As President of SAP S/4HANA, Jan Gilg oversees development of SAP's flagship ERP product, digital supply chain, and industry solutions. In this conversation, Jan discusses how the shift to a digital economy is driving unprecedented changes in how businesses operate, and the new types of software solutions businesses require to thrive in such an environment. In the midst of all that upheaval, SAP itself has changed in significant ways, and Gilg shares his perspectives on the benefits those change...
Aug 11, 2021•29 min•Ep. 244
The Big Themes: Like Goldilocks' testing out the three different sized chairs: This one is too big, this one is too small—this one is JUST RIGHT. Mid-size businesses need solutions and partners that are "just right" for them. McKinsey has reported: What mid-size enterprises really need to realize their growth potential is "the ability to access foreign markets, increase operational efficiency and adopt growth-enabling technologies." Big idea: Businesses need to choose software that is flexible, ...
Aug 05, 2021•28 min•Ep. 242
The Big Themes: You must preserve the core of your business: Leadership is about to make the investments, provide the autonomy, create the innovation culture and align it to your overall strategy. The four freedoms: An organization that allows for innovation, capability to really thrive, grow, and affect the future of your business. What I call the beacon model: You create a capability that is related – but separate from the core of your business. These are courageous innovators: They have to be...
Aug 04, 2021•35 min•Ep. 239
The Big Themes: We went all in with Google Cloud: Most of our peers were actually going in the other direction. They wanted to be multicloud, making acquisitions in adjacent ecosystems. Return to work shouldn’t mean return to normal: If I talk to our software developers, who were already remote before the pandemic. This is the future of our business: We are about to make an investment that will change the trajectory of the company forever, and we have very high expectations. The Big Quotes: “The...
Aug 03, 2021•47 min•Ep. 243
The Big Themes: Will business travel come back? There is a lot of conjecture about business travel being forever changed by the forced online interaction of the pandemic. Our sense is it already has been but not in the way many people think. Thomas Q2 Sourcing Report is out: And reflects strong demand across a wide range of categories, with significant implications for technology markets. We nailed a few of our Q2 predictions and have several for Q3. Higher Ed and Healthcare: Two massive markets...
Jul 29, 2021•44 min•Ep. 241
The Big Themes: Returning to the office: This isn’t really what native digitals want. Apple employees revolted, as did Google’s, prompting one of the largest technology companies in the world to backtrack. The result of this macro trend: If you are 35 years old or younger you will progressively spend time, energy, and money improving and enhancing your digital life, not your physical life. The stuff business: 140 million native digital Americans and Millennials and Gen Z grew up in an era where ...
Jul 28, 2021•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 238
The Big Themes: Offer customers the best in breed solutions: The pace that we see in the Middle East is a very hungry market for technology and knowledge. The best way to accelerate: We have done a rollout in 20 countries using that template in a very short period of time. I think this is a big change from the past. A very quick return on their investments: So it’s very important to understand the quick wins from these types of projects. A journey with our customers: We believe that if they grow...
Jul 27, 2021•29 min•Ep. 230
The Big Themes: Cloud repatriation : Techies and investors are buzzing about a recent articlethat seems to argue, “start in the cloud, then move back in-house.” BoD and CIO/CISO gap : Most CIOs/CISOs have limited BoD interaction, and most board directors know far too little about technology. They need to talk! Last week I became a NACD ‘Certified Director’: After lots of study and a grueling exam! So BoDs are on my mind more than usual. Pat Fitzgerald about hiring and retaining workers: Shakespe...
Jul 21, 2021•43 min•Ep. 237
The Big Themes: The creativity that each one of them had: Telling their own story – and a lot of them used real-life stories and data, and so much more. They’re very polarizing: You can’t really put human management together and feel that’s a warm environment – that definitely has a lot of tone to it. More companies are trying to be strategic: In order to be competitive and to meet customer expectations, they’re having this drive to be from the customer’s point of view. There’s lots of ways to e...
Jul 20, 2021•32 min•Ep. 235
The Big Themes: That’s what Silk helps with: We’re helping customers take those applications, and more importantly the databases underneath them – and successfully deploy them to the public cloud. Performance and cost: We always describe it as two sides of the same coin. You can have all that performance, but it’s going to cost you the world. The platform works as a very clever system: It uses a two-tier architecture that splits performance and capacity into independent dimensions. The crown jew...
Jul 15, 2021•18 min•Ep. 236
The Big Themes: They want a player that’s crushing their quota year-after-year: Everybody’s going after that person. To get a search agency that’s going to make you a priority and only recruit for you is not realistic. They’re experts in their field: They’re sales recruiters, and that’s all they do. They’re engineering recruiters – and that’s all they do. Equity is always going to be a big issue: I think we’ll continue to be a driving force for change in the future. Candidates are just getting m...
Jul 13, 2021•26 min•Ep. 234
The Big Themes: Microsoft has said that for every $1 of software they sell, partners make $9: The opportunity for channel partners in this time of cloud growth is huge. It should mirror the customer base: Software vendors should make it easy for customers to know who their partners are. Effective onboarding and training programs: These ensure that partners have the domain expertise to work any given software and ongoing programs. A level playing field: Not cherry-picking partners for customers b...
Jul 06, 2021•32 min•Ep. 233
The Big Themes: Taking a victory lap: When you look at those lists, these are technology companies that have figured out how to partner and work within the industry. New Carnegie Mellon masters program: I believe the first masters level joint business degree is to help students prepare to be a product manager. The enemy of my enemy is my friend: But the other part of that is true as well. There’s a lot of moving pieces on the chess board right now. Rockefeller breaking up Standard Oil: After the...
Jun 30, 2021•30 min•Ep. 232
Oliver Bussmann is a world-renowned expert specializing on the intersection of technology and business with particular expertise in financial services, and is now CEO of Bussmann Advisory AG. Having been both a CIO and a COO, Oliver has held senior positions at UBS, SAP, Allianz, Deutsche Bank and IBM. I had a great chat with Oliver Bussmann, who's a strategic advisor and board member for corporations and software companies, as well as startups in fintech, payments, and blockchain. Having been C...
Jun 28, 2021•23 min•Ep. 228
The Big Themes: Why isn’t big data producing big insights? In our last episode we tee’d up the idea that while we have seen extraordinary advances in big data, data analytics and data science, it’s harder to find examples of extraordinary insights of the use of big data. How should business leaders factor human judgement: In his latest book, “Noise,” Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize winning economist suggests that the issue is about human judgement and not data. The era of augmented intelligence: ...
Jun 23, 2021•45 min•Ep. 231
The Big Themes: Wake-up call for boards and C-Suites: What do we hear from victims? “We didn’t think we’d be a target.” In our emerging acceleration economy: Firms can’t afford the lost time, the lost revenue/added costs, the hit to reputation a successful attack causes. Firms must do six things well: Robust prevention, quick detection, defense in depth, keeping secrets secret, effective repair/restoration, and not keeping your eggs in one basket. Manage systemic risk, not just cybersecurity: If...
Jun 21, 2021•33 min•Ep. 227
The Big Themes: Fundamental and important to the model: Data lakes, data hubs, data warehouses, data marketplaces – that’s a lot of data. Snowflake has popularized the concept: Other vendors are latching onto it – you could argue it is kind of revolutionizing that whole model. Google announced Dataplex: A data fabric for integration, and they also announced an analytics hub for data sharing and analytics, and sharing insights into the data stream. A definition of cloud computing: Still holds up ...
Jun 17, 2021•32 min•Ep. 226
The Big Themes: Where these two circles intersect: You could offer a core set of applications, and the ability for you to pick and choose some of these other applications that are available. We set up Lifion to build our Next Gen HCM: We had to build it not for just the up-market U.S. space, but we were also targeting U.S. HQ at MNCs and international companies. The numbers may vary: I’m just going to use that standard rule of thumb we follow is the 80/20 rule. Enterprise software is about 80% o...
Jun 16, 2021•23 min•Ep. 229
The Big Themes: Plotted on a bell curve: Some are amazing, and some are terrible – and some are in the middle. Stability is not the issue: There’s capital behind these companies that give you the same amount of runway you could expect from any of the other kinds of companies. The term unicorn was coined: You needed to raise money at least a billion dollar valuation from one company in your portfolio to make that portfolio be a top performing venture portfolio. Microsoft and Nuance: You have the ...
Jun 15, 2021•28 min•Ep. 224
The Big Themes: Abe Lincoln: Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four hours sharpening the ax. No analysis paralysis: As you prepare to lock down your decision, you must be sure that the core problem you’re trying to solve is clearly outlined in your statement of work. Don’t boil the ocean: Our magic number is around three alternatives that you’re shortlisting before making a final decision. These trusted partners: When you find a partner that can challenge your ide...
Jun 10, 2021•31 min•Ep. 223
Just over a year ago, Howard Boville left his job as CTO at Bank of America to join IBM as senior VP of hybrid cloud. Boville joined Cloud Wars Live to discuss the big changes he’s been driving at IBM Cloud, the booming market for industry clouds that he’s been aggressively championing within IBM, and the colossal market for industry-specific solutions. A recurring theme for Boville throughout our conversation is the opening of Chapter 2 in the cloud story, where large enterprises that have been...
Jun 09, 2021•15 min•Ep. 225
The Big Themes: The citizen developer: Those low-code, no-code tools are giving the power back to their employees, and that’s creating a new environment that’s having a reorganization in that area. Some of the innovations from Microsoft Teams: It was just like a basic tool that I use with Teams. Some of the innovations that they developed so rapidly in the times of COVID to adapt to a new remote workforce. There’s always new things to soak in there: We also have a number of events that take plac...
Jun 08, 2021•30 min•Ep. 222
The Big Themes: I’ve got 99 problems and tech ain’t one of them: It’s almost never a technology issue. It’s usually a people problem. The technologists out there: Many technologists can be overly focused on technology, which limits their ability to see the bigger business issues. What are you really going to be focused on? This is a journey: We need to embrace one another and lock arms and move forward together in a secular fashion. The Big Quotes: “But the only thing that surprises me by that i...
Jun 03, 2021•39 min•Ep. 220
The Big Themes: Declare dominion over your work: Agency is working for something greater than a paycheck. When you love what you do, you have nothing to “balance.” Who is your Archimedes: “If you give me a lever and a place to stand, I can move the world.” YOLO, “You Only Live Once”: Originally made popular by the Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart. For many, a good job, a nice car, and a steady paycheck are no longer enough. Sometimes you need an auctioneer: Your auctioneer is probably a friend,...
May 26, 2021•53 min•Ep. 218
The Big Themes: According to the Association for Manufacturing Technology: In order to reshore 25% of the manufactured goods currently imported from China, US manufacturers will need to invest $400-$600 billion in manufacturing technology. Why isn’t “Big Data” yielding “Big Insights"? It might be because as business leaders we are still confusing causation and correlation. The “Streaming Wars”: Have changed the way that we all watch filmed entertainment. What can the rest of us learn from the ba...
May 25, 2021•40 min•Ep. 217
The Big Themes: A wealth of riches that we are so privileged to have: They serve as a kind of innovation pipeline in addition to our R&D teams. The default data was your data: I think the concept of data protection, data privacy, and now terms that people are using around confidential computing are really where the heart of our differentiation lies. IBM has worked in these industries for decades: Because we have worked with financial services, telco, healthcare, etc., IBM has brought togethe...
May 24, 2021•26 min•Ep. 216
The Big Themes: The Colonial Pipleline hack: Wake-up call for boards and C-Suites. I’ve worked in utilities industry several times, and a hack in your OT system can kill people. Industry networks are not new: Banks have been ‘clearing’ checks and ‘settling’ securities trades for hundreds of years. Remember “Bank Americard.” But these new industry clouds take industry networks to completely new levels. Sadin’s Law of industry differentiation (80-10-10 Rule): It’s about process, not system applica...
May 19, 2021•42 min•Ep. 215
The Big Themes: A lot of exciting things happening: Gartner is estimating that 75% of databases will be migrated to the cloud or be launched in the cloud by the end of next year. Big Data startup Ocient: Just raised $40 million in Series B to fund work on ingesting data on exabyte scale. IDC forecast: What they call the “Enterprise Datasphere” is growing 2X faster than the “Consumer Datasphere.” Putting databases into outer space: If you’re storing your digital assets in satellites, maybe then p...
May 18, 2021•36 min•Ep. 214
The Big Themes: · I’m in the midst of writing a book: Everybody does it, but what’s exciting are the insights I’ll get to share from some remarkable people I’ve talked to. · Purpose and culture often go hand-in-hand: We have to be students. We have to constantly study. We have to constantly come up with those new thoughts. · “Customer-obsessed”? Most of us are not. What percentage of your meetings are directly focused specifically on a customer’s need, versus meandering discussions about interna...
May 17, 2021•41 min•Ep. 212
The Big Themes: Old-school/new school: The big search firms have some really good assessment programs, but tie a formalized assessment program into succession planning. The CEO sets the tenor of the company: I think a lot of times these CEOs don’t fully appreciate the components that they’re asking for. The recruiter’s role: Knowing the company culture, management style, succession planning, and weaknesses for the future market intelligence, that recruiter becomes a more qualified candidate to g...
May 11, 2021•26 min•Ep. 211
