Cloud Wars Live with Bob Evans

The Big Themes:

· The New York Times ad begins, “Dear Microsoft, big news and congratulations on today’s announcements. We’re genuinely excited to have some competition.”

· The ad reeks of arrogance. And Slack is saying to the European Union, “it’s just not fair the way Microsoft is treating us.”

· It’s time for Slack to be part of a different enterprise company, and maybe it’s Oracle, Salesforce – or maybe Microsoft will have pity on them and gobble them up.

· The cloud space is only going to get more interesting over the next 12 months, as we rush to reinvent these industries and businesses and reimagine them.

· Slack and Microsoft Teams are not anywhere near the same. Sean says, “when I get a link from a company that I’m working with, I grimace. It’s an absolutely terrible product.”

The Big Quote:

“The sad reality is Slack is worth more inside somebody else's enterprise today than it is alone.”

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The Big Themes:

· It’s a great time to connect with your customers and employees. Try new ideas, try innovation, try creativity, and don’t waste these opportunities.

· Jamming 300 people into the same footprint is a myth. There’s not a shred of evidence that the open office makes people more productive.

· Bill McDermott, CEO of ServiceNow said there will be times some people choose to work remotely – with childcare, parents, etc. – and sometimes you need to use the office as a “productivity tool.”

· Thomas.net is now in the fourth wave of a monthly survey, and a surprising number of manufacturers are reshoring back to North America.

· This is going to reshape global manufacturing for decades to come – and not just the areas we think about.

The Big Quote:

“What we're seeing is more robust hiring than we would have anticipated. Close to 40% of the companies are actually hiring right now.”

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The Big Themes:

· Empathic design is creating a level of engagement for both your employees and your customers so that you are now listening to their needs.

· William Gibson wrote a book called “Neuromancer,” and was fond of saying, “The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed.”

· You may not have empathy, you may not be able to feel the emotions of people you’re serving, and you may not put yourselves in their shoes – but there are ways to solve that.

· A reporter said to Steve Jobs when the iPad came out, how did you know this? And he said, “Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.”

The Big Quote:

"The rigidity of all this structure, which was vital in the industrial age, is becoming this albatross around our necks.”

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The Big Themes:

· There are bottlenecks in the process, the wheels fall off, and the scope keeps changing – this is hard work!

· 85% of the time you’re going to be working with the SI partner and not the software vendor themselves –as in SAP, Oracle, Workday, etc.

· With rapid deployment you’re not going to get an army of consultants. You’re going to get fewer people – and they’re going to be cross-functional.

· Bonnie answers a “Quick Quiz” on how the customer has to have the right expectations, and has to free up the resources to get the job done.

· She compares this to a marathon: If you hit a wall at mile 18 it will be bad. But if you’ve done the training ahead of time, it’s going to be amazing.

The Big Quote:

“You really want to have confidence that the people leading the process have been there, done that, and done it successfully.”

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The Big Themes:

· A billion knowledge workers on the planet, and a quarter to half of us are working from home

· The future is not guaranteed to us, our innovations not guaranteed to us, human rights are not guaranteed to us. Our founders expected the citizenry would be much more involved.

· What happens to the travel industry, the leisure industry, and caterers, etc.? Where will they all go?

· Two million residents of New York City could permanently move out of the city – and they are moving to rural Colorado, Oregon, Maine, and Vermont

· Mark Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, has the tallest building in San Francisco – and he has been powerful, courageous, and a very visible leader

· Apple’s got the greatest UFO ever invented – what happens to it?

The Big Quote: “Silicon Valley is no longer a place – it’s an idea.”

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· Who needs to wear a suit?

· Digital transformation is rethinking your products, your markets, your customer experience

· Why are you running a million row Excel spreadsheet?

“The efficiency game is an anchor around your neck that's going to sink you.”

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Each month, “Ammirati on Innovation” episodes will look at ways that the disruptive-startup mentality is spreading beyond young entrepreneurs to big established corporations. Serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist and Carnegie Mellon B-school professor Sean Ammirati, who sits at the intersection of these high-change dynamics, provides insight. In this podcast, Sean and I talk about how long it will take until we get the economy back up and moving again.

Episode 14

Reimagining our companies is on Sean’s mind. We need to figure out what the right innovation strategy is. The world is going to be very different, and you need to build new products, new services, and new value to your customers. And companies need to do all that more rapidly and with more commitment than ever before.

The notions of courage, commitment and vision in the face of daunting threats have been with us forever. I mention to Sean one of my favorite poems: “Horatius at the Bridge” by Thomas Babington Macaulay describes how Horatius steps forward to do what others believe is impossible as the Etruscan army is about to invade. The specific form of the challenges faced by people change over time, but the need for powerful and fearless leadership is a constant.

Sean concludes with revisiting your operational plan, and how you’re investing in your assets this year. In this time of crazy transition and transformation, that’s all we have.

Also in this episode:

· Steve Jobs and Corning Gorilla Glass

· Work from home forever!

· A magical time for your business

· The mirror is much closer than it appears

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Bonnie Tinder is the founder and CEO of a company called Raven Intel (www.ravenintel.com), and it’s an independent B2B peer review site that is amplifying the voice of the customer. She focuses on software customers, consulting partners, and software vendors, and picks the best partners for their needs. In this new monthly series called “Tinder on Customers,” Bonnie and I talk about how not all partners are created equal, and choosing the right one is critical to a project’s success.

Episode 1:

Bonnie thinks that COVID-19 was a massive reset. The digital transformation projects that were happening prior to March were clipping along and life was good. And then wham! Big projects were taken down, and every single company changed their scope.

I tell her that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has gone through two years of digital transformation in the past two months. Hear her answer.

Bonnie concludes with the need to have a connection with customers and employees, and the necessity to reinvent yourself from the ground up. Businesses who were forward-thinking and had a presence were the ones who came out on top.

Also in this episode:

· No industry has been immune to this disruption

· A curveball is okay – but when you’re expecting a fastball you’d better be resilient at the plate

· Marie Kondo – let’s get rid of the things that no longer serve us

· This is going to crush some businesses

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Each month, Tony Uphoff, visionary CEO of Thomasnet.com, joins Cloud Wars Live for a recurring segment. “Uphoff on Industry” will explore the innovations, upheavals, and breakthroughs reshaping the world of manufacturing and industrial markets. In this episode, Tony and I probe how it’s been like to be in a social media and pandemic world.

Tony starts off with Facebook and the monetization of rage that you see on social platforms, and the systemic racism in the US. In the sixties, you had a print-based world, and a television-based world – and that’s it.

Tony quotes Stephen Stills, “Something’s happening here.” I say, “What it is ain’t exactly clear.” These young people are going to grow up with a set of expectations – and some of the more seasoned folks think it’s almost an instant disruption.

I joke with Tony that my black t-shirt is a 40-year-old vintage item. Tony says that my sartorial splendor and food choices are deeply troubling.

We conclude with it’s a time for listening. Try to understand what is happening and don’t be too quick to volunteer opinions. It’s a very scary time and you see a lot of false positives and negatives.

Also in this episode:

· Employees are saying, “I’m good thanks – I’ll stay right at home”

· Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella: two years of transformation crammed into two months

· Everyone in the world is paying attention to Zoom

· Email is the Rodney Dangerfield of digital platforms

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“Sadin on Digital” episodes explore the fast-changing and high-stakes world of digital business. In this discussion, Wayne and I talk about how modern ERP has changed, and if the board and C-Suite executives are not aligned with you through thick and thin, things will go badly.

Wayne talks about how the scariest three letter word in the English language is ERP (enterprise resource planning). He talks to board members and C-Suite executives about ERP, and he listens to them when they say it’s going to cost more, it’s not going to work, and it’s going to take forever. But that’s not the case. You can get an ERP in the cloud for a fraction of the cost.

In his final thoughts, Wayne discusses how if you’ve got a typical 20-year old software suite that’s discombobulated and disconnected – and half your business runs on Excel spreadsheets, you’ve got a problem. Modern ERP has all the resources for AI, IoT, mixed reality, drones, sensors, edge computing, and advanced analytics – and you should use them!

Also in this episode:

· Chesterton’s Fence: Never take a fence down until you know why it was put up

· You want a person who has the scars and the gray hair

· IBM coined the term material requirements planning (MRP), which begat ERP

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