Business Mission Control

Sovereign is on every cloud offer now, and the label does not say which of three things you buy.Have a data, analytics, automation or AI challenge you'd like us to dig into? Get in touch, we'd love to hear about it. https://cloudsonmars.com/contact/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=sovereignty-testEstera Kot and Sebastian Selman break down what a sovereign cloud offer actually buys, in francs and in failure modes.We cover:-Legal control, operational control and exit cost, with a test for each-The Swiss Government Cloud plan: 68% on foreign hyperscalers by 2032-Why renting is fine and renaming it sovereign is not-A three-question test for any sovereign offerMentioned in this episode:-Federal Administration notice on the SharePoint attack https://www.admin.ch/de/newnsb/1CjmpBBHQaMV82PjKEpcL-EFK, Swiss Government Cloud audit https://www.efk.admin.ch/en/audit/swiss-government-cloud-key-project-with-an-emphasis-on-the-business-case/-Netzwoche, EFK review and the 68% projection https://www.netzwoche.ch/news/2025-12-08/efk-nimmt-swiss-government-cloud-unter-die-lupe-BIT, Swiss Government Cloud programme https://www.bit.admin.ch/en/sgc-en-Netzwoche, Thomas Jacobsen of Infomaniak on sovereignty https://www.netzwoche.ch/news/2026-06-10/die-schweiz-hat-einen-trumpf-Microsoft and ELCA, sovereign cloud options in Switzerland https://news.microsoft.com/source/emea/2026/06/elca-collaborates-with-microsoft-to-expand-its-sovereign-cloud-options-in-switzerland-with-locally-operated-services-built-on-microsoft-azure-local-and-microsoft-365-local-Netzwoche, open source as the middle way https://www.netzwoche.ch/news/2026-07-30/digitale-souveraenitaet-mit-open-source-technologien-als-idealer-mittelweg-ICTjournal, Geneva digital sovereignty strategy https://www.ictjournal.ch/news/2026-07-08/geneve-se-dote-dune-strategie-de-souverainete-numerique-ICTjournal, Swiss Center for Digital Sovereignty https://www.ictjournal.ch/news/2026-04-29/lancement-officiel-du-centre-suisse-pour-la-souverainete-numerique-avec-31-ETH Zurich, Apertus launch https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2025/09/press-release-apertus-a-fully-open-transparent-multilingual-language-model.html-Inside IT, CSCS power consumption https://www.inside-it.ch/so-viel-strom-verbraucht-das-supercomputing-zentrum-20260810Chapters:00:00 Intro: a breach mid sovereignty debate00:56 One word, three things02:58 Three tests: legal, operations, exit03:59 Scoring a hyperscaler sovereign region04:52 The 68% Swiss Government Cloud ledger05:40 Renting is fine, renaming it is not06:05 Pricing sovereignty like insurance07:40 Full chain per workload: Infomaniak08:41 Apertus and what real sovereignty costs09:05 Patient records vs marketing site10:49 The three-question test: whose law11:34 Question 2: who holds the patch11:59 Question 3: what leaving costs12:23 What a good answer sounds like13:16 The middle-tier debate14:12 Mission debriefTalk to Estera about your data platform challenge: https://www.linkedin.com/in/esterakot/Talk to Sebastian about your business challenge: https://www.linkedin.com/in/humancentereddesign/Follow Clouds on Mars on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/clouds-on-mars/Note: Clouds on Mars is a Microsoft Fabric Featured Partner. This episode was not commissioned or sponsored by Microsoft.This video is provided for general information purposes only and does not constitute legal, tax, financial or other professional advice. Nothing herein should be relied upon as a substitute for advice from a qualified professional. Views expressed are the speakers' own. Product features, availability and licensing details may change over time, and any client results shown are illustrative only and are not a guarantee or promise of similar outcomes. © Clouds on Mars. All rights reserved. This content is the property of Clouds on Mars and may not be reproduced or distributed without permission.

Two out of three Swiss AI pilots never reach production, and the demos worked. The gap is operational, not technical.

Have a data, analytics, automation or AI challenge you'd like us to dig into? Get in touch, we'd love to hear about it. https://cloudsonmars.com/contact/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=ai-pilot-drift

Estera Kot and Sebastian Selman break down why AI programmes drift off course between the roadmap and the P&L, and which failure statistics hold up once you read the method.

We cover:

-Why 94% of CEOs keep funding AI without a 12-month return

-Where the 95% AI pilot failure figure comes from, and which failure rates have a published method

-A one-page go/no-go decision rights page, modelled on the flight director's poll

-A faster decision loop with a 24-hour SLA instead of a monthly steering committee

-Change budget and crew training funded at parity with the technology

#AIPilots #DecisionRights #GenAI #AIStrategy #DigitalTransformation #CloudsOnMars

One toggle dropped P95 query latency in a Fabric warehouse from 90 seconds to 15 seconds. Estera Kot walks through what that benchmark measured. Have a data, analytics, automation or AI challenge you'd like us to dig into? Get in touch, we'd love to hear about it. https://cloudsonmars.com/contact/?utm... Estera Kot and Sebastian Selman unpack GPU acceleration for the Microsoft Fabric data warehouse, and the footnotes behind Bogdan Crivat's six times speed-up. We cover:-Why the 6x figure is an average, not a per-query promise-The 256 concurrent user anomaly in the TPC-H run-How Databricks Photon prices acceleration you skip overnight-Why dev and production on one capacity drain the same tank #MicrosoftFabric #DataWarehouse #GPUAcceleration #DataEngineering #DataPlatform #CloudsOnMars

Your chatbot says gross margin was 46.1%. Your governed BI report says 40.5%. Same company, same quarter, and the gap is not a chatbot problem.Estera Kot, CTO at Clouds on Mars, sits down with Sebastian Selman, consulting lead for Switzerland, to unpack what replaces the dashboard — from the semantic layer underneath to the vendors they see as most exposed by the shift.See why agents eat the interface and not the model, how one architect's demo produced a governed semantic model in hours rather than weeks, what a 0 to 100 AI readiness score checks before you switch on Copilot, and three moves for leaders who already own a BI estate.Have a data, analytics, automation or AI challenge you'd like us to dig into? Get in touch, we'd love to hear about it. https://cloudsonmars.com/contact/

AI is not taking your job. It is promoting you into a job you never applied for. What happens when every knowledge worker becomes a manager of agents, without ever signing an offer letter? In this episode of Business Mission Control, Estera Kot and Sebastian discuss the three stages of AI adoption, why stage four never arrives, and what that means for hiring plans, span of control and workforce budgets in Switzerland and the EU. We cover:

• the three stages of AI adoption, from copilot to managed autonomy
• why the ceiling on autonomy is institutional and not technical
• Waymo: one remote operator, a growing fleet, and who stays accountable
• radiology: same license, same signature, a completely different working day
• why accountability does not compress, and who a court can actually sue
• how the EU AI Act and the Swiss FADP set the ceiling in practice
• why auditors, controllers and GRC leads are about to become contested hires
• three concrete moves for leaders writing their 2027 workforce plan

Subscribe for more conversations on AI adoption, governance, enterprise data and modern technology architecture. #AIAdoption #AIGovernance #FutureOfWork #EUAIAct #ManagedAutonomy #GRC #Switzerland #BusinessMissionControl

Cloud resilience is no longer just an IT issue. It is now a board-level business risk.What happens when the cloud goes down and your building depends on it?In this episode of Business Mission Control, Estera Kot and Sebastian discuss how physical cloud infrastructure, smart buildings, building management systems and geopolitical risk are changing the way businesses should think about resilience.We cover:

• why “the cloud” is still physical infrastructure
• what happens when a cloud-dependent building loses connectivity
• how HVAC, access control, elevators, energy optimization and fire monitoring can be affected
• why multi-zone redundancy may not be enough for critical systems
• what sovereign cloud, geo-redundancy and local edge mean in practice
• why CFOs, CEOs and legal teams should be part of cloud resilience decisions

Most companies do not lack data. They lack decision visibility.In the first episode of Business Mission Control, Estera Kot, CTO, Clouds on Mars is joined by Sebastian Selman, Consluting Lead, Clouds on Mars to discuss the reality many enterprises face today: fragmented systems, local reporting logic, too many Excel files, and leadership teams that still do not have one clear view of the business.Before organizations can talk seriously about data mesh or AI readiness, many first need to deal with something much more practical: data mess.The conversation explores how modern data platforms, Microsoft Fabric, OneLake, and Power BI can help connect scattered data sources and turn complex data environments into better visibility, better decisions, and real business value.Subscribe to Clouds on Mars and turn on notifications to follow the next episodes.