Cloud Wars analyzes the major cloud vendors from the perspective of business customers. In Cloud Wars Live, Bob Evans talks with both sides about these profoundly transformative technologies, and with monthly All-Star guests from across the business community about the trends impacting how the world lives, works, plays, and dreams. Visit https://cloudwars.com for more.
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In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I explain why Oracle’s massive RPO growth proves demand for AI infrastructure is real, not a bubble. Highlights 00:00 — For the last several weeks, we've all been hearing gloom and doom, there's going to be AI overcapacity for data centers, and then talking about all these things that Oracle can't do. I want to talk about this in the context of Oracle's terrific Q3 numbers that came out earlier this week. I hope what they'll do as a residual effect is shut the pie h...
In this episode of the AI Agent & Copilot Podcast, Giuseppe Ianni, host of the show, is joined by Diego Araujo, Founder and Chief AI Architect at Fusion Flow Software. Their conversation explores how enterprises are adopting AI agents and copilots within ERP environments, particularly Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations. Key Takeaways Start with a “Winning” Use Case : Successful AI adoption begins with identifying a high-impact, low-effort opportunity that delivers immediate valu...
In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I look at ServiceNow’s new Autonomous Workforce and what it means for the future of the digital workforce. Highlights 00:03 — As companies become more familiar with the scope and capabilities of agentic AI , they're seeking more efficient ways to integrate these features into their workflows. And in line with this trend, ServiceNow has launched the Autonomous Workforce: teams of AI specialists that will enhance teams with domain-specific AI knowledge. 00:29 — So how...
Key Takeaways Herain Oberoi, Microsoft's general manager for data security, privacy, and compliance, recently held a session where he outlined top security challeneges within the AI era. Specifically, Oberoi outlined three concerns enterprises must address to build secure, scalable AI operations. He stressed strict access controls and disciplined data hygiene to prevent oversharing and sensitive data leakage. Second, regulatory compliance now requires continuous auditability of AI agent operatio...
In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I explain why customer pressure is forcing SAP, Oracle, and Workday to overhaul traditional enterprise software sales models. Highlights 00:01 — Hello my friends. Welcome back to Cloud Wars Minute. We’ve got some big news here because we’ve got SAP, Oracle, and Workday all agreeing on a very key issue here and instituting some changes at the same time. What led to this unprecedented alignment between three companies that you know, day after day in the marketplace, a...
Key Takeaways Overview : Companies are drowning in AI tools, most of which "do not talk to each other." Today, Microsoft announced Microsoft 365 E7: The Frontier Suite , officially launching May 1st for $99. The suite brings together Microsoft 365 E5, M365 Copilot Wave 3, and Agent 365 . Manage agents : IDC projects 1.3 billion AI agents by 2028, creating major governance, access control, and data management challenges that Agent 365 addresses by giving teams a single place to track, secure, and...
In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I analyze Oracle’s projected Q3 numbers and the explosive growth of its cloud and AI infrastructure business. Highlights 00:02 — Tomorrow, March 10, Oracle releases its Q3 numbers. I think these will be some of the most interesting we see from any of the Cloud Wars Top 10 companies, because relative to Oracle's size, its growth rates are up near the very top, and its RPO growth has been absolutely astronomical. 00:58 — So you might think of it as pipeline or backlog...
In this AI Agent & Copilot Minute, Mason Siefert explores how grocery retailers are accelerating AI adoption behind the scenes — empowering store associates and operational teams — even as consumer trust in customer-facing AI tools remains limited. Key Takeaways Consumer Trust Gap: Despite the rapid rollout of advanced retail AI tools, adoption among consumers remains limited. A recent consumer trend study shows only about 15% of shoppers actively use customer-facing AI solutions, even with ...
In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I explore OpenAI’s decision to adjust its trillion-dollar AI infrastructure ambitions to reassure investors. Highlights 00:04 — Planned spending commitments amongst the Cloud Wars Top 10 companies have reached astronomical levels. This surge is in response to the anticipated demand for AI infrastructure, products, and services — a market that UN Trade and Development predicts will exceed $4.3 trillion by 2033. 00:25 — But in a trend-bucking move, OpenAI has informed...
Key Takeaways Microsoft leads in risk detection with tools like Defender XDR, but as enterprise data environments grow in scale and complexity, organizations now need AI‑driven security that can automatically investigate and manage risk across the entire data estate, not just detect it. With the January 2026 general release of Purview Data Security Investigations, Microsoft addresses the challenge of overwhelming data volumes by using generative AI to automatically analyze security signals acros...
In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I look at how Workday plans to blend AI agents with its core HR and finance platforms. Highlights 00:03 — One of the big stories of early 2026 is this whole wackiness around how AI is going to destroy the enterprise apps business, particularly SaaS companies. Will it change it? Absolutely and sometimes in profound ways, but not to the elimination of it. This idea that customers can either use agents or they can use apps is ridiculous. There's a very powerful role fo...
In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I explore how Microsoft is accelerating business-process transformation with its expanding Copilot and agent ecosystem. Highlights 00:10 — Microsoft has launched a three-day online boot camp covering how to leverage its expansive toolkit for AI-powered work, beginning with a session titled “Copilots and Agents: What’s New and What’s Next?” 01:01 — Rather than listing every innovation, I want to focus on business process, where some of the most relevant near-term tra...
In this AI Agent & Copilot Minute, Mason Siefert explores Microsoft’s first integrated learning agent for students, explaining how proactive AI modes like Understand, Practice, and Study are reshaping education beyond reactive digital tutors. Key Takeaways Proactive Learning Shift: Microsoft’s newly announced learning agent moves beyond reactive digital tutors by proactively guiding students through structured learning modes. Rather than waiting for students to ask the right questions, the a...
In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I explain how AI is fueling Salesforce’s renewed push for innovation and scale. Highlights 00:01 — We've got Salesforce now reporting some very nice numbers for its fiscal Q4 ended January 31. The bigger story behind that, I think, is the company is fully recommitted to growth once again. 01:18 — What Benioff is back to now is to get the company, with the AI Revolution, into a high-growth mode again. Chief Revenue Officer Miguel Milano referred to Q4 as the greatest...
Key Takeaways Laying groundwork : Weiner will be leading a session at the AI Kickstart Preconference, introducing attendees to Copilot Studio and how to build their first custom AI agent. He explains that the session will cover real-world examples and walk through agent creation, deployment, monitoring, and governance to help participants "get the groundwork to take advantage of the future days in the conference." Event takeaways : When discussing event takeaways, Weiner explains that the AI Age...
In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I break down Aneel Bushri’s powerful case for pairing AI with enterprise apps. Highlights 00:02 — There are some wild things going on in the enterprise software business, some of it rational, much of it irrational. But the big issue right now is for customers, partners, and the software vendors, the Cloud Wars Top 10 , to figure out what is going to be the right way forward, the optimal mix of AI with enterprise applications. 01:47 — I think the most important thing...
In this AI Agent & Copilot Minute, Mason Siefert outlines how Microsoft’s latest enhancements to Copilot Studio — especially the new tools in the Power CAT Copilot Studio Kit — are designed to bring structure, governance, and measurable quality to enterprise-scale AI agents. Key Takeaways Rubrics refinement: The headline feature in the updated kit is the rubrics refinement tool, which addresses a growing challenge in agentic AI operations — how to consistently and accurately grade agent resp...
In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I explain why aligning your role with AI may be the key to thriving in the next 18 months. Highlights 00:05 — There's a lot of discussion right now about the impact of AI on the job market. Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman has weighed in on this debate regarding the pace of AI innovation and its impact on employment. 00:53 — “I think that we're going to have a human-level performance on most, if not all, professional tasks. So white-collar work, where you're sittin...
Key Takeaways SEO evolution : Most people prefer having answers given directly rather than searching for them, which is reshaping how information is accessed. As a result, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is evolving toward AI-driven assistants and agents that deliver faster, more personalized responses than traditional web searches. AEO & GEO : Two approaches emerging from this shift are Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) . AEO focuses on making conten...
In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I explain why deep on-premises expertise is becoming a strategic advantage in the AI-driven cloud economy. Highlights 00:03 — One of the things we're seeing here in early 2026, as so many things change around the tech industry and customer expectations, is that three old timers in the Cloud Wars Top 10 —Microsoft, SAP, and Oracle — for each company, 50% or more of its revenue comes from the cloud. 00:56 — So these are, in some ways, the graybeards, and some people h...
In this episode of the AI Agent & Copilot Podcast, John Siefert, CEO of Dynamic Communities and host of the podcast, is joined by Christopher Lochhead , bestselling author of "Play Bigger," to explore the shift from knowledge worker to “creator capitalist.” Lochhead previews his new book, "Creator Capitalist," which he will officially launch at the 2026 AI Agent & Copilot Summit NA in San Diego, outlining how AI and agents are transforming value creation, careers, and leadership in the m...
In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I examine the rising threat of AI recommendation poisoning and what it means for enterprise security. Highlights 00:09 — Now, have you heard of AI recommendation poisoning? It could become a major security issue in the AI Era. Microsoft researchers have found a large number of instances of AI memory poisoning attacks — a kind of prompt injection specific to AI assistants. What's happening is that companies are embedding hidden instructions in familiar "Summarize wit...
In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I unpack how Palantir is turning AI’s commoditized cognition into a competitive advantage. Highlights 00:03 — One of the big stories of 2026 has been the ongoing rise of Palantir, a true unicorn at 23 years old, but still a unicorn in the enterprise software business and its incredible growth. In Q4, its revenue is up 70% to $1.4 billion, and it's projecting 61% growth for all of calendar 2026. So this was not an aberration or a flash in the pan. 01:49 — CEO Alexand...
Eric Newell, CEO of Stoneridge Software, discusses his upcoming session at the AI Agent and Copilot Summit, focusing on guiding organizations to effectively implement and secure AI, specifically M365 Copilot. He emphasizes moving beyond experimentation to establish robust AI strategies, policies, and governance to prevent data misuse and ensure productivity. The episode highlights the critical need for companies to define how AI tools should and should not be used by employees.
In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I examine how AI-powered partnerships are redefining growth and desirability in the consumer economy. Highlights 00:15 — I want to talk today about how Google Cloud, the number one company on the Cloud Wars Top 10 , has partnered up with its longtime customer, Unilever, to develop what I'm calling an AI-powered marketing and fulfillment engine for the AI economy. 00:59 — The focus about AI on large language models and tokens is incredibly important, but not the end ...
In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I unpack why one founder’s departure may mark a turning point in the AI Era. Highlights 00:03 — There's huge news today in the AI space. Peter Steinberger, founder of OpenClaw, has joined OpenAI. Now I'll start by giving you some background on OpenClaw and its significance in the industry, followed by my commentary on why this is such a shake-up. 00:56 — Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of OpenClaw is its capability to handle these [active computer use] tasks thro...
In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I analyze how AI inferencing and custom chips are reshaping the cloud power structure. Highlights 00:05 — 2026 is off to a booming start. One of the numbers we saw was that Amazon is committed to spending $200 billion in CapEx in calendar 2026. That will be, by far, the largest CapEx expenditure in a single year that any company in any industry has ever made. So, truly some monumental, groundbreaking stuff going on here. It shows the size of the opportunity. 01:11 —...
In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I explore why Bill McDermott says ServiceNow is not a SaaS company and why SaaS is “on the menu.” Highlights 00:03 — Welcome back to Cloud Wars Minute. The big thing is ServiceNow. As Bill McDermott says, ServiceNow is hungry and SaaS is on the menu. He went to great lengths in ServiceNow's recent Q4 earnings call , and also in a follow-up interview with Jim Cramer of Mad Money, to say that ServiceNow is doing great. We hit and exceeded all our numbers. We are not a...
In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I break down ServiceNow’s latest AI expansion with Anthropic and what it means for enterprise workflows. Highlights 00:04 — I recently reported on ServiceNow ’s expanded collaboration with OpenAI. That agreement makes OpenAI’s models the go-to solution for companies running upwards of 80 billion annual workflows on the ServiceNow platform. 00:17 — Now, ServiceNow has announced that Anthropic’s Claude models will be integrated into core ServiceNow workflows for tasks...
In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I analyze the leadership shift at Workday and what it means in the age of agentic AI. Highlights 00:00 — I want to talk about a change at the top of Workday. And I want to point out somebody who's been a real superstar in this business and that's Workday co-founder, former co-CEO, former CEO , chairman, executive chairman, resigned as CEO, now back in as CEO, Aneel Bhusri. 01:13 — He was going to be the person that ran all the business, the operations. And Aneel sai...
