Cloud Wars Live with Bob Evans

The Big Themes:

• Plotted on a bell curve: Some are amazing, and some are terrible – and some are in the middle.
• Stability is not the issue: There’s capital behind these companies that give you the same amount of runway you could expect from any of the other kinds of companies.
• The term unicorn was coined: You needed to raise money at least a billion dollar valuation from one company in your portfolio to make that portfolio be a top performing venture portfolio.
• Microsoft and Nuance: You have the sales, the partnership, and the marketing muscle that a company like Microsoft can provide.

The Big Quotes:

“But the more interesting thing to me was that in the first five months of 2021, there were 187 companies that for the first time raised money at over a billion-dollar valuation.”

“The thing that's more concerning to me is I think there's a lot of reflection we, as an industry, need to do on the right way to create healthy corporate governance among these companies.”

“And I think it's time for CFOs to stop worrying about just doing the logistics.”

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The Big Themes:

• Abe Lincoln: Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four hours sharpening the ax.
• No analysis paralysis: As you prepare to lock down your decision, you must be sure that the core problem you’re trying to solve is clearly outlined in your statement of work.
• Don’t boil the ocean: Our magic number is around three alternatives that you’re shortlisting before making a final decision.
• These trusted partners: When you find a partner that can challenge your ideas and make you think outside the box, that’s definitely a sign of somebody that could really be beneficial for your project.

The Big Quotes:

“Certainly Raven Intel is a great place where you can get peer review information written by other customers.”

“Celebrate your success in the end – and then do a look back and see what worked what didn’t.”

This episode is brought to you by BMC Software.

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Just over a year ago, Howard Boville left his job as CTO at Bank of America to join IBM as senior VP of hybrid cloud. Boville joined Cloud Wars Live to discuss the big changes he’s been driving at IBM Cloud, the booming market for industry clouds that he’s been aggressively championing within IBM, and the colossal market for industry-specific solutions. A recurring theme for Boville throughout our conversation is the opening of Chapter 2 in the cloud story, where large enterprises that have been caught up in purely technology conversations have flipped the topic to the one that will drive real and meaningful transformation: business outcomes. Boville has not only some great insights to share, but he’s also a gifted speaker who employs colorful language and humor to drive home essential points.

In this conversation, Boville shares his thoughts on the ongoing power of the IBM-SAP relationship, which is almost 50 years old, and on the essential need for deep industry knowledge.

The Big Themes:

• We’ve done 6,500 projects: We’ve got 38,000 SAP practitioners. But we've actually got now the regulated cloud capabilities that allow customers to move forward with their projects.
• They will run on different types of silicon: We have x86, we have Power, we have Z, and we also have Quantum, and that will become fully onboarded beyond research institutions onto our cloud at the end of this year.
• You can start your digital transformation immediately: There are a lot of cases where we’ve taken two, three, four year projects down to two, three, four months.

The Big Quotes:

“But one other point I would make, which is again very important, is we don't see ourselves as competing head-to-head against the other cloud service providers.”

“The case of cybersecurity is that threat factor never stops, so you always need to be thinking through different ways to actually protect through breadth and in depth.”

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The Big Themes:

• The citizen developer: Those low-code, no-code tools are giving the power back to their employees, and that’s creating a new environment that’s having a reorganization in that area.
• Some of the innovations from Microsoft Teams: It was just like a basic tool that I use with Teams. Some of the innovations that they developed so rapidly in the times of COVID to adapt to a new remote workforce.
• There’s always new things to soak in there: We also have a number of events that take place, and live on demand – one of them is our binge programs.
• Industry solutions: Trying to compare their challenges with other challenges – and try to see what matches and what’s worth their time and investment.

The Big Quotes:

“Most of my day job is reading, reviewing, producing content that's relevant in the business tech world, and helping others have a voice in that conversation as well.”

“A huge feature about mydacfeed.com is the ability to personalize your feed and get connected with relevant topics and find like-minded voices.”

“I think we saw something similar when Microsoft acquired Nuance, which was their second-largest acquisition behind LinkedIn.”

This episode is brought to you by BMC Software.

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The Big Themes:

• I’ve got 99 problems and tech ain’t one of them: It’s almost never a technology issue. It’s usually a people problem.
• The technologists out there: Many technologists can be overly focused on technology, which limits their ability to see the bigger business issues. What are you really going to be focused on?
• This is a journey: We need to embrace one another and lock arms and move forward together in a secular fashion.

The Big Quotes:

“But the only thing that surprises me by that is that most companies are going to go, oh, that's not me. That's somebody else. That's that other 40%.”

“Motivate your workforce to aspire to be different, aspire to be better, and understand that they're a part of that future that is different and better.”

“And so we're all going to be on board to do this, and we're not going to do a hundred things.”

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The Big Themes:

• Declare dominion over your work: Agency is working for something greater than a paycheck. When you love what you do, you have nothing to “balance.”
• Who is your Archimedes: “If you give me a lever and a place to stand, I can move the world.”
• YOLO, “You Only Live Once”: Originally made popular by the Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart. For many, a good job, a nice car, and a steady paycheck are no longer enough.
• Sometimes you need an auctioneer: Your auctioneer is probably a friend, a mentor, a family member, or former coworker who pushes you to do things you don’t think you can do.

The Big Quotes:

“So we're now seeing reasonably credible research being done by major organizations saying a huge percentage of people are considering changing jobs.”

“And so what the vast majority of people fail to understand about personal freedom and career agency is that you don't need everybody to agree with what you're doing.”

“I think we're at a time where it behooves all of us to care about our lives and our work and the intertwining of the two.”

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The Big Themes:

• According to the Association for Manufacturing Technology: In order to reshore 25% of the manufactured goods currently imported from China, US manufacturers will need to invest $400-$600 billion in manufacturing technology.
• Why isn’t “Big Data” yielding “Big Insights"? It might be because as business leaders we are still confusing causation and correlation.
• The “Streaming Wars”: Have changed the way that we all watch filmed entertainment. What can the rest of us learn from the battles between Netflix, Disney+ and HBO Max?
• These are incredibly exciting times: I think there’s a tremendous opportunity in the tech markets, and the manufacturing markets – and we are watching what’s happening in other parts of the world.

The Big Quotes:

“On Wall Street, they use the phrase, ‘Make the trend your friend’—and this is an irrefutable trend.”

“I guarantee you, Tim Cook and the team are tracking those data elements.”

This episode is brought to you by BMC Software.

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The Big Themes:

• A wealth of riches that we are so privileged to have: They serve as a kind of innovation pipeline in addition to our R&D teams.
• The default data was your data: I think the concept of data protection, data privacy, and now terms that people are using around confidential computing are really where the heart of our differentiation lies.
• IBM has worked in these industries for decades: Because we have worked with financial services, telco, healthcare, etc., IBM has brought together the different pieces of their applications.
• Could a quantum computer ever crack what I’m doing: Our researchers have invented algorithms that are secure against future quantum computers.

The Big Quotes:

“When we talk about IBM Cloud Satellite, it is about a consistent distributed cloud.”

“So I got to come into our cloud business several years ago and I now serve as our chief technology officer. And I'm also an IBM Fellow.”

“And so we're very closely partnering with our research organization on the topics of future programming models and deploying those kinds of capabilities through code engine and other services in our cloud.”

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The Big Themes:

• The Colonial Pipleline hack: Wake-up call for boards and C-Suites. I’ve worked in utilities industry several times, and a hack in your OT system can kill people.
• Industry networks are not new: Banks have been ‘clearing’ checks and ‘settling’ securities trades for hundreds of years. Remember “Bank Americard.” But these new industry clouds take industry networks to completely new levels.
• Sadin’s Law of industry differentiation (80-10-10 Rule): It’s about process, not system application. 80% horizontal process, 10% industry jargon, 10% organizational culture and practice.
• Channel conflict looming: For every dollar spent on software you spend three dollars implementing it. VARs/ISVs have been valuable channel partners for decades.

The Big Quotes:

“It’s been a great time to be in this business. And it’s a wonderful time to be a consumer of all this stuff.”

This episode is brought to you by BMC Software.

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The Big Themes:

• A lot of exciting things happening: Gartner is estimating that 75% of databases will be migrated to the cloud or be launched in the cloud by the end of next year.
• Big Data startup Ocient: Just raised $40 million in Series B to fund work on ingesting data on exabyte scale.
• IDC forecast: What they call the “Enterprise Datasphere” is growing 2X faster than the “Consumer Datasphere.”
• Putting databases into outer space: If you’re storing your digital assets in satellites, maybe then physical space for storage units becomes less of an issue here on planet Earth.

The Big Quotes:

“So we went from terabytes, petabytes, exabytes, and now when you look at it globally, you're talking yottabytes?”

“So you can see that just tremendous amount of data being created but much of it is ephemeral, and short lived, it's cached and it's gone.”

This episode is brought to you by BMC Software.

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