Cloud Wars Live with Bob Evans

Bob Evans

Cloud Wars analyzes the major cloud vendors from the perspective of business customers. In Cloud Wars Live, Bob Evans talks with both sides about these profoundly transformative technologies, and with monthly All-Star guests from across the business community about the trends impacting how the world lives, works, plays, and dreams. Visit https://cloudwars.com for more.

  1. 6h ago

    Agentic Reasoning Loops Could Drive a 17x Increase in AI Token Consumption

    In today’s Cloud Wars AI Minute, I break down the rise of agentic reasoning loops and why their impact on AI token consumption and costs could be significant. Highlights 00:12 — Today's topic is going to be agentic reasoning loops. Everyone's moving to this concept where we can have a planning, act, observe, and reflect type of process, which allows us to be able to get much deeper analysis and much more resilient implementations across AI, across the world. 01:03 — Now, the other thing is with this, we're seeing that about 33% of enterprise software will run on this kind of approach by 2028. Also, the other part of this is that because these different loops are taking place, we're actually seeing that tokens are going to get more and more consumption happening off the back end. 01:38 — So one of the driving factors of this is going to be the increase that we're seeing, and just to give you perspective of what we're starting to see, it's about a 17x on a single chapter that we're starting to see happen as a result of this. So what it used to do when we just did simple RAG patterns. 02:01 — Now we're seeing about 17 times the amount of tokens being consumed, and when we start seeing that level of token consumption, we're going to see that while we're getting better answers, there's also going to be a higher cost that's associated to it. 02:28 — But it doesn't matter that the tokens are necessarily coming down in cost because of the fact that what we used to see is that an average transaction would be about three cents, and now we're seeing it move to about 15 cents across the board, and so this is going to be one of those things that we really need to be thinking about as you start to build out your solutions. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

  2. 7h ago

    Palantir CEO Karp: 3 Simple Steps to Software Revolution

    In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I look at why Palantir's approach to AI sovereignty, sales, and customer value deserves the software industry's attention. Highlights 00:02 — I wanted to talk a little bit more today about Palantir, and I know I've been mentioning the company, digging into what they did in Q2 and their discussions about customer developments, the huge advances some customers are making as they use Palantir. 00:18 — And the reason I want to do this is because when a company almost doubles its growth rate against some very intense competition, that deserves extra scrutiny. What's going on there? Why is this happening? So, today I wanted to take a look at the CEO of Palantir, Alex Karp, as the company posted recently its Q2 numbers. 01:31 — Just to recap, Q2 Palantir's revenues soared 93% to 1.9 billion dollars. Their U.S. commercial business grew 149 percent and is now almost bigger than their government business, and their net revenue retention was up 157 percent, which shows that once customers start to work with Palantir, they quickly accelerate the investments they're making with Palantir. 02:26 — His first point, he said, there is a revolution underway for independence and for AI sovereignty. He said this is well underway. It's taking place. Businesses are going to demand that they be in control of their data and all the metadata surrounding that, the processes, the related workflows, that give the great value to that data as it's used for AI outcomes. 03:10 — His second big point, he said, we are accomplishing this stunning industry-best growth, while he said we have a minuscule and shrinking sales headcount. So, while Palantir has been undergoing this incredible growth rate, they've been reducing the size of their sales organization. 04:21 — The third point, he said, we've always aspired to be paid as a derivative of value creation for customers. So, they don't have a price list. He's saying, we set up an agreement up front with customers that said if, in working with us at Palantir, you achieve the business outcomes you want and we're a significant contributor to that, then we will extract our fees, our payment, our revenue as a derivative of that value that's being created for the customer. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

  3. 3d ago

    Why Oracle’s Google Gemini Deal Strengthens Its Enterprise AI Strategy

    In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I look at why Oracle is rejecting a single-model AI strategy and embracing a flexible, multi-model future. Highlights 00:03 — Oracle has announced that it's extending its partnership with Google Cloud and will be making Google's Gemini models available across its enterprise AI portfolio. This includes Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications, NetSuite, Oracle AI Agent Studio, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, or OCI. 00:22 — In true Oracle style, the company will embed Gemini into business applications and AI agents, allowing customers the flexibility to use Google's models within their existing workflows. At the same time, customers will have the freedom to switch between the various models offered in Oracle's suite. Now, what this is doing is giving customers more choice when they build Fusion-native agents and agentic apps. 00:53 — Oracle and Google Cloud already have a strong relationship, but the broader story here is how Oracle is positioning itself as an AI control plane that delivers outstanding infrastructure without the need to roll out a host of foundation models itself. Now, the company is really embedding itself in this area, and I think it's working out incredibly well for it. 01:17 — The company has really pushed the idea of flexibility, interoperability, and choice. Now, Oracle, from very early on, has really avoided that single-model strategy, saying that's a strategy that's aging quickly, and instead, Oracle's building a platform that can adapt as the AI landscape continues to evolve. 01:40 — I think this really ties in with the ambitions of those enterprises that want to take advantage of rapid AI developments while still controlling their data, applications, and workflows. And that's where Oracle stands out in its ability to bring together infrastructure, applications, and multiple AI models while seamlessly enabling companies to maximize the benefits of the latest AI developments. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

  4. 4d ago

    AI’s Shift to Forward Deployment Engineering Signals a New Enterprise Skillset

    In today’s Cloud Wars AI Minute, I break down the rapid rise of forward deployment engineering and why getting AI into production is becoming the next competitive advantage. Highlights 00:10 — Today, the topic is going to be why we're seeing AI move to forward deployment engineering type of scenarios, and this industry trend has actually increased in just year-over-year growth of forward deployment engineering job postings in just the first half of 2026, increasing by 1,000%. 01:29 — You actually have to get to deployment, and the big problem there is that between 88 to 95% of all AI pilots that are being built today are actually never actually getting to production. So we have a whole lot of interest in the market and a lot of stuff that's being really cool and is being done, but we're not actually seeing it get to production. Hence the need for FDE, or forward deployment engineers. 02:04 — Two, you actually have embedded engineers to go help a client to be able to get up and get going. And just to give you guys a typical situation here, now we're starting to see a lot of the pay for these type of roles. They're getting very, very valuable in this market space. 03:04 — So this is a major, major shift in what we're seeing, and it's also why even in DCI and our training offering, I'm looking at building out how to be able to move toward an FDE-type approach engagement, specifically for partners, because you're gonna really have to think about how you move to AI being able to get about 99% code coverage in order to be able to play in this space and be able to have fixed-fee, high-quality implementations that actually drive into production implementations. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

  5. 4d ago

    ServiceNow Focuses on Control Tower + Security: McDermott Wants to Help CEOs Sleep at Night

    In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I explain why ServiceNow’s fast-growing security business is becoming central to Bill McDermott’s AI strategy. Highlights 00:01 — I wanted to chat a little bit about ServiceNow's Q2 performance, but mostly what CEO Bill McDermott disclosed on the Q2 earnings call. Very strong performance across the board. They beat on all their numbers, doing very nicely. And what McDermott did, what he used the Q2 earnings call for in his opening remarks, was to lay out what I think is a significant new direction. 01:15 — Now, on top of that, we see a lot of anxiety from businesses now about — while they see the huge potential of AI, they also see that it raises security to levels that it hasn't been at before. So McDermott is sort of pairing those things up: the fully integrated Control Tower plus security plus governance. 02:14 — He said, “We're going to be able to handle all that simply and easily for customers.” He said that whichever chip wins, whichever lab wins, whichever price-per-token regime wins, he said, ServiceNow is going to be able to handle that. You're not — any of the customers aren't going to be, you know, going down a dead end or a dead-end alley if they choose to work with ServiceNow. 03:23 — He said CEOs have been losing sleep over this idea of risk at scale, and we're going to help those CEOs sleep well at night. So it's a big promise. It's a big adaptation for ServiceNow, but I think it's one that's consistent with some of the steps that McDermott has been making in the past, and it's very timely now to bring these two forces together. 03:59 — Now, one of the things that has made McDermott so successful over his seven years at ServiceNow, and before that at SAP, is his ability to use these earnings calls as almost like a come-to-Jesus discussion of where we as a company are, where the external market is with customers, and how aligned we are not just with where customers are now, but where they're heading. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

  6. 5d ago

    Manish Sood: SAP and Reltio Can Turn Data Into AI Advantage

    In this special episode of Cloud Wars Live, Bob Evans speaks with Manish Sood, founder and CEO of Reltio, about the rapidly changing relationship among enterprise data, AI, and business strategy following SAP’s acquisition of Reltio. Sood explains why trusted, interoperable data is becoming increasingly important as enterprises embrace agentic AI and autonomous business processes. He also discusses why AI models themselves may increasingly become commoditized, how organizations can bridge legacy and next-generation technology, and the ideas behind his new book, Agentic Intelligence: Strategy at the Speed of Data. Data Powers Agentic AI Data Becomes the Differentiator: Sood argues that enterprises should stop viewing data simply as another asset and instead recognize it as an interoperable asset that becomes more valuable as it is put to work across the organization. This distinction becomes particularly important as AI capabilities spread. If businesses eventually gain access to broadly comparable AI models, competitive differentiation will increasingly come from proprietary enterprise knowledge: decades of customer information, operational history, relationships, and business context. AI Creates Unavoidable Urgency: Enterprise transformation once proceeded at what Sood describes as a relatively organic pace. AI has fundamentally changed that dynamic by creating an enormous pull on organizations to move more quickly. Executives might still feel uncertainty about AI, but another fear has become even stronger: getting left behind. That competitive pressure is creating urgency around experimentation, investment, and execution. Sood sees this as potentially healthy because it forces organizations to reconsider technology and processes that previously seemed difficult to change. Strategy Still Beats Shiny Objects: AI's extraordinary pace doesn't eliminate the fundamentals of good business strategy. Sood notes that every major technology cycle produces a new "shiny object" that organizations race to adopt, sometimes before determining the architecture, strategy, and business value required to make it useful. AI shouldn't become another example. Enterprises absolutely need to embrace the technology, but Sood argues that they cannot sacrifice disciplined thinking about what they are trying to accomplish. That idea sits at the center of Agentic Intelligence. The Big Quote: "Our thesis has always been that data is not just an asset. Data is the interoperable asset that needs to be used.” More from Manish Sood and Reltio: Follow Manish on LinkedIn and learn more about Reltio and SAP at the following links: Reltio: Agentic AI Readiness Research, SAP Business Data Cloud, and Reltio: Building a Foundation for Agentic AI Visit Cloud Wars for more.

  7. 5d ago

    Oracle Wins $7 Billion Pentagon Contract in Major Government Deal

    In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I explore Oracle’s major $7 billion Pentagon contract and what it means for the company’s government and enterprise ambitions. Highlights 00:03 —The Pentagon has awarded Oracle a major 10-year contract worth up to $7 billion, sending the company's shares around 3% higher in extended trading. On the news, investors are clearly happy to see another major government win here for Oracle. 00:22 — The agreement will see Oracle's software deployed across on-prem data centers used by the U.S. military, intelligence agencies, and Coast Guard. But the contract covers far more than just software licenses. It also includes long-term maintenance, technical support, and consulting services, which will ultimately provide Oracle with a steady stream of recurring revenue over the next decade. 00:50 — This deal is also pretty significant in the wider Cloud Wars and shows how Oracle's ongoing investment in its OCI platform is helping it win these really high-profile enterprise and government contracts. 01:05 — And also for customers, really its enterprise customers, this contract is a really important endorsement of Oracle's technology and its ability to support some of the world's most challenging and sensitive IT environments, and crucially, at a massive scale. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

  8. 6d ago

    Microsoft, Oracle, Google, AWS: $2.3 Trillion Backlog + RPO

    In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I analyze the extraordinary RPO growth at Microsoft, Oracle, Google Cloud, and AWS and what it signals about AI demand. Highlights 00:03 — We've got another example here where, in the greatest growth market the world has ever known, we are working with some big numbers that put the law of big numbers to the test here. So, if you look at the four hyperscalers, and I go in order of the size of their backlog or RPO, you've got Microsoft, Oracle, Google Cloud, and AWS. 00:29 — So this is fully committed business. It's fully contracted and not yet recognized as revenue. So this is what's coming down the road, to look into the pipeline, in the future, these companies have — this isn't some guesstimate of what they hope they'll get. This is signed, contracted business. So this is one of the factors, probably the key factor, behind why you see these CapEx numbers approaching or exceeding $200 billion. 01:09 — Now that has led to a couple of these companies entering into the debt markets to try to fund this data center expansion and all that enormous CapEx outlay that they've got to go through. In turn, a couple of these companies for a quarter or two had negative cash flows, and that's got some people on Wall Street unable to comprehend it. The world's coming to an end. What are we going to do? 01:46 — I think the perspective is being switched here, right? Traditionally, the idea is bad. You don't want to have negative cash flow. Okay, that's pretty basic. I think we got that. The difference is there have never been a market with a size, a total addressable market , anything like this, growing at the rate this is. Look at these latest numbers for the four hyperscalers. 02:23 — Oracle, off a much smaller revenue base, has this huge future business coming in: $638 billion in RPO, growing at 363%. Google Cloud had a huge jump this past Q2, $514 billion in backlog, up 390%, and a resurgent AWS posted its biggest backlog number ever, $496 billion, and I believe that growth rate of 154% for its backlog is much higher than any they've reported over the last five or six quarters. 04:07 — So I think it's significant, but I also think it's being vastly overblown. I just want to say one more time: $2.3 trillion. Now, that's not like a TAM figure. Somebody's saying, "Oh, we think the market for new scooters is going to be $2.3 trillion." These are four companies, just four , not the whole tech industry, and these are their signed, contracted, committed figures for what they've got in their backlog or RPO. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

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Cloud Wars analyzes the major cloud vendors from the perspective of business customers. In Cloud Wars Live, Bob Evans talks with both sides about these profoundly transformative technologies, and with monthly All-Star guests from across the business community about the trends impacting how the world lives, works, plays, and dreams. Visit https://cloudwars.com for more.

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