Cloud Wars Live with Bob Evans

In this episode of the AI Agent & Copilot Podcast, Cloud Wars Founder Bob Evans, is joined by James Lennox, Director of Product, Microsoft, who shares his perspective on AI transformation, enterprise adoption, and the evolving human-AI relationship. Recorded live at the 2026 AI Agent & Copilot Summit NA, Lennox explores how tools like Copilot and Work IQ are reshaping productivity, governance, and innovation across industries.

Key Takeaways

Delegation is the New Productivity Model: Lennox underscores a fundamental shift: “I can delegate those long-running tasks to AI.” This evolution allows humans to move away from repetitive execution and focus on strategic, creative, and decision-driven work. With platforms like Work IQ acting as the “brain behind Copilot,” organizations gain end-to-end visibility into business processes. This changes not just efficiency, but the very nature of work — humans become orchestrators rather than operators, dramatically increasing output and impact across roles.

Governance is the Gateway to Scale: One of the biggest blockers to AI adoption isn’t capability, it’s control. Lennox notes organizations ask: “How do I have the governance and oversight to roll this out at scale?” Tools like Microsoft Agent 365 aim to solve this with “full observability, full control, full security.” Without trust frameworks, AI remains experimental. With them, it becomes operational. This highlights that enterprise AI success depends as much on infrastructure and policy as it does on innovation.

AI is Universally Applicable Across Industries: Lennox observed leaders from diverse sectors, manufacturing, healthcare, and food services, all exploring AI adoption. “There is so much broad applicability…to real business process automation.” This reinforces that AI is not industry-specific but function-specific. Whether it’s document processing or supply chain optimization, AI can integrate into virtually any workflow, making it a universal transformation layer rather than a niche tool.

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In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I analyze the shifting balance of power between Google Cloud and AWS.

Highlights

00:03 — Last week, we had three of the four hyperscalers report their Q1 numbers. It’s been fascinating to look at those. While everybody did very, very well, Google Cloud just had an utterly exceptional, spectacular Q1, and I think the evidence of what we see in these comparative numbers shows why Google Cloud has risen to number one.

00:51 — If we compare side by side, Google Cloud and AWS in Q1 on the growth rate, their revenue, their backlog growth, and the backlog numbers — the growth: 63% to 28%. Now we will certainly hear from a lot of the AWS fanboys that that’s just because there’s a discrepancy in size. That’s true, but it does not cover this discrepancy in growth rate.

01:35 — For Google Cloud, the backlog grew 93% to $462 billion. For AWS, the backlog grew 49% to $364 billion. Really impressive numbers here from AWS, but they play in a market with some other pretty good companies as well. Google Cloud shows 93% backlog growth versus 49%, and $100 billion bigger in backlog total versus AWS.

02:31 — AWS in Q1 had 85% more revenue than Google Cloud. Then how do you explain this backlog discrepancy? It shows that going forward, which is what the backlog shows us, future trends of business, Google Cloud is winning much more business in the future. Google Cloud is winning more new business, and that’s where the game is being played.

03:25 — So clearly, the whole AI boom had a huge impact on these numbers. We saw Microsoft, just to toss this in, Microsoft's growth rate was 29% in Q1, its fiscal Q3, and its RPO, which is its version of backlog, was up, it said, 99% to$ 627 billion. Oracle, its RPO was up 325% to over $550 billion. So, it's just an incredible market here right now.

04:05 — For a long time, AWS has conditioned the market to say AWS is the king of the cloud and it will be forever. That’s just not true anymore. Google Cloud, through innovation and jumping into the AI game early and aggressively, is booming right now, and its core cloud business is doing very well.

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At Google Cloud Next in Las Vegas, Bob Evans sat down with Karen Dahut, CEO of Google Public Sector, to discuss how AI, security, and open cloud strategies are reshaping government services. Dahut shared how Google Public Sector was built on the belief that government agencies deserve the same advanced commercial technologies as private enterprises, and why that decision is now proving critical in the era of agentic AI.

AI Reinvents Government

The Big Themes:

Commercial Cloud for Government: Karen Dahut explained that when Thomas Kurian became CEO of Google Cloud in 2019, he challenged the outdated assumption that public sector organizations should receive different or lesser technology than private enterprises. Instead of building a separate, restricted GovCloud environment, Google chose to accredit its full commercial cloud for government use. This gave agencies access to the same scalability, resiliency, and innovation cycles as Fortune 100 companies. That decision is especially important now because AI workloads demand enormous scale.

Leadership Makes AI Real: Technology alone does not create transformation — leadership does. Dahut highlighted examples from the FDA, Department of Transportation, and the City of Los Angeles, where visionary leaders are actively driving AI adoption rather than waiting for change to happen. These executives are not simply buying software; they are rethinking how agencies operate, from transportation systems to drug discovery to citizen services. Dahut stressed that real AI success requires courage, education, and enablement alongside strong technology.

Open Cloud Is Responsible Government: Dahut strongly argued that openness is not optional in public sector technology, it is the only responsible approach. Governments operate with decades of legacy systems, massive backlogs of information, and multimodal data spread across many environments. Forcing all of that data into one cloud platform would be expensive, slow, and ultimately harmful. Google’s approach is to leave the data where it already exists and analyze it there, avoiding costly ingress and egress fees and preventing vendor lock-in.

The Big Quote: “AI and agentic AI is truly going to be one of those technologies that we look back on 10, 15 years from now and say that was truly the most transformational piece of technology since the transistor.”

More from Karen Dahut and Google Cloud:

Connect with Karen on LinkedIn or learn more about Google Cloud Public Sector.

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In this special episode of Cloud Wars Live, Bob Evans sits down with Steve Miranda, Executive Vice President of Applications Development at Oracle, from Oracle Park in San Francisco to discuss one of the biggest shifts happening in enterprise technology: agentic AI applications. Miranda explains how Oracle is moving beyond embedded AI and AI agents to fully agentic applications that can act on business objectives rather than just automate transactions. From finance and supply chain to HR and customer service, he shares how this transformation is changing operations, competitiveness, employee roles, and the very mindset organizations need to succeed in the AI Era.

Rise of Agentic Apps

The Big Themes:

From AI Features to Agentic Applications: Steve Miranda explains that Oracle’s AI journey has evolved in three major stages. First, Oracle embedded AI directly into applications to help generate and enhance content, improving the traditional user experience. Next came AI agents — workflow-driven systems capable of handling transaction sequences across ERP, HCM, supply chain, and CX. Now Oracle is introducing agentic applications, which represent a full redesign of enterprise software. These systems allow users to set business objectives rather than manually manage transactions. Instead of handling purchase orders, invoices, or approvals individually, users provide strategic guidance while AI agents execute, monitor, and optimize outcomes.

Competitive Advantage Comes from Speed: Miranda stresses that agentic AI is not only about reducing costs through automation — it is about increasing business speed and adaptability. In competitive markets, companies need to react instantly to supply chain disruptions, shifting cash positions, pricing opportunities, and customer demands. Human-driven workflows create delays, while agentic applications can monitor both internal operations and external market conditions in real time. AI can identify early payment discounts, detect supply chain disruptions, or recommend immediate operational adjustments faster than traditional teams. This responsiveness creates a major competitive edge. Companies that adopt agentic applications can operate faster and more efficiently, while those that delay risk falling behind competitors who are able to move at machine speed

Oracle’s Pricing Philosophy Supports Adoption: Miranda explains that Oracle’s pricing philosophy for AI remains intentionally customer-friendly. Core AI improvements — including embedded AI and standard agentic capabilities — are included within existing application subscriptions. Customers subscribing to financials, HCM, supply chain, or other Fusion applications receive these enhancements as part of the normal service evolution, much like database upgrades. Additional charges apply only when customers extend applications further, such as building custom agents or adding specialized workflows through Agent Studio. Those extensions use token-based pricing, which reflects current industry standards for AI usage. This model gives customers both innovation and flexibility: they benefit from improved core functionality without surprise costs, while paying incrementally only when they choose to expand AI into additional areas of the business.

The Big Quote: “We’re essentially rebuilding our applications from the ground up to make them agentic.”

More from Steve Miranda and Oracle:

Connect with Steve on LinkedIn or learn more about Oracle AI Agent for Fusion Applications.

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In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I explore how Oracle is redefining enterprise software with AI agentic applications.

Highlights

00:03 — One of the biggest stories of the year, maybe the next few years, is going to be the rise of generative AI, the animating force behind business innovation and unlocking new ways for businesses to work, to run, to see the future, to adapt, and to give people higher-value opportunities as well.

00:29 — Oracle, I think, has been the most articulate and the most active in framing out how agents and applications are going to work together in the future. There has been this false choice brought up that it would be apps or agents, but that is not where things are headed.

01:09 — What we're seeing now is not going to be apps and agents. Oracle is fusing them together, calling them AI agentic applications. Steve Miranda explained in a longer conversation I had with him how these applications are different, what the business benefits are for customers, and how this new AI agentic revolution is changing enterprise software.

02:34 — Oracle is saying these AI agentic applications will trigger a shift of applications being systems of record to systems of actual outcomes. The agents are going to pursue not just task by task, but business outcomes, business goals, and business objectives.

03:51 — Companies that move quickly will be able to reposition their people to do higher-value work instead of drudge work. The risks of waiting are growing scarier as the pace of innovation increases, and leaders need to aggressively and confidently take on these new technologies.

Check out my longer conversation with Steve Miranda here.

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