In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I look at why private-data inferencing may be the next trillion-dollar AI market Highlights 00:28 — Larry Ellison's grand AI plan for 2026 is centered on the holy grail for CEOs, boards of directors, and business leaders. They’re looking to unlock the power of all their data for AI reasoning and inferencing. Oracle’s promise is that Oracle’s solutions are going to allow companies to be able to reason and do inferencing on all of their private data, and to do so very...
Jan 06, 2026•5 min•Ep. 657
In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I share how big tech and Edtech are aligning to meet the challenges of rapid change. Highlights 00:03 — IBM and Pearson have announced a partnership to create personalized learning products powered by AI. These products are designed for a wide range of businesses, public organizations, and educational institutions. Pearson aims to utilize watsonx Orchestrate and watsonx Governance to develop these products. Additionally, IBM will create a custom AI-powered learning ...
Jan 05, 2026•2 min•Ep. 654
Key Takeaways Reflections: Grant reflects on last year's AI Agent & Copilot Summit, acknowledging the in-depth learning opportunities given the newness of AI at the time. Although it was the first year, he says it "felt like a really mature conference." The upcoming AI Agent & Copilot Summit can enable attendees to dig deeper into "how we actually accomplish things as a business, as an organization, and even as individuals. Session considerations : Looking forward to the event in March, ...
Dec 23, 2025•17 min•Ep. 649
In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I explore what ServiceNow’s potential $7B acquisition of Armis could mean for its cybersecurity strategy and its customers. Highlights 00:06 — According to recent reports, ServiceNow is in advanced talks to acquire Armis, with more details expected to be announced in the coming days. Coverage from Bloomberg suggests that the deal could be worth up to $7 billion. I want to discuss what the introduction of Armis to the ServiceNow ecosystem could mean for customers. 00...
Dec 23, 2025•2 min•Ep. 653
Key Takeaways AI use cases : At Insight Works, Hamblin explains that AI is leveraged in three main ways: to enhance internal business process development, to create higher-quality marketing content, and to enhance product offerings. Product specifics : Hamblin shares how AI is streamlining Shop Floor Insight , a product of Insight Works, by automating labor time validation, eliminating the need for supervisors to manually review time cards through exception-based logic and rules. Further, AI and...
Dec 22, 2025•24 min•Ep. 651
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Dec 22, 2025•3 min•Ep. 652
In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I want to wish everybody a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and an incredible New Year. Highlights 00:02 — This is the best time of the year, the holidays. We want to say Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. Happy New Year to everybody. This is my special partner, Louisa. She's two and a half. She's quite the technologist. 00:40 — So, hey, everybody, I just want to say it is a blast being a little part of your technology lives. We have enjoyed this year so much. We a...
Dec 19, 2025•1 min•Ep. 651
today's Cloud Wars Minute, I unpack how tech and mindset together will decide the winners in the 2026 AI economy. Highlights 00:31 — Google Cloud, has just had a pretty interesting engagement with BNY Mellon. BNY used to be called Bank of New York, merged with Mellon — a massive financial services organization — and they've got what I think is a brilliant AI strategy. It's simply: “AI for everyone, everywhere, everything." 01:24 — BNY has chosen to take Gemini Enterprise and adapt it into BNY’s ...
Dec 18, 2025•5 min•Ep. 650
In this episode of the AI Agent & Copilot Podcast, John Siefert, CEO of Dynamic Communities and Cloud Wars, is joined by AJ Ansari, Microsoft MVP and member of the programming committee for the AI Agent & Copilot Summit. The conversation focuses on what enterprises should really be looking for as agentic AI adoption matures. Key Takeaways Real-world stories over hype: As interest in agentic AI surges, Ansari notes a sharp increase in speaker submissions driven by practitioners who have m...
Dec 17, 2025•21 min•Ep. 647
In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I look at how Google Cloud is reshaping the defense tech landscape. Highlights 00:04 — Google Cloud has announced a multi-million dollar contract with the NATO Communication and Information Agency (NCIA), to provide critical sovereign cloud capabilities.This new strategic partnership aims to enhance NATO's digital infrastructure.The NCIA will utilize Google Distributed Cloud, or GDC, to support its Joint Analysis, Training, and Education Center, or JATEC. 00:39 — On...
Dec 17, 2025•2 min•Ep. 648
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Dec 16, 2025•36 min•Ep. 646
In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I break down the latest earnings results showing Oracle and Google Cloud surging into a tie for the #2 fastest-growing cloud vendors in the world’s greatest growth market. Highlights 00:13 — Two companies that are really pushing the boundaries here in the greatest growth market the world has ever known are Oracle and Google Cloud . Recently, Oracle pulled into a tie with Google Cloud for the second spot, number two spot on the fastest growing major cloud vendors lis...
Dec 16, 2025•4 min•Ep. 645
Key Takeaways Summit expectations: With so many people dipping their toes into the AI, Copilot, and agentic capabilities of Microsoft, Nancie expects the AI Agent & Copilot Summit to be filled with exciting stories about the outcomes and how people are leveraging and benefiting from it. She also anticipates seeing more exploratory customer case studies demonstrating the shift from conversational Copilot side to the agentic side. "I'm expecting to see much more of that understanding, how to u...
Dec 15, 2025•11 min•Ep. 643
In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I cover Oracle's Q2 results. Highlights 00:19 — One of the hottest Cloud Wars Top 10 companies right now is Oracle. And I want to talk today a little bit about Oracle's Q2 results from last week. I think there's been a little bit of the fog of war, the fog of AI war specifically here, that has obscured the impact behind what's really going on with Oracle's numbers. 01:06 — Let's look at Oracle's RPO (remaining performance obligation) results from Q2. RPO rose 433% t...
Dec 15, 2025•6 min•Ep. 644
In today's Cloud Wars Agent & Copilot Minute, I explore Microsoft's addition of Mistral Large 3 to its Foundry platform and why it's a major win for developers seeking open, enterprise-ready AI models. Highlights 00:11 —Microsoft Foundry is a platform from Microsoft, designed for building, customizing, and deploying GenAI applications and agents. It allows users to access over 11,000 models. Recently, Microsoft added a new model to its offerings, Mistral Large 3. Microsoft claims it to be on...
Dec 12, 2025•3 min•Ep. 636
Sales, and Matt Hobbs, Cloud Engineering and Data Analytics Platform Leader and Partner at PwC US. Together, they explore how companies can stop overpaying for cloud and instead fund AI innovation by shifting spend from legacy and suboptimal cloud deployments into modern architectures, multi-cloud strategies, and enterprise-grade AI capabilities that actually move the needle on growth, margin, and new business models. Smarter Cloud, Bigger AI The Big Themes: Built to Cost Less : Oracle entered t...
Dec 11, 2025•36 min•Ep. 638
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 discuss why culture, mindset, and leadership matter just as much as technology in driving AI transformation, based off my conversation with Will Grannis, CTO, Google Cloud. Highlights 00:30 — Will has been the Chief Technology Officer at Google Cloud, one of the world’s most advanced tec...
Dec 11, 2025•5 min•Ep. 641
Bob Evans sits down with Will Grannis, Chief Technology Officer at Google Cloud, to unpack how AI is reshaping both technology stacks and corporate culture. They explore Google Cloud’s Gemini Enterprise platform, the newly upgraded Gemini 3 models, and the rise of agentic AI. Along the way, Will shares customer stories from industries like finance, healthcare, retail, and travel, and even talks about how his own team had to change its habits to benefit from AI. Inside Google Cloud’s Agentic AI T...
Dec 11, 2025•33 min•Ep. 640
Key Takeaways Mullican expresses the value of the event, and given that AI and Copilot have matured, the sessions at the 2025 AI Agent & Copilot Summit NA will shift from a focus on experimentation to practical applications that deliver real impact. As a returning Programming Committee Board member, Mullican highlights the "unprecedented number of submissions this time around,” making it tough to choose sessions for 2025. The event will offer a mix of visionary talks, practical use cases, an...
Dec 10, 2025•13 min•Ep. 639
In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I look at how IBM and Cisco are teaming up to pioneer long-distance quantum networks. Highlights 00:03 — Although not the only company invested in the development of quantum computing , IBM is certainly considered the most active. The company has the highest number of patents, a clear road map for fault tolerant quantum systems, and the most prestigious track record across quantum hardware, software and the commercialization of these tools. 00:28 — Now, IBM and Cisc...
Dec 10, 2025•3 min•Ep. 634
Highlights 00:24 — I think we’re seeing some very interesting competitive battling between Palantir and ServiceNow, head to head, emerging over two categories. One, this AI platform position that they’re both talking about relentlessly as sort of the core of their strategic value. And secondly, they’re both on this kick now about who is the defining software company of the 21st century, of the generation. 01:57 — Both are talking up the power of the AI platform as the foundation for what compani...
Dec 09, 2025•5 min•Ep. 637
Key Takeaways Agents take center stage : Bensch says last year’s event was focused on Copilot basics and early-stage AI adoption, but 2025 is the year of agents. Organizations are asking how to make agents work securely, how to tap into data through offerings like Work IQ and MCP servers, and how to build governance that actually holds up. Attendees can expect deep dives into security, data extraction, Dataverse, Finance & Operations, and all the new features unveiled at Microsoft Ignite . “...
Dec 08, 2025•16 min•Ep. 630
In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I review the remarks and insights from CEO Marc Benioff and Salesforce from the recent Q3 earnings call. Highlights 00:20 — After an approximately three-year hiatus, CEO Marc Benioff and Salesforce demonstrated their growth mojo through the Q3 numbers. While some of the numbers aren't quite as robust as they were in Salesforce's earlier days, in the earnings call, Benioff emphasized growth, innovation, and new things coming that are reflective of where the company w...
Dec 08, 2025•5 min•Ep. 635
In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I discuss how Palantir’s latest customer wins reveal a shift from point solutions to end-to-end AI strategies. Highlights 00:19 — Palantir's got a customer that, very shortly after signing a deal for a fairly limited AI engagement, said it wanted to go enterprise-wide with an investment that's up 8x over what the original one was. This signals where CEOs are driving these AI-centered business transformations to ensure that they go end-to-end here and have enhanced b...
Dec 04, 2025•5 min•Ep. 633
In today's Cloud Wars Agent and Copilot Minute, I unpack why Microsoft Copilot will no longer be available on WhatsApp starting January 15 and what users should do next. Highlights 00:03 — Starting January 15, Microsoft Copilot will no longer be available to users via WhatsApp. This feature has been offered since 2024, but due to changes in WhatsApp platform policies — which include the removal of all LLM chatbots, Copilot users will need to access the assistant through alternative means. 00:30 ...
Dec 04, 2025•2 min•Ep. 632
In this Cloud Wars Live podcast, Bob Evans sits down with Hayete Gallot, President, Google Cloud Customer Experience, to explore how Google Cloud is helping enterprises move from AI experimentation to true business transformation. Gallot describes how her organization unifies engineering, consulting, partners, and learning to accelerate time-to-value and scale agentic AI across every function. Together, they dive into Gemini Enterprise, customer successes like Virgin Voyages, and why human-cente...
Dec 03, 2025•22 min•Ep. 627
Key Takeaways Community involvement: Mary is a member of the programming committee board this year and will be attending the AI Agent & Copilot Summit, taking place from March 17th to 19th in San Diego, California. Working in the real estate industry, Mary acknowledges that, like individuals in all industries, there's a lot of AI transformations happening right now. "Being involved in this broader community is really exciting and energizing," she says. Summit expectations: She reports moment...
Dec 03, 2025•9 min•Ep. 631
In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I explore how Salesforce’s acquisition of Informatica strengthens its foundation for delivering trustworthy, agentic AI. Highlights 00:04 — A few years back, when I was covering the cloud data management firm Informatica on a regular basis, the rumor mill was rife with speculation that the company was set to be acquired by Salesforce. It didn’t happen right away, but ultimately, that’s what transpired. 00:22 — Now, Salesforce has announced that the acquisition is co...
Dec 03, 2025•2 min•Ep. 628
In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I analyze why Workday’s $26B RPO signals strong future momentum in the face of SAP and Oracle. Highlights 00:15 — Very nice Q3 that Workday recently finished here. Great revenue growth for the quarter ended October 31 — up 15% to about $2.25 billion. 17% growth for its total RPO, to about $8.2 billion. It's been cranking up the innovation engine there at Workday. Small AI-specific acquisitions over the last year or two have really been adding to this so customers ha...
Dec 02, 2025•4 min•Ep. 629
In this special Cloud Wars report, Bob Evans sits down with Michael Ameling, President and Chief Product Officer of SAP Business Technology Platform, for a deep dive into how SAP is helping customers navigate the fast-moving AI Era. Ameling and Evans discuss how SAP’s Business Data Cloud, partnerships with Snowflake and Databricks, HANA Cloud innovations, and new AI-powered tools and agents are helping SAP evolve from an applications powerhouse into a data-and-AI-driven business platform for the...
Dec 01, 2025•22 min•Ep. 623
