Cloud Wars Live with Bob Evans

The Big Themes:A project leader: Who has enough political capital to see the effort through to the end – and people who are culturally aligned with them.Projects with poor technology succeed because of great teams: Projects with great technology fail because of bad ones. You choose which one.An experienced technical person: One who’s deeply and intimately familiar with the product idiosyncrasies and pitfalls – and is willing to take that chance.Commitment: Project team members who can stay throughout the duration of the project – both from the systems integrator side and the customer side. The Big Quotes:“I'm from Chicago. You always think of Michael Jordan, but really, and truly that was Phil Jackson that I would call the project leader.” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

The Big Themes:Seeing a shift from hyper-specialization: What are the implications for recruiting, retaining, and developing talent in today’s market? Will the era of collaboration give way to a more structured approach to building teams and organizational structures?Digital transformation is blurring the boundaries between domains: Technology is asking questions about finance. Finance is asking questions about sales. Marketing is helping to define core financial metrics.In a world where everyone has access: Same data, and same information. What sources can leaders turn to seek an advantage?The role curiosity plays: Business success will grow exponentially in the next decade. Leaders can see the patterns and the connections between various disciplines and functions. And data sets will become highly prized.The Big Quotes:“I think Steve Jobs took a lot of inspiration from just the relentless curiosity that Walt Disney had.”This episode is brought to you by BMC Software. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

The Big Themes:A sprint to the finish line: Digital transformation doesn’t just mean changes in our business models. We’re seeing a fundamental change in our culture.Truly engaging with customers: Not only you are benefiting yourself, but you are also benefiting others – and that’s true empathy.Seven and a half billion people on this planet: We all want to be happy, and that journey to happiness is not a bad thing.Amazon makes zillions of dollars with Prime: If they say it’s going to be delivered on November 6th, and it shows up on November 5th you go wow!The Big Quotes:“Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary said, ‘If I had known that being nice to customers would have worked so well, I would have done it a lot sooner.’” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

The Big Themes:ServiceNow vs. IBM: The market cap of ServiceNow, with $4 billion in revenue, is closing in on that of IBM, which is a 115-year-old company with $75 billion in revenue! Meanwhile, Bill ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott teams up with IBM to unleash AI on IT. Go figure!The markets continue to go up: The economy at large is finding its sea legs – but it’s always about the future.Let's figure out what customers want: Customers want solutions and they want solutions for the businesses that they're in, and the industries that they operate in.Not the dream job it once was: Young people feel that working at Facebook today is about as appealing at working for a tobacco company. For top students at Carnegie Mellon, the dream job is with Elon Musk’s SpaceX. The Big Quotes:“It’s impossible to imagine a CEO on the golf course at Augusta saying, ‘I really need to fix my cloud infrastructure, but I don't really care as much about my ERP solution.’ That’s just not how they think!” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

The Big Themes:His grandfather Jack and father-in-law Phil: Jack served in World War II, and Phil in Korea. Both served and fought—and lost too many friends—so that we wouldn’t have to.How is it possible that the internet didn’t blow up?: No industry in history has been tested like the tech industry. Our IT professionals are heroes.The worst cyberattacks in history: Massive security breaches, but the cloud worked to become an essential service, and data became an essential service.So many companies were able to migrate millions of workers: According to Stanford researchers 42 percent of the US labor force is now working at home full-time. The Big Quote:“We have a hundred percent volunteer military, and it's not like we pay them millions of dollars a year. These people are not Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos.”This episode is brought to you by BMC Software. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

The Big Themes:The power of trust: We’re trying to create a better experience – for our customers, our partners, and our employees. But navigating that trust is all-important.Avoiding the creepy factor: Tech companies who are applying this technology have to be very careful of how they leverage it.An actual video avatar: We understand that the computer’s not real – but if it comes in as a projected human, we respond to it in that way.Virtual agents and the customer experience: A core element of platforms across the spectrum, virtual agents are here to stay.The Big Quotes:“When I sit on some of these briefings with technology companies that are demoing some of this new technology, it's staggering, it’s mind blowing.”This episode was brought to you by BMC Software. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

This episode is brought to you by HVR.For this sponsored episode of Cloud Wars Live, I spoke with Anthony Brooks-Williams, CEO of HVR. As a cloud provider of data-replication and data-integration solutions, HVR takes hybrid to the next level.The Big Themes:People are taking a digital approach to their businesses: Where are they sending that data? They're typically sending it to the cloud.HVR had the best quarter ever: It was a wow moment. And Q1 is looking even better for them.Data is the lifeblood of corporations: Whether the challenge is operational efficiencies, inventory management, or better communication with their customers, more companies across multiple industries are turning to HVR for their hybrid data. HVR’s customer include some of the world’s largest corporations.HVR helps connect the dots to help leaders lead: What kind of data do companies want? What is the strategy? Ultimately it gets driven down from the top.The Big Quotes:“It's constantly evolving because customers’ expectations are rapidly changing.” This episode is brought to you by HVR. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

The Big Themes:Cool technology, but: You don’t want AI bots running your show. Many companies are defaulting too quickly to technology. “Old-fashioned” personal engagement is essential.Looking for the rising star: Companies want aggressive young talent that they can mold into the leaders of tomorrow.Companies are not giving them the chance: Because companies have employees with more practical experience, they’re not getting younger people into the fold.You’ve got to do your own homework: Your LinkedIn profile and your social media sites are important. But you need some coaching with your manager or other friends and then tailor your resume to specifically do those things.The Big Quote:“I believe in relationships. I believe in market intelligence, I believe in competitive intelligence.”This episode is brought to you by BMC Software. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

The Big Themes: • Metrics that matter: As the ability to track most anything as “data” accelerates, there’s a lag between technology’s ability to capture data and people’s ability to understand the data, spot patterns – and more importantly act on it. • Are millennials negatively impacted by WFH? The young generation of managers will have a gap in their learning curve based on not being able to regularly interact with their peers, mentors, and industry face-to-face. • Leading in times of crisis: These are very unique times for leaders, and perhaps the best approach is to.... • Focus on your True North: What are the needs of my customer? How are those needs changing? What do my employees need to adapt, to succeed, to excel? What is my company’s new opportunity? And how do we make money with that? The Big Quote: “I think it's a time for leaders to make sure that they're calibrating their aggression and taking advantage of these opportunities.” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

The Big Themes: • Good, fast, or cheap – you can only pick two: Don’t shortchange your project results by not investing enough in user training and adoption activities. • Garbage in – garbage out: There’s a reason you’re changing systems, and it’s easy to think that a new user interface will make it easy to clean up old information. Not so! • Pick the best team: Make sure that the team you meet in the sales process is the same team that will stay with you during implementation. • Big bang rarely works: The big-bang approach results in an implementation that has a positive and lasting impact. Most customers wish they’d been more patient and measured with the schedule. The Big Quote: “The partner is really the one that is going to help make or break the success of the software that you purchased.” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software Visit Cloud Wars for more.

The Big Themes: • Microsoft told 160,000 employees: You have the permanent right to work from home. All the big tech companies are starting to adapt because a lot of their workers can work from anywhere. Huge implications for every type of business. • Apple will evangelize 5G. The new wave of iPhones will help millions of businesspeople grasp the significance and power of 5G without having to understand the technical details behind this extraordinary technology. • “Augmented” Reality becoming “Regular” Reality? As more of this powerful new technology becomes commonplace, it will expand our perception of what’s “real”—and it will seem normal, not the stuff of sci-fi. Are you ready? • CXOs who refuse to understand technology are doomed to fail. Doesn’t matter how old you are or what your early experiences were with IT—no CXO can expect to succeed unless she or he has a deep and ongoing sense of how technology can drive new levels of business value. The Big Quote: “When you put in your technology 10, 20, 30, or 40 years ago you’ve stopped maintaining it.” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

The Big Themes:• The power of the network effect: Will it trigger next wave of M&A for software companies?• A crisis is a terrible thing to waste: This crisis has been a great accelerant – and now the question is can you take advantage of that accelerant.• Tech addiction: What’s happening across society right now is around tech addiction. There is a right way and there is a wrong way – which do you choose?• Pets.com was way too early: The Super Bowl commercial in 2001 was the demise of pets.com. Actually, the idea was perfect—but the timing was brutally wrong. There’s a big lesson in that for all of us today.The Big Quotes:“Three cell phones that can't talk to each other don't really have any value by themselves. It's the ties between the three that become valuable.”This episode is brought to you by BMC Software Visit Cloud Wars for more.

The Big Themes: • Home projects vs. digital transformation projects: There are going to be challenges along the way—here’s how to keep calm and soldier on! • Embrace the disruption: Enjoy the journey. In the end, is you’ll be able to see the full value of the project. • Prepare to be annoyed: There are times you are going to be annoyed with your software vendor for certain things – but stay focused on the larger goal. • Pursue the gain, get over the pain: Bonnie has some customers who say it was twice as much time as they thought – and a lot more expensive than they thought – but they still rated the project as excellent. The Big Quote: “If they're going to be impactful to your business, they're going to be big and complicated – and there are going to be challenges along the way.” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software. Visit Cloud Wars for more.