Cloud Wars Live with Bob Evans

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I discuss Workday's acquisition of the enterprise knowledge and learning platform provider Sana, and what it means for customers.

Highlights

0:05 — Now,the understanding of the capabilities of LLMs has seeped from discussions among in-the-know business leaders into the general public. Personally, I don't know anyone who hasn't tried ChatGPT at least once. However, when it comes to leveraging LLMs and their associated technologies in a business context, it all comes down to the data that you can provide.

0:34 — Essentially, it's about making internal knowledge useful. This combination of business data and LLMs is the golden ticket for companies that want to thrive in the AI Revolution. There are some standout examples of companies making that possible. One such company is Sana. Now, Workday has announced that it has completed its acquisition of Sana.

01:17 — Gerrit Kazmaier, President Product & Technology at Workday, explained: "By bringing Sana's leading enterprise knowledge and learning to Workday, we're creating a single intelligent interface...We're unlocking a new era of productivity, focus and flow across our customers, organizations with a complete AI solution for the next generation enterprise."

01:46 — Kazmaier is describing the combination of Sana's enterprise knowledge tools and Workday's unified cloud platform and formidable partner ecosystem. The vision is to create what Workday calls a "horizontal intelligence layer" across the enterprise. Within this layer, users will have access to deeply personalized experiences.

02:34 — Now, as I've discussed many times before, cutting through the noise to identify the specific features, capabilities, data, sources and outcomes that a user needs is essential for thriving in this increasingly competitive, AI-enabled business environment.

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In today's podcast, John Siefert sits down with Magnus Perri, CEO, elevaite365 Test Automation, and Michael Catterall, Product Lead, elevaite365 Test Automation, to unpack how AI is redefining testing in Dynamics 365 projects. They discuss why manual testing overwhelms business users, how elevaite365 Test Automation's platform automates and adapts with AI, and how a community-driven script library accelerates implementation. It's test automation built for real-world complexity and speed.

AI Testing, Real Results

The Big Themes:

• Testing Stress: Perri points out a systemic flaw in ERP and Dynamics 365 implementations: the burden of testing often lands on business users whose primary roles have nothing to do with quality assurance. This leads to rushed efforts, incomplete coverage, and high error rates. The fundamental issue isn’t lack of diligence, it’s misalignment. Elevaite365 Test Automation directly addresses this by reducing or eliminating the need for manual testing.
• Insight and Resilience Layers: Catterall describes how elevaite365 Test Automation's platform doesn’t just mimic human testers, it enhances them. Once a user records a business process, the system converts it into a reusable, repeatable automated test. But what sets elevaite365 Test Automation apart is what happens next: It adds AI-powered layers that detect anomalies like incorrect field values, unexpected pop-ups, and subtle error messages that human testers often miss. This isn’t basic scripting, it’s intelligent validation that keeps evolving.
• AI Testing Brings Measurable ROI: While much of the conversation covered process pain and automation theory, the real value becomes evident in customer results. Elevaite365 Test Automation isn’t just a nice-to-have, it delivers real ROI. Customers using the platform have reduced their testing cycles from weeks to hours, lowered defect rates in production, and significantly cut the manpower required for UAT (User Acceptance Testing). Because the tool is embedded in real Dynamics 365 workflows, it provides test coverage for processes that actually matter like purchasing, invoicing, inventory, and more.

The Big Quote: "Testing is always falling onto the business users, not IT department ... so you go into testing and you're stressed, you have a lot to do. You're thinking about talking to the next supplier, and while you're doing that, you work through the testing as fast as you can, and you might miss stuff."

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In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I explore how tech rivals are becoming collaborators to better serve customer innovation.

Highlights

00:43 — I call SAP and Snowflake's recent announcement a promiscuous partnership that's powerful and promising. I'll try not to trip over too many more P’s here, but I think the point of this is we're seeing the promiscuous side: big tech companies that, you know, were very selective about how they worked with each other in the past.

01:04 — I think now we're seeing that there are great advantages toward them aligning in ways — working together to do things for customers that neither could do individually. I think the ultimate example of this is the Oracle multicloud deals with Microsoft, Google Cloud, and AWS. So, in this case here, now we see both SAP and Snowflake are in the data cloud space.

02:04 — This could have been a situation where SAP and Snowflake might have said: "I have a Data Cloud. You have one. We're going to compete" — but the result would be — “We’re going to make customers’ lives more miserable, because to work with both the SAP Data Cloud and the Snowflake Data Cloud, those customers are going to have to find workarounds and ways to integrate and all that.” Instead, they said, “Let's try to do this together.”

03:00 — Some highlights: it accelerates customer innovation because they can spend more time focusing on business innovation, growth, and new business models, rather than a lot of expense on integration. The two companies, Snowflake and SAP, have intertwined their brands, which I think reveals to customers a very powerful commitment. This solution is called SAP Snowflake.

03:55 — The AI revolution has put all sorts of new and interesting, challenging stresses on customers, right? And on the Cloud Wars Top 10 vendors: it can't just be business as usual for customers. The tech vendors have to operate differently — not just in the products they create but in the alliances they strike.

04:46 — I tip my hat to Snowflake and SAP, and I think we're going to be seeing lots more of these promiscuous partnerships break out as the needs of the AI Revolution require customers to do things differently — which, in turn, compels the Cloud Wars Top 10 companies to behave in different ways.

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In this episode of the AI Agent & Copilot Podcast, John Siefert hosts Jeff Miller, Vice President, Americas, LS Retail, for a discussion on LS Retail's position in its industry, how it supports organizations across the globe, integrating AI, and upcoming projects.

Key Takeaways

• About the company: LS Retail has been a leader in its industry from an ISV perspective. The company has been in the ecosystem for about 30 years, focusing on software development in the retail market. There are over 110,000 retail locations using LS Retail in their stores. "We come to a market with what we call 'composable solution,' so I can build building blocks, depending on a retailer's need, that can do everything from run the entire enterprise of a retail business, simply down to a point-of-sale solution that integrates into the rest of the retailer solution stack," Miller explains.
• Global use: One of LS Retail's specialties is creating the localization and fiscalizations that organizations need to operate across different countries. Every country manages aspects of business, like taxes, a little bit differently. Between LS Retail and its partners, they have done the work to make sure it operates in a way that companies conducting business in various countries can use the software in their stores around the world. Deploying in the Microsoft Cloud with Azure enables them to implement the software seamlessly.
• Partner network: Operating at a global scale also speaks to the power of LS Retail's business partner network. It has over 300 business partners globally who go through certification testing so they have a technical understanding of how to implement the software and support clients in their local communities.
• AI integration: "We really take in the whole idea of customer zero and being a frontier firm to heart," Miller says. Within LS Retail, there has been an emphasis on using Copilot and Copilot Studio not only from a development standpoint but also for automating the testing of code. Externally, LS Retail is part of Microsoft's program, "The Microsoft Red Carpet Club." They have been meeting to discuss ideas around agents and providing feedback to Microsoft about the future of products and code, as well as how it integrates with Dynamics products.
• Pharmacy agent: LS Retail recently announced a project at an event. One of the agents it has developed supports pharmacies in Europe. The company is working on co-innovation projects with pharmacy clients to develop an agent that manages tasks for them, like handling prescriptions and refills. LS Retail is looking at opportunities to expand this particular agent in Latin America as well.

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In this special episode of Cloud Wars Live, Bob Evans speaks with Chad Wahlquist, Architect at Palantir, about the company’s explosive Q3 growth and the accelerating adoption of its AI Platform (AIP). They explore how AIP serves as an operating system for the enterprise, enabling customers to achieve global optimization, faster ROI, and model flexibility. Wahlquist also talks about Palantir’s open, interoperable architecture and its commitment to delivering value at speed, especially for customers in high-stakes, high-pressure environments.

Operate Smarter, Not Slower

The Big Themes:

• Speed to Value: Many companies still operate under the assumption that meaningful transformation requires multi‑year timelines (two to three years, sometimes more). Palantir is pushing the idea that you must deliver value in months, three to six months, rather than years. This shift is critical because when business markets move fast, and when competitive advantage erodes quickly, speed becomes a differentiator. If you wait for years, you may miss the window or be out‑paced.
• Interoperability and Ecosystem Integration: The platform isn’t trying to lock you into a “box” you must keep your data in; it instead emphasizes plug‑in interoperability with systems you already have. Wahlquist mentions connectors, SDKs, APIs, and plug‑ins to partners like Snowflake, Databricks, SAP, NVIDIA. The concept: if you already have investment in some systems, don’t throw them away; just connect them. This increases the speed to value and reduces friction.
• Ambition, Willingness to Operate in Crisis: Wahlquist points out they often engage with customers who are under pressure. These customers need value now, not two or three years out. Situations like supply chain disruption, plant outages, labor issues, etc., are real. This situational urgency forces companies to adopt architectures and partners that can deliver now. The takeaway: It’s not enough to believe you’ll transform in the future; transformation architecture must be built for today’s fires.

The Big Quote: “Our goal is really: how do we scale our customers and the outcomes they’re delivering — not just the number of customers?"

More from Chad and Palantir:

Follow Chad on LinkedIn or get an overview of Palantir's Q3 in its letter to shareholders.

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In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I take you inside Palantir’s wildly different approach to driving customer growth.

Highlights

00:14 — One of the companies causing a lot of disruption within the Cloud Wars Top 10 companies is Palantir, which recently reported its Q3 revenue up 63% to $1.12 billion, just growing incredibly fast and putting together a remarkable set of customers and customer references for what they’ve been able to do with Palantir. And I think this speaks to a very, very different approach Palantir is taking.

01:42 — So I had a great chat with Palantir Architect Chad Wahlquist. Palantir has an unusual way of setting titles in the company. They often are untraditional. Chad does much more than being an architect. He’s a great architect, but does much more than product strategy, marketing, and so on. We are linking here in the show notes to that full video with Chad.

02:09 — We talked about a lot of things. Interesting that as Palantir went through this extraordinary growth, its salesforce shrank. It said that’s because it uses its own software to do things. What it calls “quantified exceptionalism” — how do you break through in a quantifiable way to do things that others aren’t able to do? — is something they want to prove inside, then project outwardly.

03:19 — Chad said: "It’s great that our number of customers is growing. That’s not our goal. Our primary goal is to see growth within our customers in terms of their business outcomes, their capabilities, their quantifiable outcomes." And he talked a lot about their ambition. He believes that Palantir software gives enterprises the ability to do things beyond what they thought were possible.

04:28 — Final big point from Chad Wahlquist is that point solutions allow companies to optimize locally, and he said that can be a nice thing; it leads to small returns or small positive outcomes. He said: "Our goal with Palantir and our Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP) is to help our customers drive global optimization."

• Check out my full-length interview with Chad Wahlquist.

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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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