Cloud Wars Live with Bob Evans

Minute, I look at how Google Cloud, Microsoft, AWS, OpenAI, and Anthropic are redefining enterprise AI adoption.

Highlights

00:11 — So, in what I'm calling the AI Deployment Wars, we see the five largest AI companies — that is, Google Cloud, Microsoft, AWS, OpenAI, and Anthropic — are now all saying, or realizing, that in addition to this incredible technology they're pumping out, they have to actually ensure that all that cool stuff works for customers and that it delivers quantifiable business outcomes.

01:29 — One, we see these tech companies, who've always said, "I don't want to be in the services business," now they have to get a little bit into the services business. They are all relying on the coolest three-letter acronym of the year, FDE, for forward deployed engineers, and they're all saying they're doing this to help customers, to co-create and collaborate with customers.

02:22 — So first, Google Cloud, number one on the Cloud Wars Top 10, it announced a $750 million ecosystem fund to help partners develop agentic AI applications and capabilities that will help its customers get up to speed. OpenAI, $4.15 billion that it's investing in this — $4 billion so far itself, and outside investors have put into a new deployment company.

03:03 — Anthropic, it's about $1.5 billion, and all these companies, other than Google Cloud, it's a combination of forward deployed engineers and partners. AWS said, "We're going to put a billion dollars into it." Microsoft, $2.5 billion. It's calling it's the Microsoft Frontier Company. These numbers here together add up to $9.9 billion. I rounded up to $10 billion.

04:02 — They're (customers are) saying, "We're spending a lot of money on it, we're devoting a lot of time, we're devoting a lot of thinking and energy and focus to this, but we're not seeing the tangible business outcomes." We need to get this deep-seated engineering capability from these big tech vendors to ensure that these new AI transformation initiatives aren't just talk.

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In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I explain why Microsoft's newest AI initiative could reshape enterprise engineering and customer success.

Highlights

00:09 — Some huge news from Microsoft today. The company has launched Microsoft Frontier Company, a brand-new business that's entirely focused on helping customers achieve frontier transformation with AI.

00:28 — Now, Microsoft, despite not coining the term [Frontier Firm] itself, has been using it extensively to really outline its strategy in terms of how it sees its AI tools transforming companies, essentially enabling them to become frontier firms. This Frontier Company, to me, feels like the culmination of all that forethought and clarity around Microsoft's enterprise AI mission.

00:56 — Microsoft is investing $2.5 billion into the initiative, which will see 6,000 industry specialists and AI engineers embedded into customer organizations to help them co-design, deploy, and continuously improve AI systems. You can think about it as forward-deployed engineering, but on a much broader scale.

01:19 — Judson Althoff, CEO of Microsoft Commercial Business, calls it the "largest, most capable, outcome-driven engineering organization in the industry." Ultimately, Althoff explained the aim of Microsoft Frontier Company is to focus on end-to-end frontier transformation and enable customers to "amplify their IQ with AI while refining their differentiated value in the markets that they serve."

01:51 — Microsoft has said it will be working closely with its partner ecosystem, particularly with partners including Accenture, Capgemini, EY, KPMG, and PwC, to scale the company, extend its capabilities to organizations across many sectors globally. It's an incredibly interesting and strategic move from Microsoft, and one that I'll be following up with a deeper analysis in a written article publishing shortly.

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In this episode, I consider an argument that Palantir recently made: While traditional ERP has been valuable for many businesses over the last few decades, as we move into the AI Economy, is it possible that some of the rigor, discipline, and standards that traditional ERP has brought to organizations and their processes are beginning to cause a problem?

Highlights

00:58 — Palantir challenged traditional ERP in a recent blog post. Although there's a great value it can offer, the company prompted the idea that too much standardization — in the current economy, which is very fluid, and in the age of AI — can become a problem.

01:44 — Standardization leads to everything being uniform. So, how do companies stand out? Palantir noted that uniqueness is not a bug that software should erase but rather a feature that keeps you ahead. Another note it made was that it means sacrificing the organization's identity, its differentiated processes, and the ways it creates value for customers.

02:34 — This isn't a case of Palantir saying that ERP overall is bad; it's the mindset and how the business operates. Now, we have to pick and choose where the approach of standardization applies. This overly standardized traditional ERP approach is going to stifle the ability of companies to create competitive advantage by those unique capabilities, qualities, and personality that traditional ERP, in the view of Palantir, stifles.

03:42 — In its blog post, Palantir suggests a solution to this, that the company can help customers interconnect these new ways of doing things — a modern layer with traditional ERP. Palantir is deepening its partnership with SAP so they can deliver greater capabilities to customers.

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In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I explore Microsoft's shift to usage-based Copilot Cowork pricing and what it reveals about the changing economics of enterprise AI.

Highlights

00:10 — Microsoft is moving Copilot Cowork from a fixed-price subscription model to usage-based pricing, and this is really reflecting the fact that heavy users are racking up massive compute costs compared to others.

00:55 — More and more, the focus is shifting to how organizations can scale those (AI) capabilities in a way that's financially stable, but beyond that, Microsoft has also said that it's considering a Microsoft-hosted version of DeepSeek as a lower-cost model alternative.

01:16 — Right now, at the moment, Copilot Cowork workloads are powered by models from OpenAI and Anthropic. We should expect to hear from Microsoft regarding DeepSeek, or another low-cost model choice, within the coming weeks.

01:32 — So, what are we really seeing here? Well, Microsoft's AI strategy is evolving beyond simply offering access to the most powerful models. Increasingly, it's about giving customers the right balance of performance, economics, and choice.

01:49 — This is also highlighting, for me, a big divide between how governments and businesses view the AI race. Governments often frame this AI race as a competition between nations, but enterprises are more likely to focus on which models deliver the best outcomes at the lowest cost for their customers.

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In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I examine what OpenAI's latest move reveals about the maturation of the enterprise AI market.

Highlights

00:03 —My colleague Bob Evans has already covered the specifics of OpenAI's new partner network, so I don't want to spend too much time on the ins and outs of the program itself today. Instead, what I want to do is focus on what this announcement really tells us about the wider state, the broader state of the AI market.

00:25 — Now, for much of the past two years, the conversation around AI has focused on models, questions like: "Which model is best? Which company is ahead? How quickly are capabilities improving? Now, while those questions still matter, they're not the most important ones for many enterprises today. The challenge is more about scalable deployment.

00:44 — Most large organizations have already experimented at this point with AI in some way. They've run pilots, they've tested use cases, and identified areas where AI can really create value for them. The issue now is turning those successes into a scalable business strategy.

01:17 — And that's why OpenAI's partner network matters in this instance. For me, the announcement is less about OpenAI launching another program and more about the company realizing that, although it has the technology, that alone isn't enough for companies to scale in the AI era. They need an ecosystem that includes consultants, partners, and specialists as well.

01:49 — The winners in this next phase will not necessarily be the organizations with access to the most powerful models; they'll be the ones that can successfully embed AI into day-to-day operations and generate real business outcomes. When you look at it like this, OpenAI's partner network is not just a new customer program, it's a sign that the industry is entering a new chapter.

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