In today's Cloud Wars Agent and Copilot Minute, I look at how Copilot’s smarter search experience supports users, respects content creators, and strengthens the web.

Highlights

00:12 — Microsoft has announced that it's bringing the best of AI search to Copilot, along with a dedicated Copilot search experience. In practice, this means that responses from Copilot will include, as Microsoft describes it, more prominent clickable citations and the option to see aggregated sources. The aim is to align more closely with Microsoft's human-first approach.

00:48 — A blog post written by the Copilot team reads as follows: "We've optimized Bing's powerful search capabilities and utilized Copilot's intelligence to deliver greater control and transparency to everyday interactions with your AI companion." Additionally, this feature will provide direct links to complex queries.

01:42 —Microsoft says it's implemented these updates with publishers and content owners in mind to support what it describes as a healthy web ecosystem. Not only is Microsoft introducing greater transparency to Copilot search, but it's also adding additional familiar processes to ensure that both new and experienced users can more effortlessly use Copilot to access the information they need. 

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In this episode of the AI Agent & Copilot Podcast, John Siefert is joined by Stijn Geeroms, Vice President Business Solutions, Cegeka, for a conversation on Cegeka being named Microsoft's Partner of the Year for supply chain.

Key Takeaways

• About the company: Cegeka is a global IT company headquartered in Belgium. It has around 10,000 professionals across Europe and North America. Geeroms describes Cegeka as a "Microsoft-first partner," as it offers solutions for the various Microsoft solution areas. The company also specializes in a number of industries. "We're very proud to also be recognized by Microsoft on our journey," he says.
• Key efforts and vertical industries: Since the start, Cegeka has been focusing on manufacturing. More specifically, it has honed in on process manufacturing. When saying they "focus efforts" in a particular area, Geeroms clarifies that this refers to four layers: added capabilities, pre-configuration, understanding industries, and agents. Before the introduction of AI, Geeroms notes, "We might have said that ERP might break productivity, but it was mainly streamlining their processes and giving them insight." But now, it's bringing new opportunities for productivity with Microsoft solutions.
• Customer example: Cegeka recently went live with a large pharma customer. "We went live in almost nine months, which I think, for that industry, is very fast and a broad scope," Geeroms explains. It involves planning, warehousing, sales, procurement, and more. Because they focus on pre-configuration, they were able to accelerate the adoption and validation processes required for that industry. Now, Cegeka is working with that customer on implementing agents and automation to make the platform more efficient.
• Market demands: The rapid transformation that Cegeka was able to do with that customer demonstrates the pace of change as well as the pace of innovation that AI is bringing. "They demand from us a solution fitting to their requirements as fast as possible...Once they're on it, they're continuously thinking of improvement on optimization," he says. This is what the market is demanding. "It's no longer a one-shot; it's like a life method."

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In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I take a look at how Oracle’s bold multicloud partnerships — with Microsoft, AWS, and Google Cloud.

Highlights

00:15 — One of the ways in which Oracle has been distinguishing itself is not just with its new technology, but with interesting go-to-market approaches. Now, Ellison recently said that while Oracle's multicloud business, where its three competitors, Microsoft, AWS, and Google Cloud, all offer the Oracle Database to their customers, that revenue was up over 1,500%.

01:11 — He said so far, almost all of that growth has been generated by the Microsoft partnership because it was the first to come on board. Ellison believes that as the AWS partnership and Google get up to speed — and they get all the infrastructure set up to support that — you’d think that's going to drive a new round of growth for the Oracle Database business.

02:12 — Can the Oracle Database hit $20 billion in revenue in five years? Ellison seemed bullish on that. One reason is the new Oracle AI Database, purpose-built for the AI Revolution. Second is these multicloud partnerships. There's such a demand among customers who have wanted the Oracle Database but have felt trapped using Microsoft Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud.

03:15 — The AI reasoning, which Ellison was calling it, also known as inferencing, is something a lot of companies are going to be doing when they take these new tools and say, “How do I suit this for my retail company or my clothing company or my trucking company?” That's where, Ellison said, everybody’s going to want to do this. He sees massive demand for it.

04:32 — In a full-length article that I have today on CloudWars.com, I offer four specific points on why this approach that Ellison led with Oracle — and that the others fully agreed to — is so important. It’s a great trend moving forward in the direction of more capability, more choice, more power in the hands of customers here in the buyer-seller equation.

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In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I delve into OpenAI’s $38 billion partnership with AWS, giving Amazon a major role in powering and scaling OpenAI’s AI workloads.

Highlights

0:03 — OpenAI and AWS have announced a multi‑year strategic partnership valued at $38 billion for AWS. This deal will enable AWS to provide the infrastructure necessary to support the operation and scaling of OpenAI’s AI workloads. OpenAI is currently utilising computing resources through AWS, which include hundreds of thousands of NVIDIA GPUs and the capability to scale up to tens of millions of CPUs.

01:02 — The infrastructure rollout for OpenAI includes architecture optimised for maximum AI processing efficiency and performance, with clusters designed to support a variety of workloads such as inference for ChatGPT and model training. This latest deal is yet another staggering example of the demand for AI services — a demand that companies like OpenAI must invest billions in to keep up with the pace.

01:55 — OpenAI recently signed several significant deals with technology partners, including a remarkable $300 billion agreement with Oracle. While that figure might seem outrageous, it puts the $38 billion into a more relatable context. One thing is clear: wherever you stand in the AI revolution, whatever your role is — just make sure that you have one, because this unprecedented growth is touching every corner of the business world.

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In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I dig into why Google Cloud’s momentum in AI-centric deals is reshaping the entire cloud landscape.

Highlights

00:30 — A few major things became evident from Google Cloud's third-quarter results from late last month. One, if you look at the giant deals Google Cloud signed in the first three quarters of 2025, it inked more billion-dollar-plus deals than it did in all of 2023 and 2024 combined. The pace of these huge investments by businesses is accelerating.

01:05 — Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai expressed excitement that enterprise AI is now becoming a huge factor of these massive deals. In just three quarters, Google Cloud signed more billion-dollar deals than in the previous eight combined. Seventy percent of all Google Cloud customers are now purchasing the company’s AI products and services. Another indicator of momentum is its backlog.

02:25 — Pichai also said that Google Cloud now has 13 products with annualized revenue run rates exceeding $1 billion. He emphasized the company's diversification and scaling of its product line, many of which are tied to enterprise AI. Gemini Enterprise has already been adopted by over 700 customers and deployed across more than two million seats.

03:36 —Over the last two years, Google Cloud has been the fastest-growing player in the Cloud Wars Top 10. I’ll go into more detail in an article later this morning, but it’s worth noting that Google Cloud’s reign as the number one fastest-growing company is about to end. That’s because Palantir, a new entrant into the Top 10, posted an eye-popping 63% revenue growth in Q3.

04:15 — Still, if you set aside the outlier of Palantir, Google Cloud remains the fastest-growing among the rest. It's executing well, with lots of momentum. The backlog data underscores that this isn't just about past performance — it’s a forward-looking indicator that their pipeline is incredibly strong. So, hats off to Google Cloud for doing a great job.

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In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I call out AWS’s slowdown in both innovation and momentum, as the rest of the hyperscalers redefine the future of cloud.

Highlights

00:15 — Now it's been interesting here as we watch the four hyperscalers recently, Microsoft, AWS, Google Cloud, and Oracle. We hear that cliche about a rising tide lifts all boats. And I would say that AWS is definitely the one of the four hyperscalers that is rising less slowly, less quickly, and to not as great a height.

01:08 — AWS is the company that created the cloud infrastructure business, and for most of those 19 years, AWS deserved to be called the King of the Cloud. But a few years ago, Microsoft's cloud, Azure, became, you know, quite prominent. Google Cloud started to innovate wildly. Oracle has been on fire. AWS lost the role, the opportunity, the swagger of being the leader

02:16 — It is now the follower. AWS is not the innovator, either in technology or in go-to-market ways, and these financial results prove that they certainly had a very nice Q3. You can't just bring metrics or comparative performance from other industries and apply it to the Cloud Wars. Those numbers that AWS put up were just not anywhere close to as good as those of its competitors.

03:36 — So, in either of those cases, AWS is being dramatically outgrown by the other three hyperscalers. There's just no way around it, and in a detailed article that I'll have on cloudwars.com later today, I lay that out both for the quarterly numbers and the latest RPO and backlog figures.

04:23 — And in the AI Revolution, these four companies are in large part helping the entire global economy to establish, "How am I going to move forward? What am I going to need to do?" The other three have all stolen the jump on AWS and become much more dynamic, and that's revealed in the customer demand, expressed as quarterly revenue and also going forward as RPO or backlog.

05:28 — What we're seeing here is the fact that this, this notion of innovation, of, you know, relentless performance, relentless excellence, relentless progress. It can be brutal at times. And while AWS is a big, successful company, is going to be around for a long time, the numbers are showing it is no longer anywhere close to the leader.

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In this episode of Cloud Wars Live, Bob Evans speaks with T.K. Anand, Executive Vice President at Oracle, during Oracle AI World in Las Vegas. The discussion centers on Oracle’s new AI Data Platform, a major initiative designed to help customers harness their own data to drive AI transformation. Anand outlines how Oracle’s open, unified approach to managing enterprise data enables organizations to bring AI directly to their business processes, while also citing breakthrough developments in industry-specific applications.

Reinventing with AI

The Big Themes:

• Data + AI = Business Reinvention: Enterprises cannot simply adopt AI as a bolt‑on; they must combine their private business data — workflows, applications, processes — with advanced models if they hope to reinvent themselves ahead of disruption. Anand notes that many AI/LLMs have been trained on public domain data and thus “know nothing about our customers’ private data.” The AI Data Platform is designed to enable that union.
• Pre‑integrated with SaaS Applications: For customers of Oracle’s large SaaS portfolio (e.g., Fusion, NetSuite, industry apps) the AI Data Platform offers tailored variants that are pre‑integrated with the application’s data models and semantics. This means organizations get out‑of‑the-box predictive models, analytics, and agents aligned to their workflows, but still have the full platform underneath to extend or customize. This helps reduce time‑to‑value for companies using those applications.
• Full Stack Advantage: Oracle positions its differentiator as owning and integrating the full stack: cloud infrastructure (OCI including autonomous database), data and analytics platform, applications (SaaS) and now AI/agents. This end‑to‑end control enables closer integration between data assets, applications, and AI use cases. For example, having application workflow knowledge baked into the data platform allows faster mapping from business process to predictive agent.

The Big Quote: “The AI Platform is all about helping our customers achieve AI transformation through the power of their own data."

More from T.K. Anand and Oracle:

Connect with T.K. Anand on LinkedIn or get an overview of Oracle AI Data Platform.

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In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I explore Workday’s latest move to deepen AI’s role in enterprise operations.

Highlights

00:03 — Workday has announced its new Custom AI Model Library for the Workday Contract Intelligence Agent, powered by Evisort. The library includes over 120 pre-built AI models designed to identify critical clauses, risks, line items, and terms within contracts. The goal is to give users specialized models that speed up contract review, detect risks earlier, and reduce manual work.

00:40 — The addition of the Custom AI Model Library expands the range of contract terms users can automatically analyze. Jerry Ting, Vice President and Head of Agentic AI and Evisort at Workday, said: “We aren’t just adding features; we’re giving our Contract Intelligence Agent new skills that help solve real business problems.”

01:29 —What stands out about this announcement is how Workday is operationalizing AI within enterprise contract management: moving beyond standard automation toward domain-specific, customizable intelligence. This is a key differentiator, and one every company in the agentic AI space should aim for.

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Hasan Rizvi, EVP, Database Engineering, Oracle, talks to Bob Evans in this latest episode of Cloud Wars Live. They explore the launch of Oracle AI Database 26ai, the Autonomous AI Lakehouse, and breakthroughs in multi-cloud deployment. Rizvi also discusses vector search, agentic AI, and how Oracle is simplifying complex architectures for the AI era. It’s a compelling look at how Oracle is reshaping enterprise data strategy for the age of AI.

Oracle’s Next-Gen Data Strategy

The Big Themes:

• AI Demands a Modern Data Foundation: As AI shifts operations from human scale to machine speed, enterprises must ask: “Is my data foundation ready?” Without intelligent data structures, comprehensive access, real‑time performance, and strong security, organizations will struggle to compete. The introduction of Oracle AI Database 26ai is positioned as that foundation. The urgency of this shift is clear: companies that delay risk being left behind.
• Agentic AI and Vectors Come to the Enterprise Database: Generative AI and autonomous agents require new data types and workflows. Oracle has built vector data types and vector indexes into the database so enterprises can perform similarity search, retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG) and agent workflows directly on their private data. Further, Oracle is enabling annotations (metadata) so LLMs can understand enterprise data schemas, improving accuracy. Finally, agentic workflows (AI that takes action) are supported within the database, reducing data movement, improving performance and strengthening security.
• Start‑Ups and Established Enterprises Both Benefit: The case study of Retraced (a fashion supply‑chain company) underscores how smaller, agile firms are using Oracle’s autonomous AI database to innovate quickly: multi‑datatype support, agentic AI, automatic scaling, and reduced operational overhead. At the same time, Oracle’s heritage in mission‑critical enterprise systems means large companies with massive workloads benefit from the same platform. The point: whether you’re a start‑up or a Fortune 500, the difference will be how fast you move.

The Big Quote: “We really believe that in in the age of AI, where you have to move much faster, you really don't have a choice but to start simplifying your environment. Otherwise, you're going to get left behind."

More from Hasan Rizvi and Oracle:

Connect with Hasan on LinkedIn and learn more about Oracle AI Database 26ai.

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In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I spotlight Palantir’s stunning 63% revenue surge and its defiant, rule-breaking vision for the AI Era.

Highlights

00:30 — Palantir, earlier this week, reported its Q3 numbers, and they were absolutely extraordinary. I thought the only thing that matched the blowout numbers that Palantir had was the perspective and philosophy revealed in the Q3 earnings call from CEO Alexander Karp. I want to talk about that in just a minute.

01:23 —You hear talk around the industry, people saying, “Well, what is Palantir? Are they an apps company? Are they an analytics company? Are they a data company? Are they an AI company? Are they a database company? Are they, you know, this or that?” Palantir absolutely defies any easy positioning or being put in a particular box or category. It is all of those things.

02:26 — Its revenue for Q3, ending September 30, was up 63% — almost $1.2 billion. It had projected growth for Q3 of about 51% and blew that number away. Within that, its U.S. commercial business is now by far the fastest-growing part of its company. Remarkable growth there of 121% in Q3 to almost $400 million. The U.S. government business was up 52% to $486 million.

03:42 — Palantir signed new deals totaling $2.8 billion in contract value. That new business alone is an indication that this is not a blip. Some people talk about an AI bubble. Karp said, “The bubble exists only for companies that are not really trying to impart enduring value.” Of that $2.8 billion, there were 93 deals signed in the quarter for $5 million or more, and 51 deals for $10 million or more.

04:14 — A big point that Karp made is that as the company gains more visibility, it’s important that: “We are always at the toughest and most complex part of our customers’ technology stacks, because with AI, that’s the only way we can impart real value for those customers and unlock for them the ability to become truly transformed companies in the AI revolution.” He speaks like no other CEO I’ve been around.

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