Cloud Wars Live with Bob Evans

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I unpack why Workday customers are demanding AI agents and agentic capabilities.

Highlights

00:03 — I had a chance to speak with Workday co-founder, then CEO, then chairman, now back as CEO, Aneel Bhusri. And absolutely, Aneel, I would say, is back as CEO. He is unplugged in this conversation and definitely fired up about Workday’s prospects, and the sort of reimagination of the company as an AI-first, AI-powered, agentic powerhouse moving into the future here.

01:27 — He said none of them is talking about vibe coding applications. He said the enterprise apps are here, but he said "it’s our job at Workday to ensure that they are reinvigorated and kept as modern as possible, with as much AI and agentic capability as possible."

02:29 — He also said, “We’ve got to take on a startup culture, startup mentality, a startup mindset that lets us continually experiment, push new things out, and not get stuck in doing things a certain way.”

02:58 — The opportunity now that customers see is for the right sort of agentic AI to come in to enhance what the applications are already doing, to help these companies move faster, get better insights, allow people to be able to move up to higher-value work.

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In this Cloud Wars conversation, Bob Evans sits down with Workday Co-Founder and CEO Aneel Bhusri for a candid discussion about AI’s disruptive impact on enterprise software, the future of agentic workflows, and why Bhusri returned to the CEO role during one of tech’s most consequential transitions. The conversation explores whether AI will replace software or labor, why systems of record remain strategically vital, and how enterprise leaders should think about governance, security, and business transformation as intelligent agents begin reshaping the operating model of modern organizations.

AI Changes Enterprise Work

The Big Themes:

AI Replaces Labor, Not Software: One of the most provocative points in the conversation is Bhusri’s assertion that AI is not currently replacing enterprise software, it’s replacing labor. That distinction changes everything. Rather than displacing systems like HR, finance, or ERP, AI is being layered on top of those systems to automate work previously performed by people. Bhusri sees this as both a business opportunity and a societal concern.

Systems of Record Still Matter: Despite “SaaSpocalypse” chatter, Bhusri argues strongly that systems of record remain deeply entrenched. Customers are not planning to rip out core HR or ERP systems and replace them with loosely connected AI tools. Instead, the competitive battle shifts to what gets built on top of those platforms. That’s a major strategic advantage for incumbents with trusted enterprise infrastructure, data models, and governance frameworks. Bhusri groups Workday alongside SAP, Oracle, and Salesforce as vendors with durable strategic relevance.

AI’s Social Impact Is the Bigger Story: The most human part of the discussion comes at the end, when Bhusri expresses genuine concern about AI-driven job displacement. Unlike past automation waves focused on repetitive tasks, he worries this generation affects reasoning and knowledge work. Yet he remains optimistic that technology ultimately improves society. Still, he insists enterprise leaders must become part of the solution, not simply profit from disruption.

The Big Quote: “Great tech companies aren’t built on one generation of technology.”

More from Aneel Bhusri and Workday:

Learn more about Workday and AI Connect and Workday Agent System of Record.

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In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I explore how Workday and Achievers are using AI-driven behavioral intelligence to transform employee recognition and workforce engagement.

Highlights

00:03 — Workday has made Workday Recognition provided by Achievers, available to its customers. This offering has been developed alongside Achievers, the world's leading employee recognition and reward software, integrating its features into the Workday experience. The new offering leverages AI to make it easier for HR teams to evaluate performance drivers.

00:29 — The integration enables employees to recognize their peers and redeem rewards directly within Workday, while streamlining these processes for HR within Workday Human Capital Management, or HCM. This integration provides HR teams with insights into in-demand skills and creates a broader picture of performance.

00:55 — Ben Carter, Senior Vice President, Total Rewards at Workday, explained, “Recognition fuels engagement, and engagement drives productivity, making it one of the clearest indicators of a thriving workforce. By bringing Achievers into Workday, we are helping customers amplify those everyday moments of appreciation and turn them into actionable insights..."

01:22 — By embedding Achievers directly into Workday HCM, Workday is showcasing a significant use case for enterprise AI. That's behavioral intelligence. This really, to me, represents a shift away from automation and instead leverages AI's ability to provide insights at a human level.

01:45 — Businesses are pursuing tools that can offer them a competitive advantage, especially in a landscape where many are targeting similar goals and deploying the same strategies and tools to achieve them. I believe tools like this, which focus on behaviors and reward performance as a result, will undoubtedly become powerful assets in the competitive business arsenal.

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In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I look at how Palantir’s soaring growth reflects rising demand for disciplined, outcome-driven AI platforms.

Highlights

00:03 — For the past several quarters, the fastest-growing company in the Cloud Wars Top 10 has been Palantir. It upheld that mark in Q1, and what I wanted to talk about today was their combination of extraordinary growth and also the rise from Palantir of a couple new terms to describe what's going on in AI right now.

00:30 — Palantir believes it's been successful because it is offering real solutions when other tech vendors — many other tech vendors, it says — are offering only incomplete portions of it. Total revenue was up 85% to $1.63 billion. If you take the U.S., which is both commercial and government or defense business, it's up 104% to $1.28 billion.

01:31 — Palantir has blown past its guidance in each of the last several quarters. Its big point about AI slop is that customers are wasting time and money with incomplete AI solutions that don't offer enough precision, enough rigor, enough discipline, so that every move that agents are making can be tracked with great specificity about cost, security, and ROI.

02:30 — Alexander Karp says there’s a new category here that he thinks is more befitting of what Palantir does: AI infrastructure. These results are remarkable because it shows that what it is that Palantir is putting together, customers are loving. It's passed now 1,000 customers, and its customers are rapidly increasing the spending they’re doing with them.

03:24 — Karp says business leaders have to start thinking differently about what they want out of AI and what a high-quality AI vendor is going to deliver for them. Palantir has been around for 23 years, and despite seeming like a startup company, it continues pushing forward on customer expectations and the value it's imparting to customers. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I unpack how flexibility and competition are reshaping the AI ecosystem.

Highlights

00:08 — One of the most important tech partnerships in the past decade has undergone a radical shake-up. I'm talking about Microsoft and OpenAI, the two companies have revealed new terms for their partnership agreement in a joint statement.

00:38 — "Today, we are announcing an amended agreement to simplify our partnership and the way we work together, grounded in flexibility, certainty, and a focus on delivering the benefits of AI broadly. This new agreement frees both companies up to pursue opportunities independently while maintaining a relationship."

00:59 — There is an endpoint for the length of time that Microsoft has rights to OpenAI's model. OpenAI is going to benefit massively from wider partner opportunities, but still, there are additional benefits for Microsoft as well.

01:17 — Microsoft will remain OpenAI's primary cloud partner, with products shipping first on Azure. However, OpenAI can now serve all its products to customers across any cloud provider. Microsoft will continue to have a non-exclusive license to OpenAI IP until 2032.

01:54 — Despite the significant alterations, Microsoft will continue to participate directly in OpenAI's growth as a major shareholder. Microsoft will benefit by not having to allocate so many resources, allowing it to focus on areas that align with its evolving business goals.

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