Cloud Wars Live with Bob Evans

In today's Cloud Wars AI Minute, I break down why ServiceNow and Microsoft are embracing open protocols as the AI Agent War shifts to the control layer.
Highlights
00:01 — What I want to talk about today is that we're actually seeing the Agent War moving up to the control layer. You're seeing that there's a new control layer that's becoming the core part of what everyone is fighting over in this space, and this is really where we're going to start seeing governance and control becoming the more important part as we continue to move forward.
00:55 — ServiceNow is building a layer that governs what agents do with it, and this is going to be shipped on the open protocol of MCP. But if we look over at Microsoft, which is building out Work IQ, it's going to make sure that it also exposes over MCP, A2A, and REST.
01:32 — It's actually leveraging the out-of-the-box available [protocols] that are basically industry standards at this point, and that's actually a really good sign for the way that things are going. And it also means that what we're also starting to see in this governance space reliance and integration starting to happen across all of these different layers.
02:17 — And I would fully expect that this is going to be a place that we need to keep a strong eye on as we continue to move forward. And, of course, here at Cloud Wars, we'll make sure that we continue to take a look at this particular space .

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In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I look at why SoftBank is turning to the bond market to finance its latest $10 billion OpenAI investment.
Highlights
00:03 — It's fair to say that we're at an interesting inflection point when it comes to how AI innovation is set to progress, what might constrain it, and where, eventually, lines may be drawn. However, that hasn't slowed planned investment in some of the biggest U.S. firms.
00:19 — Most recently, Japanese investment giant SoftBank has announced that, through the issuance of senior unsecured bonds, it will be borrowing over $11 billion to help fund its planned $10 billion investment in OpenAI. Now, $10 billion of the new bonds will be issued in U.S. dollars, with another 1 billion issued in euros.
00:41 — This is SoftBank's third tranche of its follow-on investment in OpenAI, with the $10 billion payment expected to close on October 1. It's a very significant amount, and if the bond sale is completed at this planned size, it will be the largest corporate bond deal by a non-financial company ever recorded in Asia Pacific and Japan.
01:03 — Now, quick note here: despite its name, SoftBank isn't a bank. It's primarily an investment holding company and tech investor. I think the interesting thing here is that SoftBank isn't just investing $10 billion of spare cash into OpenAI; it's borrowing billions from the bond market to help fund the investment.
01:27 — Effectively using debt to finance this continued relationship with OpenAI, at the very least, signals a significant level of confidence in the company.

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Key Takeaways
AI investments: Simms explains that a top priority for organizations currently is determining how to get value out of AI investments. He says an estimated 80% of AI initiatives aren't seeing the value that was anticipated, which begs the question: Are you choosing the wrong initiatives? Are you using the correct data? Have you defined the processes correctly? "All the underlying pillars that are required for these things to actually work and actually provide value, those need to be revisited and looked at," he says.
Data readiness: Data readiness is, in Simms' opinion, "the biggest single issue that's out there right now" as it relates to AI projects. He suggests that organizations need strong data governance and an "iterative approach" to ensure both structured and unstructured data are clean, organized, and ready to support AI systems and workflows at scale.
Adoption: Simms says his approach to AI adoption is different because he focuses on building the right organizational and process foundations first, rather than rushing to implement technology. He compares it to building a house, noting that "you don’t put on the shingles and the shutters and the paint before you actually build the foundation and the frame."
New roles defined by AI: Simms expects AI to create and reshape job titles and also create demand for expertise that helps organizations adopt, manage, and govern it. Specifically, he foresees roles focused on governance and engineering, as industries determine how to implement and maintain AI systems.

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In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I look at how SAP is moving industry AI into the mainstream while expanding its autonomous enterprise strategy at Connect.
Highlights
00:03 — SAP is having a big event in Las Vegas this week called Connect, and whereas its Sapphire event every year really is aimed at its traditional IT audience, and lays the technical foundation for its strategy, Connect, now in its second year, was brought about to focus on the LOB users, business users, non-tech users.
00:24 — And this year at Connect, SAP is getting ready to crank up its promise of the Autonomous Enterprise with a lot of new Joule AI-powered agents and assistants that SAP believes will help customers be able to leverage the full power of the autonomous enterprise on an end-to-end basis.
00:57 — Now, the promise that SAP has with the autonomous enterprise is it's going to be able to push this now across the enterprise. So at Sapphire, it really laid the tech foundation, putting together the SAP Business Suite with the SAP Business Data Cloud. It's now calling that the autonomous enterprise.
02:14 — What SAP is doing now with the autonomous enterprise and a lot of these new agents is it is using Signavio and LeanIX to be able to help people make the best decision, be able to map out exactly, you know, what processes to map, how to map those, what KPIs to put together with it.
03:09 — So it feels like this is going to be, with the Autonomous Enterprise, not just the technology, but very, very strong guidance, best practices that customers will be able to use to put together full end-to-end solutions.

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John Siefert sits down with Christopher Jones, Vice President of Ecosystems and Partner Alliances at T-Mobile, to explore why enterprise connectivity is becoming foundational to the AI Era. Jones explains how T-Mobile for Business is moving beyond the traditional perception of a telecommunications provider to become an infrastructure layer supporting distributed workforces, AI agents, enterprise applications, and data at the edge.
AI Runs on Connectivity
The Big Themes:
Connectivity Underpins Enterprise AI: AI may dominate enterprise conversations, but Jones argues that connectivity remains the foundation that makes AI useful. Applications, agents, enterprise data, and mobile workforces all depend on networks capable of delivering reliable access wherever work happens. That makes connectivity increasingly important as AI pushes workloads and data beyond traditional office environments and toward the edge. T-Mobile for Business is positioning itself not simply as a telecommunications provider but as an underlying infrastructure layer supporting whatever technologies enterprises deploy today and tomorrow.
Co-Creation Replaces Technology Silos: The conversation repeatedly returns to co-creation. T-Mobile doesn't want partners to build specifically into its solutions, nor does it necessarily want to embed itself deeply inside an SI's technology. Instead, Jones describes a co-sell and co-creation model in which different providers contribute their respective expertise toward a common customer outcome. An SI may own the application or industry solution while T-Mobile provides the connectivity that allows that solution to operate reliably across locations and devices. That distinction matters as enterprise architectures become more complicated. Rather than expecting one vendor to provide every component, customers can benefit from ecosystems that combine networking, applications, cloud, AI, consulting, and domain expertise while keeping each participant focused on what it does particularly well.
Resilience Requires Multiple Paths: One example of T-Mobile's infrastructure strategy is SuperBroadband, which Jones describes as pairing its 5G network with Starlink in a managed connectivity solution. The objective is to provide two independent connectivity paths rather than leaving an organization dependent on one. T-Mobile's current materials describe SuperBroadband as integrating its 5G Advanced network with Starlink and supporting capabilities including failover and load balancing. This reinforces the broader message of the conversation: as organizations place more mission-critical workflows on cloud applications and AI systems, network resilience becomes inseparable from business resilience.
The Big Quote: “No one owns the whole solution. It's how do you bring together a variety of partners that have their own individual expertise [to] work together for the joint customer outcome.”
More from T-Mobile:
Learn more about T-Mobile for Business Advanced Network Solutions and T-Mobile SuperBroadband.

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