others are undertaking. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I break down how Microsoft is redefining the agentic AI landscape with Copilot Studio Lite and Full Experience, offering tailored tools for both low-code creators and enterprise-grade developers.Highlights00:03 — Microsoft has announced the launch of Copilot Studio Lite and Copilot Studio Full Experience, two versions of Copilot that, in the words of Principal Solution Architect Rémi Dyon, "empower everyone from information workers to developers to build intelligent agents tailored to their needs."00:23 — Microsoft Copilot Studio is a low-code platform that enables users to build and customize AI agents to operate across Microsoft 365 and LOB (line-of-business) systems. Now, Copilot Studio provides two ways to operate: a Lite experience (formerly Agent Builder), which is integrated directly into the Microsoft 365 Copilot app, or a Full Experience, as a standalone web portal.01:17 — When choosing which option is right for you, Microsoft suggests acknowledging four key criteria: audience, deployment, scope, functionality, and governance needs. Dyon describes the changes as a "clarity upgrade," which is significant.01:34 — The AI Wars have evolved into the Agentic AI Wars. One defining trend is the emphasis on clarity. This clarity applies to how tools are operated, the range of users who can access them, and marketing strategies. A simple name change like this may not seem like a huge leap, but Microsoft is defining a category focused on agent development rather than just agent deployment. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I break down how Oracle's $455 billion RPO surge is being driven by Larry Ellison's bold vision to lead not just in AI training — but in the even larger market of AI inferencing.Highlights00:46 — First, Ellison talked about AI training. Then, he discussed AI inferencing, which will be much, much bigger than AI training. Ellison said that AI inferencing will be used for everything — from robotic cars, robotic factories, and robotic greenhouses, to biomolecular synthesis to come up with new drugs.01:20 — He said, “We think Oracle is particularly well-positioned to go after this because of Oracle's history.” He said AI inferencing is the key, and Oracle is going to succeed because it's going to be able to provide data of multiple types for businesses that they can then use with these AI-trained models to be able to answer any sort of questions.02:33 — So Ellison thinks, therefore, business customers using Oracle Database and Oracle AI, Oracle inferencing, will be able to get any question answered they want, and that will also help them develop the AI agents that Oracle goes deeply into. Ellison and Oracle are redefining the whole nature of what data means, what AI means, what's possible.03:42 — CEO Safra Catz said she thinks that it won't be long before Oracle has RPOs above half a trillion dollars. So they're doing some remarkable things. Larry Ellison has always been a master of the long game. We're really seeing this play out here, and it's, I think, very interesting to see how he perceives these two multi-trillion dollar markets04:15 — The Oracle way is to go after them both, AI training and AI inferencing. No doubt there'll be lots of competitors. It's going to be a great market — great opportunities for businesses. And as we always say, the biggest winners in the Cloud Wars are always, always the customers. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I discuss Oracle's amazing Q1 results.Highlights00:17 — Oracle yesterday released its fiscal Q1 results for the quarter ended August 31. And while its revenue figures for those three months were nice, the killer here was its RPO: remaining performance obligation. Oracle reported remaining performance obligation up 359% to $455 billion.01:24 — Microsoft's cloud revenue is almost seven times bigger than Oracle's. Who's winning the most business out into the future? Several weeks ago, Microsoft reported its RPO was up 37% to an astonishing $368 billion, the biggest RPO number I had ever seen. Several weeks later, we see Oracle blow that away. It's got an RPO nest egg out there that is 25% bigger than Microsoft's.02:35 — Now, Oracle CEO Safra Catz, in perhaps the understatement of the year, said, "Oracle is off to a brilliant start in FY26." My point there is, I've just never seen anything like this. Astonishing. And we can point to the OpenAI deal that's due to start in a few years, where OpenAI has contracted with Oracle to pay Oracle $30 billion a year for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.03:09 — Catz referenced a number of gigantic contracts that Oracle has signed, and they'll be talking about more soon. Catz did take the unusual step of projecting future revenue for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure — OCI — and its growth over the next five years, including the current year we're in. And I want to emphasize: These numbers don't include Oracle's cloud applications business.03:50 — So, for this year — FY26, ending May 31, 2026 — OCI revenue will grow 77% to $18 billion. Then next year, up 44% to $32 billion. Then it's going to take a spectacular leap — up 128% to $73 billion. I believe that's when the OpenAI revenue starts to kick in. Then 56% to $114 billion for fiscal '29. Fiscal '30, up 26% to $144 billion. Again, I've never seen any numbers like this.05:06 — It's a very different approach Oracle has taken. These numbers show just an astonishing future for Oracle, and I think it's fair to say too that these results from Oracle — and the indication of its future success — have definitely, completely rattled — turned upside down — the balance of power in the Cloud Wars. Oracle is the hottest hyperscaler in the world now, by far and often. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I dive into the growing debate between SaaS and agentic AI, sparked by Satya Nadella's December 2024 remarks suggesting that AI agents could spell the end of SaaS.Highlights00:32 — We've all been hearing a lot about SaaS dying — the demise of SaaS — triggered by AI, an opinion expressed in December of 2024 by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who said that the rise of AI and agents is going to lead to the collapse of SaaS, the hollowing out of it, to become little more than a third-tier support product.01:18 — Well, Marc Benioff said basically that this view, it's just so much nonsense. And Benioff even went biblical. He said, we've got to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff, and we need to be able to determine what's going on here with SaaS, what's going on with AI, and what's going on with agentic AI. How are they going to play together, along with Data Cloud and so on?02:26 — And he said, that's very much not the right question. He used some pretty tough language in explaining this. He said we've got thousands of customers who are very happily using Salesforce applications along with our Agentforce platform, to drive better business results. It's very beneficial to believe both in the future of SaaS and the future of agentic AI.04:02 — And on the earnings call, he went into detail about how many customers now are investing heavily in Agentforce. And the number of new business deals coming in — or repeat business — on agentic AI and Agentforce coming from existing customers. The Data Cloud that underpins this and Agentforce, he said, are now on a $1.2 billion run rate.04:32 — I wish that there would be a point at which Satya Nadella could say, with the experience of nine months now of feedback in the market and from people he's talked to: “Hey, I'm going to double down on what I said in December 2024.” Or he could say, “You know what, maybe I was a little too aggressive on that.” I'd love to hear that. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, ServiceNow's push into CRM meets Salesforce's expansion into ITSM (IT Service Management), powered by agentic AI.Highlights00:14 — While I'm focusing here on Salesforce and ServiceNow, and some changes each is making to get into markets dominated by the other, the larger point here is about how agentic AI is triggering new competition and new approaches. Today, I'm going to share about five repercussions with you.01:15 — On Salesforce's Q2 earnings call, Marc Benioff said, “Hey, we're going to get into IT Service Management.” Salesforce is changing from being an apps company to a data company. It just so happens that ServiceNow and CEO Bill McDermott have been making it very plain that they intend to move aggressively into the CRM business, which has been Salesforce's prime area.02:34 — So, I'm going to mention big implications. One, these companies are looking for new hunting grounds — new areas to help customers do more and to allow these vendors to make more money. Agentic AI is also blasting out boundaries, because agentic AI, I think, optimally works on an end-to-end basis.03:36 — Benioff, on the earnings call, said Data Cloud and agentic AI — Agentforce — are "at the heart of our company strategy", not their applications. Which leads into this: I don't think, as Satya Nadella said, “apps are dying,” or “SaaS is dying,” but I do think that agentic AI is going to change profoundly what apps do, how they work, and how customers can extract value from them.04:44 — We are seeing agentic AI knock down a lot of boundaries. You're going to have more wide-ranging tools that let [customers] see all of their data, be able to develop end-to-end processes that are more effective, more successful, and give them better insights — and, mostly, better business outcomes. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

Highlights00:03 — Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman has published a blog post that criticizes the notion of seemingly conscious AI. He argues that the pursuit of this idea, particularly regarding AI model welfare, is misguided.00:19 — Suleyman explains that these concepts are already causing mental health issues among users. He is growing: “more and more concerned about what is becoming known as the psychosis risk and a bunch of related issues. I don't think this will be limited to those who are already at risk of mental health issues.”00:56 — Suleyman argues that we should “build AI for people not to be a person.” He is adamant in his neglect of this previous approach, saying that: “The arrival of seemingly conscious AI is inevitable and unwelcome. Instead, we need a vision for AI that can fulfill its potential as a helpful companion without falling prey to its illusions.”AI Agent & Copilot Summit is an AI-first event to define opportunities, impact, and outcomes with Microsoft Copilot and agents. Building on its 2025 success, the 2026 event takes place March 17-19 in San Diego. Get more details. 01:18 — Meanwhile, companies like Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google DeepMind are actively pursuing AI consciousness or welfare research. Now, while there are complications and not everyone is on the same page, here, it is clear that the evolving scenarios and possibilities presented by AI are increasingly reaching into the realm of the surreal and in some cases, they're fantastical.01:42 — This is largely because, for the first time in human history, we have a tool that is evolving at a pace beyond which we can conceive. While some of these ideas may sound far-fetched, the warnings accompanying them are serious based on real concerns coming from leaders in the AI space, the ones leading this new AI revolution.02:04 — What everyone must do, and though it will be challenging, is to start imagining the unimaginable. Once you accept the vast possibilities of AI, both good and bad, you can begin to take the warnings that come with them seriously. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

Welcome to the Cloud Wars Minute — your daily cloud news and commentary show. Each episode provides insights and perspectives around the “reimagination machine” that is the cloud.In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I spotlight Google's stunning 33x reduction in AI power consumption, what it means for the future of sustainable tech, and how bold innovation is driving the AI revolution forward. Highlights00:23 — Google says it has achieved a 33x reduction in power consumption for Gemini apps' text prompts. A remarkable number. Google, rather than just saying, “Well, hey, we're going to go invest all our money in getting as many users as we can, and we'll deal down the road with some of the energy implications,” have said, “No—now is the time to do it.”01:37 — Now it's got a larger metric here that it uses for the total—what it calls carbon footprint—down by 44x. All of the details behind this have been released in a blog post by a couple of executives.02:31 — Google has adopted a completely end-to-end approach to doing this, where it's taking a look at all of the different technology up and down its stack that could have an input on this. And the data it's collecting is going to give them a fantastic foundation to continue this effort into the future.The AI Revolution, we can safely say now, is not going to boil the Earth.AI Agent & Copilot Summit is an AI-first event to define opportunities, impact, and outcomes with Microsoft Copilot and agents. Building on its 2025 success, the 2026 event takes place March 17-19 in San Diego. Get more details. 03:42 — Several years ago, Google Cloud was number nine on the Cloud Wars Top 10. I'm not sure at the time why it was not number ten, but it had fantastic technology, but could not fully put that in the service of their customers. It was sort of like a mismatch. It's harnessed it over the last several years, under Thomas Kurian, to be fully in service of what customers want and need.04:44 — These breakthroughs by Google and Google Cloud, across the board (again, the details of this in the article coming up later today) show that there's incredible potential to keep doing this. And I think it's this power of innovation that says: Don't be afraid of big ideas. Go after them. Dig into it. Try new approaches to it. There are better ways forward. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

Bonnie Tinder is the founder and CEO of Raven Intelligence, an independent B2B peer review site that amplifies the voice of the customer. She focuses on software customers, consulting partners, and software vendors and helps identify the best partners for their needs. In this episode, Bonnie shares seven hard-earned lessons from over 1,000 customer reviews, covering everything from data migration and partner selection to change management, over-customization, and planning beyond go-live.Episode 54 | Avoiding Project PitfallsThe Big Themes:Choose Your Partner Strategically, Not Cheaply: Raven Intelligence data reveals customers who chose systems integrators (SIs) based on price often ended up spending weeks onboarding the partner—because they lacked industry expertise. Others defaulted to familiar names or existing vendor relationships without assessing fit. A well-matched SI should offer deep, relevant experience—not just a good rate.Over-Customization Leads to Long-Term Pain: One of the most common regrets customers share with Raven Intelligence is excessive customization. While it's tempting to rebuild old workflows in new systems for comfort or continuity, Bonnie Tinder warns this strategy almost always backfires. One company customized so heavily that their upgrade a year later cost nearly as much as the original implementation.Clarity on Requirements Prevents Costly Detours: Poorly defined requirements derail even well-staffed projects. A client lost three months mid-project because two departments had opposing expectations for payroll reporting. Before implementation, all stakeholders—from executives to end-users—must agree on goals, deliverables, and boundaries.The Big Quote: “Vendors and SIs are really good at presenting the highlights reel during the sales process. What customers really need to be successful is the actual game footage." Visit Cloud Wars for more.

00:03 — ServiceNow has announced that it's joining forces with SENAI-SP to launch a major AI training and certification program in Brazil as part of ServiceNow University. The new program aims to train hundreds of users by 2025 contributing to the University's overall global goal of upskilling three million people by 2027.00:30 — This new program will equip learners with technical skills in AI digital workflow automation and low-code/no-code development. Additionally, it will provide certification pathways and job readiness support, connecting learners with potential employers.01:14 — AI upskilling is not only providing people from incredibly diverse backgrounds with the tools to thrive in a new AI-driven work landscape. It's also helping to level the playing field. Every country, regardless of its historical wealth generation, has an opportunity to excel in the AI space, and each country needs to provide users with skills and upskilling initiatives to do so.01:42 — Companies like ServiceNow that are entering these jurisdictions with specific, targeted programs are playing a crucial role in shaping a hopefully more balanced future. In this future, everyone, from independent employees to companies start, from a level playing field with a brand new set of tools and, importantly, opportunities. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I dive into Snowflake's record-breaking Q2 performance and explore how CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy is positioning the company for long-term AI-driven success.Highlights00:14 — Snowflake has been a remarkable story of growth and achievement—category creation here around the AI Data Cloud—and it reported last week a very strong Q2 with product revenue up 32% to $1.09 billion. That's the first time it has topped $1 billion. That's the good news. The bad news is that the competition is really intensifying.01:16 — CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy said, “We're also trying to continue to push out new AI solutions and technology as rapidly as possible.” There are startups and similarly sized companies, such as Databricks and Palantir, coming after it in that core market. But also bigger players (SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, Google Cloud, and others) are getting more deeply into this AI Data Cloud space.02:06 — Ramaswamy feels that Snowflake is very well positioned around this end-to-end data lifecycle spot that it has. He has been repeating relentlessly over the 18 months he's been CEO that businesses cannot have a successful AI strategy unless they first have a successful data strategy and are able to execute on that data very, very forcefully and consistently.03:30 — I mentioned Palantir, talked about them some last week—and the phenomenal Q1 it had. It grew 48%. So I really applaud Snowflake for 32% growth. But here's Palantir in a similar space—analytics and AI—growing 48%, which is a 50% higher growth rate than what Snowflake just posted. Databricks is growing very rapidly as well, doing some good things.03:54 — Lots of competition there, but—as always in the Cloud Wars—the biggest winners are always, always the customers. Later, we'll have a long, detailed article on Cloud Wars about Snowflake's Q2 results, perspectives from Ramaswamy, and some of my own thoughts about how this all shapes out. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I explore how explosive AI demand is driving massive infrastructure deals like the one between Google Cloud and Meta.Highlights0:03 — Google Cloud has entered into a six-year agreement with Meta that's reportedly worth over $10 billion. The deal encompasses a variety of services, including use of Google Cloud servers, storage, and networking facilities. This is a significant deal in terms of the relationship between Meta and Google, both of which are continuously battling for dominance in the ad spend space.00:52 — As the demand for cloud capacity surges, such deals are not just important, but crucial, given the fierce competition among top cloud infrastructure providers. And my colleague Bob Evans recently reported on the explosive demand for AI services — and how this demand has led to four companies spending a combined billion dollars a day on capital expenditure in Q2.01:29 — Currently, Google Cloud holds the second position in the Cloud Wars Top 10. However, more deals like this — especially those that mean potential losses for Microsoft — could soon elevate Google Cloud to the top spot. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I, along with a special partner, dive into Palantir's explosive Q2 performance, celebrate their first billion-dollar quarter, and explain why this 21-year-old disruptor is poised to shake up the cloud industry.Highlights00:13 — I've got a high-growth specialist here, Rory, my granddaughter and good buddy. We're going to talk about Palantir. Palantir, in its recently ended Q2, went over the moon: 48% growth. It had its first billion-dollar quarter. It says that LLMs — large language models — won't work without Palantir software.01:42 — There are incredible numbers. Its U.S. commercial business grew 93% to over $300 million. Now in Q2, as I said, its overall growth was 48% — over a billion dollars right over here. Then we've got Q3, it's guiding to 50% growth.02:20 — Palantir's future is really ahead of it. Palantir is not on the Cloud Wars Top 10, but I believe — I'm the one who picks the list, right? So I get to make the decision — Palantir is going to be joining the Cloud Wars Top 10 in the near future. I will have more on that to come.03:13 — But the last thing I'd say about this is what this industry constantly needs is smaller, intense, disruptive, sort of agitating companies. And Palantir, believe me, is an agitator. It is going to come up and force other companies to do things differently because customers are having so much fun with Palantir software.04:06 — Rory, thanks a lot for being with us. This has been fun talking about Palantir. They, like you, are a little bit of a unicorn. Happy birthday to me, happy Q2 to Palantir, happy almost-five to you. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I dive into Oracle's bold $1 billion-a-year move to power a massive AI-focused data center in West Texas using gas generators.Highlights00:18 — Oracle is set to spend over a billion dollars a year to power a new mega data center in West Texas, using gas generators instead of waiting to be connected to the local utilities. The gas-powered site is being developed by Vantage Data Centers. It will cover 1,200 acres, house 10 data centers, and have a total capacity of 1.4 gigawatts — making it one of the largest in the world.01:00 — So, why spend a billion dollars a year on power generation? The issue is that obtaining approval for power infrastructure projects of this size using local electricity gridscan take years. The balance between progress and environmental impact is not so straightforward. While gas-generated electricity is cleaner than other fossil fuels, it is still far from clean energy.01:33 — I reported a few months back on Microsoft's efforts to mitigate the environmental impact of data centers by changing construction methods, while Oracle recently floated the idea of using nuclear power — a much cleaner alternative to gas. I hope that, in the drive for success in a painfully competitive market, these core values and significant concerns for sustainability are not lost. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I break down Workday's strong Q2 results, highlighting how AI solutions, mid-market growth, government expansion, partner-driven value, and global initiatives are fueling momentum. Highlights00:14 — Workday recently posted a very nice fiscal Q2, ended July 31. I pulled out growth factors from the earnings call. Just a quick recap here: for Q2, its subscription revenue was up 14% to $2.17 billion, while their current RPO was up 16.4% to almost $8 billion. So, strong demand for the recent quarter and the pipeline going forward.01:37 — First of all, suites. Workday CEO Carl Eschenbach said 30% of Q2 deals were for full suites, which, in Workday parlance, is both Financials and HCM. These consolidated data sets, he said, are more and more vital to companies. Now they can use all of that data together for some of their AI solutions, and certainly on the AI side, there was strength there.02:05 — Among existing Workday customers, 30% of all deals included one or more AI solutions. For new customers, that number jumped to 70%. In the mid-market, a lot of strength there with a new go-to-market program tailored for the needs of mid-market companies, Workday Go. In the federal government, Workday has created a new subsidiary called Workday Government.03:04 — Partners are now generating, among new annual contract value, 20%. The sharing of data for AI, Eschenbach, over the last few quarters, has been touting the value and how clean that dataset is. There's a new president in India. Workday is building a data center in India to handle local and regional data requirements there—and in Germany and the UK.04:19 — One of the high-growth areas was a recent acquisition of a company called Eversort, in the contract intelligence business. Eschenbach said that for Eversort, revenue grew 100% quarter to quarter. So that's not year over year, but sequentially—it is doubling its revenue from one quarter to the next. Overall, very nice quarter for Workday and CEO Carl Eschenbach. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I break down SAP's strategic acquisition of SmartRecruiters and what it means for the future of AI-powered talent acquisition within the SuccessFactors HCM suite.Highlights00:03 — SAP has announced that it has agreed to acquire the talent acquisition software provider SmartRecruiters. SAP plans to integrate the company's comprehensive suite of AI-powered talent acquisition tools into its existing SuccessFactors Human Capital Management or HCM Suite.00:43 — Muhammad Alam, Member of the Executive Board of SAP SE, Products and Engineering, said,“Hiring the right people is not just an HR priority, it's a business priority. With this planned acquisition, we will help our customers attract and hire the best talent so they can advance their talent acquisition agendas with speed and agility, while lowering their total cost of ownership.”01:08 — Customers will be able to manage the entire candidate life cycle — from sourcing and interviewing to onboarding and beyond — all in a single system, to streamline the experience for recruiters, hiring managers, and, in particular, for candidates. The deal is expected to be finalized in the fourth quarter of 2025, positioning SAP very strongly in this unique, bespoke market.01:37 — It not only modernizes the company's existing HCM platform by addressing the complexities of talent acquisition in the post-pandemic landscape — issues that have taken many years to develop but are now highly relevant — but it also integrates perfectly with SmartRecruiters' neat, AI-powered, cloud-based tools. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I explain how Oracle is transforming healthcare with its AI-driven, cloud-native EHR, setting a bold path toward intelligent care.Highlights00:02 — Oracle has introduced an updated version of Oracle Health EHR, or Electronic Health Record, for ambulatory providers in the U.S., built on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. The new system features native AI agents that operate together as an orchestrated system for maximum process efficiency.00:29 — The new Oracle Health EHR, was designed in collaboration with frontline providers and delivers the services that they require in a manner that's most useful to them. For example, it features personalized, streamlined workflows. In 2026, Oracle plans to enhance the system to include acute care, further expanding the reach of this groundbreaking technology.00:50 — Now, this represents a major leap forward for healthcare providers, and Oracle is right to focus significant efforts in this direction, enabling clinicians to cut through the administrative burdens of the healthcare industry. Identified as one of the first major use cases for generative AI, it remains a priority, and Oracle is certainly thinking big in this area.01:13 — In fact, Seema Verma, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Oracle Health and Life Sciences, said the following: "When Oracle committed to transforming the healthcare industry, we knew we had to start with the EHR." Note the commitment to not just supporting, but "transforming" the healthcare industry. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I look at how the four hyperscalers are now spending a billion dollars every day on CapEx to keep up with explosive AI demand.Highlights00:19 — The four hyperscalers — AWS, Microsoft, Google, and Oracle — are now spending, as of Q2, a combined billion dollars a day on CapEx to try to keep up with explosive AI demand. Here's where these numbers come from. And I will say here, I'm calling it Q2, but Oracle's quarter ended May 31.01:00 — But these are very close for the four CapEx spending numbers for the four hyperscalers: AWS, $31.6 billion; Microsoft, about $27 billion. Google Cloud, $22.4 billion. Oracle, $9.1 billion — far more than Oracle has ever spent before. That's a total of $90.1 billion. We had 91 days in the quarter. So yeah, I cheated a little. It's actually $990.1 million per day. But I got a little crazy.02:02 — Andy Jassy, the CEO of Amazon said, “You know, this is a new industry. It's pretty crazy. You know, we've built at AWS a $123 billion annualized run rate business, and we're still in the early days.” All of the business leaders are realizing that to be able to compete going forward, they're going to have to turn their businesses into AI-powered enterprises.03:20 — They don't see this as a one-time seasonal boom that will go back down. They all say, “We think we're going to be spending at these rates going forward.” Oracle CEO Safra Catz, reflecting on the $9 billion that Oracle spent in its quarter ended May 31, said for the coming year, “We are expecting to spend more than $25 billion in CapEx — way more than ever before.”04:05 — CFO Amy Hood gently guided the questioner through this, saying, “That is a lot of money, there's no question about it. But our RPO, or remaining performance obligation — we have future commitments at Microsoft Cloud for $368 billion in customer contracts, and we don't currently have enough capacity to meet that. It's going to continue to go up.” Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I break down a major move by the U.S. government and AWS.Highlights00:02 —The U.S. government is being given access to $1 billion in AWS credits for use until the close of 2028 to help bolster federal cloud adoption and IT modernization efforts.00:38 — We're seeing companies in the Cloud Wars Top 10 and beyond offering the U.S. federal government massive discounts to secure contracts under the administration's AI Action Plan. Companies like DocuSign, Adobe, and Oracle are reportedly providing discounts of up to 70 to 75%. OpenAI is offering ChatGPT at a discounted rate to federal users.01:27 — Secondly, there's a shift we're witnessing. Instead of clashing with the government, these companies are offering significant discounts because they're valuing the opportunity upfront. AI that aligns with the government and private industry will undoubtedly be safer and more reliable.  Visit Cloud Wars for more.

Wei Hu is the Senior Vice President, High Availability Technologies, at Oracle. In today's Cloud Wars Live, Hu sits down with Bob Evans for a wide-ranging discussion on Oracle's globally distributed database, AI-native workloads, and how Oracle is helping businesses meet data sovereignty requirements while delivering high performance, elasticity, and always-on availability across regions.Where AI Meets Your DataThe Big Themes:Globally Distributed Exadata Database on Exascale: Oracle's Globally Distributed Exadata Database on Exascale Infrastructure delivers something few cloud providers can: high performance, high availability, and full compliance. Built on Oracle's powerful Exadata platform, this architecture removes the traditional need to purchase or manage hardware. Organizations can start small and elastically scale compute and memory across multiple regions.Agentic AI and Vector Search at Enterprise Scale: Oracle's database innovation is designed for real-world AI demands, especially agentic AI. AI agents need massive compute, consistent availability, and extremely fast access to live business data. Oracle's globally distributed architecture supports in-memory vector indexes for lightning-fast retrieval augmented generation (RAG), making AI more responsive and effective. Additionally, Oracle keeps AI close to the data — eliminating stale data issues and ensuring compliance.Built for a Sovereign Cloud World: Data residency and sovereignty are no longer optional, they're legal imperatives. Countries around the world are implementing strict rules on where data must be stored, how it can be accessed, and who can process it. Oracle addresses these challenges with policy-driven data distribution, allowing customers to define how and where data lives. Whether it's for compliance with India's payment data regulations or Europe's GDPR, Oracle enables precise control without requiring app changes or replication of the full stack.The Big Quote: “The other thing that's interesting about agentic AI is that it's very dynamic. The work comes in, the demands comes in, like a tidal wave. Then it goes away, right, then a little, then when it comes again, there's another tidal wave. So, what you really want to do is have an infrastructure that is elastic, that can scale up and down depending on the demand."More from Wei Hu and Oracle:Connect with Wei Hu on LinkedIn and learn more about Globally Distributed Exadata Database on Exascale Infrastructure.* Sponsored Podcast * Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I explored why the groundbreaking Oracle–Google Cloud partnership around Gemini AI marks a bold new era for multi-cloud collaboration.Highlights00:14 — It's a brilliant move by Oracle and Google Cloud to form a partnership where Gemini AI is now available on the Oracle Cloud. Gemini on OCI is pretty wild. Both Oracle and Google compete viciously against each other. At the same time, they're both customer-centric enough to say: " ... in this other area, we're going to create new and significant value for customers."01:52 — Too often, I think tech vendors get into this mindset of: "Well, they're a competitor, so I'm not going to do anything with them — even if that might make life better for customers."I think those days are over. That's why I feel this is truly transformative.02:08 — Both executives from Google Cloud and Oracle spoke in great detail about how this partnership will make life easier for customers. They also talked about how this reflects their new philosophy: "We've got to be open. We've got to give choice — regardless of where it comes from."03:05 — Beyond Oracle and Google Cloud, I'd love to see AWS do some things with competitors. Microsoft has done some of this, but I think there's still room for all these companies to do more. It's the best of both worlds for customers: being able to get combinations of technologies and vendor capabilities rolled into single packages.03:41 — You're going to have both Google Cloud and Oracle salespeople now able to sell Gemini on Oracle Cloud. Just like about a year ago with the multi-cloud agreements — where Oracle Database became available on Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud — those hard and fast walls that used to separate vendors from ever cooperating are coming down. And they're coming down quickly.04:12 — What we see here is that tech vendors have to be not only world-class in the technology they're developing, but also in how they're willing to go to market in unprecedented ways to drive new and significant value for customers. That's going to be one of the primary yardsticks by which vendors are measured — not just by the power of their technology. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I take a closer look at AWS's market positioning and the narrative shared during its recent earnings call.Highlights00:36 — I was puzzled by some of the math and the numbers that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, speaking on behalf of AWS on the Amazon earnings call, used in trying to describe the competitive position that AWS finds itself in.01:28 — We've got AWS, now on a $123 billion annualized run rate, and which grew 17.5% in Q2, which is extremely good for a company that size. The challenge comes in when you compare it with the growth rates, both in recent-quarter revenue, but also RPO, or backlog. AWS is far, far behind the other three hyperscalers on those metrics, or the rate of acceleration as they each grew from Q2 over Q1.02:12 — On the earnings call, Jassy said the second player has revenue that's only 65% as big as AWS. So that has to be Microsoft. So he's saying that Microsoft's cloud revenue is more in the range of $75 to $80 billion, but it's more than twice that — $187 billion. I don't get that. Maybe he's trying to say it's only about infrastructure, but he doesn't say that.03:46 — The issue is that the AWS growth rate is lower than that of Microsoft, Google Cloud, and Oracle, and it has been lower for at least the last eight quarters. Yet on the earnings call, Jassy said, "Sometimes we grow faster than they do, sometimes they grow faster than we do."04:07 — So, perhaps Andy Jassy, who has been an extraordinary executive, I'm not questioning his overall capability, his record stands for itself. But Jassy is choosing to try to play a little bit of a shell game here, trying to say that Microsoft's whole cloud revenue isn't all there, or some is illegitimate — something like that.05:26 — It's something that AWS has to address, own up to, and figure out what to do about it. And I think AWS is a great company. I don't think it helps AWS's cause for Andy Jassy to be using some numbers and representations of the market that seem to clash with reality. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I explore AWS's bold new approach to eliminating AI hallucinations using automated reasoning and formal logic.Highlights00:04 — AWS has announced that automated reasoning checks, a new Amazon Bedrock guardrails policy, are now generally available. In a blog post, AWS's Chief Evangelist (EMEA), Danilo Poccia said that: "Automated reasoning checks help you validate the accuracy of content generated by foundation models against domain knowledge. This can help prevent factual errors due to AI hallucinations."00:38 —The policy uses mathematical logic and formal verification techniques to validate accuracy. The biggest takeaway from this news is AWS's approach differs dramatically from probabilistic reasoning methods. Instead, automated reasoning checks provide 99% verification accuracy.01:10 — This means that the new policy is significantly more reliable in ensuring factual accuracy than traditional methods. The issue of hallucinations was a significant concern when generative AI first emerged. The problems associated with non-factual content are becoming increasingly damaging. This new approach represents an important leap forward. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

 In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I unpack the strategy behind Microsoft's $368B in contracted cloud business and Q4 surge.Highlights00:39— CEO Satya Nadella explained what was behind this huge growth in Microsoft's Azure revenue in Q4, which ended June 30. Overall cloud revenue for the quarter was up 27% to $46.7 billion. This is the first time it's ever released any revenue figures for Azure.01:14 — Azure was up — I think it was 34% — to more than $75 billion. So, I divided four into 75, got almost $19 billion. It said it was “more than,” so I'm going to go with Q4 Azure revenue of $19 billion. And in Q4, it grew 39%. So 34% Azure growth for the year, spiking in Q4 to 39%. And its RPO (remaining performance obligation) was up an astonishing 37% to $368 billion.02:09 — Nadella pointed to, first, classic migrations from on-prem to the cloud. He cited an enormous initiative that Microsoft undertook with SAP to move Nestlé's huge SAP estate from on-prem to the cloud. He talked about cloud-native applications scaling very rapidly.03:16 — And third, he talked about AI workloads: the investments that Microsoft is making and the progress it is making on building out its infrastructure for Azure to be able to handle all of this new and rising demand. And he bristled a little bit at the notion that some other hyperscalers are doing more in the way of data centers and regions and gigawatt capacity and data center capacity04:22 — So again, an extraordinary quarter there from Microsoft Azure, sort of at the heart of so much of this. We'll have a lot more detail on this in an article that we'll be posting later this morning on Cloud Wars. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I cover Snowflake's investment in Hightouch to advance agentic AI for personalized marketing.Highlights00:03 — Snowflake Ventures, the investment arm of Snowflake, alongside Capital One Ventures, has announced an investment in Hightouch, a data and AI platform focused on personalized, targeted marketing. In 2024, Hightouch launched an agentic AI solution for lifecycle marketing called AI Decisioning.00:35 — Adam Kaufman, Vice President, Global Head of Industry Go To Market at Snowflake, shared insights about the investment: "By building directly on top of Snowflake's unified platform for data and AI, Hightouch enables marketers to execute faster with less complexity and more control. We're excited to support their continued growth and innovation in the AI Data Cloud."01:08 — This investment represents the confidence that major players like Snowflake have in agentic AI for marketing use cases. Interestingly, agentic AI for marketing was one of the first use cases to be discussed when the technology emerged not so long ago, and has obvious applications, particularly in the area of personalization.01:31 — However, this level of AI-driven personalization comes with its challenges, like data privacy regulations — especially regarding consent, transparency in decision making, and data security. This investment by Snowflake Ventures is encouraging because it should help shape the direction of agentic AI-driven marketing. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I take a closer look at what may be the biggest B2B deal in tech history, Larry Ellison's $100B+ agreement with OpenAI. Highlights00:15 — We've seen some extraordinary things happen with OpenAI and the alliances it has had. For the first several years of its existence, it was tightly paired with Microsoft. That has changed dramatically now, and OpenAI is now tightly entwined with Oracle.02:01 — What Oracle said in a document it filed was that it has a cloud services contract that will pay it more than $30 billion annually, starting in fiscal 2028. I doubt that Sam Altman at OpenAI wants to go out every year and shop around for new cloud infrastructure providers. So, I think it's reasonable to expect this is going to last two years, three years, perhaps more.02:39 — So now, OpenAI, aligned with Oracle, could have picked anybody. What happened to the Microsoft and OpenAI bromance? Going back to 2019, Microsoft invested $1 billion into OpenAI. In 2021, it followed up with more, and in 2023, at the beginning of the year, the companies each put out announcements saying: We have entered into a deeper, longer-term, incredibly strategic, two-way technology transfer.03:38 — And suddenly we see this change. In just two short years after this big announcement by both of them, we see, in the White House, the first day of President Trump's second term, who shows up but Larry Ellison, Masayoshi Son, the CEO of SoftBank, and Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, to announce a $500 billion initiative called Project Stargate.04:22 — You could have looked at this and said: Microsoft is the biggest tech company in the world. It's the biggest cloud company. It has the most money. It has all these advantages. They'll never let OpenAI slip away. But they did, or was it not so much that Microsoft let it slip away as Larry Ellison said, Hey, I have a better approach. I have a better way here.05:02 — But these shifts we're seeing — where new types of business are done in different ways, with different combinations and partnerships — are challenging the status quo. All these companies have to continue to do new and better things in new and better ways that drive more value and better business outcomes for customers. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's special edition of Cloud Wars Live, Bob Evans talks with Kris Rice, Senior Vice President, Software Development, Oracle Database, about the rapid rise of AI, the strategic impact of the new MCP Server, Oracle's unique approach to integrating LLMs with private data, and what to expect at this year's CloudWorld. Rice shares how Oracle is meeting developers where they are, enabling seamless AI-powered interactions with enterprise data.Inside Oracle's MCP StrategyThe Big Themes:Oracle's Strategic Integration of MCP: Oracle's implementation of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) represents more than a technical upgrade. Rice explains that MCP, though technically simple, becomes powerful because of how it's supported across AI agents, Copilots, cloud desktops, and IDEs. Oracle's distinctive approach lies in integrating MCP directly into its existing developer environments rather than layering on new tools.Oracle Marries AI with Data Sovereignty: Oracle has the unique ability to merge large language models (LLMs) with enterprise-grade data privacy and sovereignty. While many companies hesitate to use public AI platforms for sensitive queries, Oracle's approach — running LLMs on private GPUs in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) — lets customers leverage cutting-edge AI while keeping data entirely within their own virtual cloud networks.Oracle CloudWorld 2025: Looking ahead to CloudWorld, Rice promises more than vision — he promises practical value. Attendees can expect hands-on labs, demos, and real-world use cases showing exactly how Oracle's MCP server and GenAI services can be applied immediately. From natural language-driven infrastructure provisioning using Terraform MCP to business logic queries run autonomously by AI agents, the event will be centered on tangible outcomes, not speculative futures.The Big Quote: “I saw the other day that the Google AI Studio supports MCP. So you could literally go to the Google AI studio, drop in your Oracle Database MCP support, and talk to your Oracle database that's on GCP, and never leave the boundaries of Google."More from Kris Rice and Oracle:Connect with Kris Rice on LinkedIn and learn more about Oracle and MCP* Sponsored podcast * Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I discuss Satya Nadella's bold Q4 claim that Microsoft is the #1 cloud provider, leaving rivals to fight for second place.Highlights00:12 — Microsoft laid out a very clear, unmistakable story in Q4 that it is the biggest and right now certainly the most powerful, most influential cloud provider. CEO Satya Nadella used the opportunity of these unprecedented financial results to spread the word that, “We're number one, and all of the other hyperscalers — Google, Oracle, and AWS — can fight for the number two spot.”01:06 — Q4 cloud revenue was up 27% to 46.7 billion. Full year cloud revenue was $168 billion, up 23%. One that really blows me away, its RPO for Q4 was $368 billion up 37%, so that is remaining performance,obligation, contracted business not yet recognized as revenue. Then for Azure, for the full year, $75 billion and a 39% growth rate in Q4. So pretty powerful stuff.02:04 — Nadella said, "We're the leaders in breadth of AI products and AI infrastructure." He said, "In our overall tech stack, nobody can touch us, and that's how we're able to deliver at this scale." He said, "We have more data centers than anybody else does," cutting against some claims that have been made by Oracle and others. "We are outperforming everybody else."03:16 — I thought it was interesting that, without identifying those specific companies, he referred to our competitors and that we're doing more than them. Now, I think this was a smart move by Nadella, right? Because we're not talking about some technical features — these are the technological foundations that business leaders will be betting the future of their companies on.03:55 — So, the hyperscalers with the best overall capabilities are going to be the ones that those business leaders tend to go with. I think it's a smart move by Nadella here to say, in my view, here's where we stand. We're out ahead of the others on all this. Now, I'm sure Google Cloud, Oracle, and AWS will have their own points of view on this, and I would encourage all of them to speak up.04:20 — I'm not talking about name-calling, but a very clear and well-articulated, reasoned, customer-oriented set of here's where I stand versus competitors here. I was glad to see this from Microsoft. I hope everybody does it, and later this morning on Cloud Wars, I'll have a detailed article offering the verbatim comments that Nadella made about these different subjects. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I highlight how the rapid rise of AI — without the right security in place — could be the biggest unseen threat to your business.Highlights00:03 — IBM's new "Cost of a Data Breach" report has revealed that while AI adoption is on the rise, AI security and governance are lagging significantly. Suja Viswesan, Vice President, Security and Runtime Products at IBM, explains that the data shows a gap between AI adoption and oversight already exists, and threat actors are starting to exploit it.00:57 — 13% of organizations reported breaches involving AI models or applications, while 8% of organizations were unsure if they had been compromised in this way. Among those surveyed who experienced a breach, 97% indicated that they had no AI access controls in place. As a result, 60% of AI-related security incidents led to compromised data, and 31% resulted in operational disruptions.01:56 — In contrast, organizations that utilize AI and automation in their security operations save an average of $1.9 million in breach costs and reduce the breach life cycle by approximately 80 days. However, it's important to remember that 16% of breaches still involve AI tools, primarily in phishing or deepfake impersonation attacks. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I reveal why AWS's growth, though strong in isolation, looks sluggish compared to its peers.Highlights00:29 — We're seeing a distinct split looking at the Q2 numbers. We've got three sprinters — Microsoft, Google, and Oracle — and we've got one stroller, which is AWS. Now, also, just a quick detail: the first three companies — Microsoft, Google, and AWS — all follow the quarterly calendar pattern.01:30 — Microsoft in Q1 grew 20% to $42.4 billion. In Q2, that growth shot up from 20% to 27%, revenue for Microsoft Cloud was $46.7 billion. Google: Q1, 28% growth to $12.3 billion. Q2, that growth accelerated from 28% to 32%; revenue reached $13.6 billion. Oracle: 23% growth in what I'm calling Q1 to $6.2 billion. That growth jumped to 27% in its most recent quarter: $6.7 billion.02:39 — Oracle has guided that its fiscal 2026 RPO — that'll end May 31 — will grow 100%. So while its cloud revenue currently isn't that big, its RPO is enormous, and its growing very fast there. Now, here's the outlier: AWS. Q1 grew 17% to $29.3 billion. Come over to Q2 — again, it was the slowest growing — 17.5% to almost $31 billion.03:21 — I think the point to look at here, though, is all four of the companies' growth accelerated from Q1 to Q2. But while the others all showed significant jumps in growth rate Q1 to Q2, Amazon — or AWS — was a modest half-point: from 17 to 17.5%.04:01 — Taking their total Q2 revenues, who got what chunk? Microsoft: 47%. Google: 13.9%. Oracle: 6.8%. AWS: 31.6%. Who is grabbing more of the new business? Who are customers — right here, right now — signing up with? Look at AWS: 31.6% of the total, but only 20.8% of the new revenue meaning that it is taking less share than its overall size and mass would indicate.05:19 — Now, AWS — I will say before I close here — it's perhaps unfair, in the category of, you know, "life's not always fair," that AWS — almost at about a $30 billion scale — grew 17.5%. And in any other industry, at any other time, that would be lauded as absolutely stunning and fantastic. But compared to their competitors, it's not doing as well. So it's a wild time in the Cloud Wars. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I break down reports of a potential $1.2 billion cloud deal between Google Cloud and ServiceNow, and what it means for the ever-intensifying battle among the cloud giants.Highlights00:04 — Google Cloud has just secured a massive cloud deal with ServiceNow worth an estimated $1.2 billion over five years. In its latest filing, ServiceNow states that it's entered into various non-cancellable agreements with cloud service providers, under which it is committed to spend an aggregate of approximately $4.8 billion through 2030 on cloud services.00:29 — However, neither Google Cloud nor ServiceNow would comment on the alleged $1.2 billion deal.00:55 —This deal, although many details are yet to emerge, serves as a great reminder of how crucial cloud infrastructure is to leading tech companies — both those providing cloud services and those that utilize them. Now, while AI has dominated the headlines in recent months — perhaps we're looking at years even — the demand for cloud infrastructure remains consistent. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

business history.Highlights00:14 — Now, any question about this greatest growth market the world has ever known was blown away last week, when Microsoft reported its fiscal Q4 earnings. And I think Microsoft's Q4 results have to be regarded as the greatest quarterly results of any company in any industry of all time.00:40 — Now, I cannot say that I have done a rigorous analysis of every quarterly report from every company in every industry there's ever been. But I will be wide open to hearing from anybody about anything that expands this. It could have grown even more, but customer demand is just swamping ability to build out data center capacity.01:38 — Microsoft Cloud used to be a nice, healthy portion of its business. It's now 61% of Microsoft's overall revenue. The total number for Microsoft's remaining performance obligation: $368 billion — a phenomenal, huge number. But it grew 37%, so you've got a combination here of scale with an incredible rate of growth here on this.03:31 — Azure in Q4, it grew 39%. If you look at the full year, Azure grew 34%. Now, revenue for Azure is over $75 billion. And the Q1 growth guidance for Azure is 37%. So again, even at these very large numbers, the growth rates are astonishing. Also looking ahead to Q1, which will end September 30, CFO Amy Hood said the CapEx is expected to be $30 billion.04:45 — We saw Google Cloud last week report very, very strong Q4. It's up 32% to $13.6 billion. Oracle's reporting just spectacular growth rates. RPO in its most recent quarter was 62%, and they're predicting 100% RPO for their fiscal year, which will end May 31 of next year. AWS numbers haven't come out yet, so I will get to them later next week. But hats off to Microsoft. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

Welcome to the Cloud Wars Minute — your daily cloud news and commentary show. Each episode provides insights and perspectives around the “reimagination machine” that is the cloud.In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I explore the fierce competition among tech giants to attract the brightest minds in AI as the race for dominance ramps up a gear. Highlights00:03 — As the battle for AI dominance among the Cloud Wars Top 10 heats up, the race for talent has escalated. The latest executive to switch sides is Amar Subramanya, the former Vice President of Engineering at Google, who was responsible for developing the Gemini assistant and had been with the company for 16 years, is now joining Microsoft AI as Corporate Vice President for AI.00:28 — Ultimately, the stakes are so high that companies are now willing to shell out incredible sums to secure the best talent in the business. Recently ,OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stated that Meta was offering his employees $100 million signing bonuses.AI Agent & Copilot Summit is an AI-first event to define opportunities, impact, and outcomes with Microsoft Copilot and agents. Building on its 2025 success, the 2026 event takes place March 17-19 in San Diego. Get more details. 00:50 — Interestingly, this hiring drive by Microsoft comes at a time when the company has announced significant layoffs. However, this shouldn't be viewed negatively. Instead, it serves as a poignant reminder of how the tech industry is pivoting towards AI and how these skills are becoming increasingly essential for workers in the industry.01:36 — The AI Revolution is ushering in a new wave of innovation, reminiscent of the startup culture that defined the Silicon Valley boom. Companies that wish to hire the best talent need to keep this in mind and embrace the desire of tech executives to explore new ideas and innovate beyond the confines of the copy-paste approach that has come to characterize many technologies. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I share how IBM has built a $7.5 billion GenAI business in just 18 months, transforming everything from mainframes to consulting under the bold leadership of CEO Arvind Krishna.Highlights00:13 — IBM last week reported its Q2 numbers. Very impressive. I thought one of the most interesting points was that in just 18 months, IBM has built up a GenAI business with a revenue run rate of $7.5 billion. And that GenAI impact is cutting across IBM's entire, huge product portfolio, everything from mainframes to software to consulting.01:00 —This is a company that's 114 years young. And if you were to stack up all the startups or companies of any age that launched AI businesses within the last 18 months, I wonder how many of those would now have revenue of $7.5 billion. But IBM is right there, smack in the middle of that business. Krishna said GenAI's sparking growth in everything — even with mainframes.02:16 — And on the software level, Krishna said that this new rise of the AI products within IBM are helping to improve products it currently has, like Apptio, Turbonomic, and HashiCorp, adding additional value to them. Now, one area where Krishna said there could be a little bit of cannibalization is in the broad area of consulting.03:29 — This is all another sign of the remarkable job that Arvind Krishna has done in his five years now as the CEO at IBM. It's hard to recall, as well as the company's doing now and the innovation that's underway, what a mess it was five years ago when Krishna took over. IBM now has a fantastic portfolio of partnerships with many of the Cloud Wars Top 10 companies.04:30 — So again, a big turnover here in the products, the technologies that come to use, how it goes to market, and the culture that it takes out to clients to let them know: We at IBM are very happy to bring together the best of the best companies in the world to drive new value for those clients. So hats off to IBM. Very nice quarter. Visit Cloud Wars for more.