Cloud Wars Live with Bob Evans

In this episode of the AI Agent & Copilot Podcast, John Siefert, CEO of Dynamic Communities and Cloud Wars, sits down with Dona Sarkar, Chief Troublemaker, Enterprise AI Advocacy at Microsoft, to explore what it really takes to move AI agents and copilots from experimentation into production. Their conversation previews Sarkar’s keynote at the 2026 AI Agent & Copilot Summit NA and dives into practical adoption, human-centered AI, and lessons learned from real-world enterprise deployments.
Key Takeaways
Enterprise advocacy bridges the gap: Sarkar explains that enterprise cloud advocacy exists to translate Microsoft product capabilities into practical, real-world business solutions. Rather than selling tools, her team focuses on enablement — creating demos, workshops, and labs that show how AI agents, Copilot Studio, Azure, and Power Platform can actually be deployed inside organizations.
Production is harder than experimentation: Building an AI agent is easy; deploying it responsibly is not. Enterprises struggle with permissions, ownership, data readiness, and governance once agents move into production. These challenges reveal why successful AI adoption requires cross-functional collaboration between IT, business units, and governance teams.
Not all work should be automated: Sarkar cautions against replacing meaningful human interactions with automation simply because it’s possible. Instead, organizations should focus AI on prioritization, analysis, and repetitive tasks — freeing humans to spend more time on creativity, judgment, and relationship-building. “We really need to go draw a big old line in the sand and say, these should be uniquely human to human activities," she says. "These should be uniquely AI to human activities. These should be uniquely AI to AI activities.”
Human connection matters more than ever: Despite fears that AI would reduce in-person interaction, both speakers observe the opposite trend. Conferences and professional gatherings are thriving because people crave perspective, not just information. While AI can surface data instantly, point of view comes from lived experience.
Failure is part of responsible AI adoption: Sarkar openly shares that "The number of agents I’ve had to take down is probably like 50% of the agents I built.” These failures weren’t wasted effort; they informed better tooling, clearer governance, and improved workflows. Microsoft’s rapid release of new AI tools reflects lessons learned internally before being shared with customers.

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In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I look at how Microsoft is helping developers build and scale AI agents safely inside Visual Studio Code.
Highlights
00:10 — The Microsoft Copilot Studio extension for Visual Studio Code is now generally available, providing developers with the ability to build and manage Copilot Studio agents directly within the IDE. This extension is designed for developers and integrates seamlessly into their workflows.
00:28 — It includes standard Git integration, request-based pull reviews, auditability, and is tailored to the VS Code UX. The new extension reflects the growing complexity of agents and equips developers with the same best practices they use for app development, including, as Microsoft puts it, source control, pull requests, change history, and repeatable deployments.
01:02 — This extension really benefits developers when they need to manage complex agents, collaborate with multiple stakeholders, and ensure that any changes made are done so safely. It’s ideal for developers who prefer to build within their IDE while also having an AI assistant available to help them iterate more quickly and productively.
01:30 — The extension introduces important structural support for the development of AI agents. By integrating Copilot Studio directly into VS Code, Microsoft is empowering developers to build more efficiently, without compromising control, access to collaborators, or safety. This is a critical combination as AI agents become increasingly more powerful and complex.
02:00 — As these agents continue to evolve, they require the same stringent checks and balances as traditional software. Microsoft’s Copilot Studio extension addresses this by giving developers the tools they need to scale agents responsibly while maintaining performance.

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In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I break down Palantir’s breathtaking Q4 results and why its customer-first AI approach is a wake-up call for the entire enterprise software industry.
Highlights
00:06 — Several companies in the Cloud Wars Top 10 have been rolling out their numbers for Q4 and for year 2025, the numbers from Palantir, expected to be pretty good. They're absolutely stunning. Total revenue growth for Q4 was up 73% and their guidance for Q1 indicates more of the same. They are guiding to 73% revenue growth for the quarter we're currently in.
00:54 — The numbers are just absolutely extraordinary, I think, breathtaking. There's no talk from Palantir that you hear from so many other enterprise software companies: "Oh, it's a challenging macroeconomic environment. There's global uncertainty, there's budget pressures on." Palantir just doesn't talk about that.
01:39 — Palantir comes in and says, "What are you trying to achieve? What are your business outcomes? Let's start there, and then we'll back up, use some of the existing software we have, or some variations combinations of it, what we're doing and with partners, it is the way of the future."
02:27 — Now let me just step away from Q4 a second and go to the full year. For the full year, revenue is up 56%. So, that means that throughout 2025 the growth rate for Palantir is accelerating significantly. Generally, we would see this flipped, where a company grew very fast in the first few quarters, but understandably slowed down as the revenue basis got bigger.
04:10 — They don't fall into the trap of having to engage with customers based on categories or boxes or buckets of industry terms created by the big analyst firms ... They do not go down that path. They say each customer's problems are unique. The capabilities that we bring are unique. The engagement model is unique, and the outcomes we want to work with are different here.
04:49 — So I think that behind these breathtaking numbers there's a wake-up call for all of the big enterprise software companies, right? What got us here will not get us there? And I think Palantir is offering to everybody an example of the new type of thinking technology and engagement models that are going to be required here into the AI economy.

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Key Takeaways
AI's progress: Wiese expresses excitement to return to the event after a year to hear real case studies on how people have embraced AI, especially appreciating the human and change‑management side of this transformational journey. Specifically, she's eager to learn where organizations have tested, scaled, or faced pushback over the past 12 months, noting that adopting AI is an ongoing, iterative process.
Curating the agenda: "I think my number one view of all of the submissions was around innovation," notes Wiese, who played a role as a Programming Committee Board member, selecting sessions for the 2026 AI Agent & Copilot Summit agenda. In her process, she looked for examples of where organizations have truly innovated with this technology. "I want honest, too. You know, 'this is what we tried. It didn't work, but we came back at it, here's how'".
AI's impact on women in tech: On Thursday, March 19, Wiese will lead a Fireside Chat around her new book, "You're on Mute." The book explores whether AI has actually helped women enter and thrive in the tech industry amid persistent adoption and trust gaps. Through stories from contributors, it examines AI’s impact on leveling the playing field and encourages more women to see AI as a path into tech.
Event expectations: The real power of conferences and events comes from being together, notes Wiese. With the lineup of speakers, she believes attendees will gain access to candid insights and meaningful peer connections.

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In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I discuss Christian Klein's plan for SAP's continued success.
Highlights
00:00 — Hello, my friends. Welcome back to Cloud Wars Minute, where 2026 is off to a racing start here into the AI economy. And I wanted to talk today a little bit about the results for Q4 and full-year 2025 from SAP, which is now number four on the Cloud Wars Top 10, moved up from the number five spot earlier this month.
00:37 —So let’s focus on the strength that’s going on here, and why customers are reacting to the dynamics in enterprise apps and agents and AI and data marketplaces — not just apps anymore. I think SAP wrapped up a very strong Q4. CEO Christian Klein laid out a 5-point growth plan for 2026 and beyond. Before we get to that, here are my choices for the key numbers from the SAP Q4 earnings results.
01:15 — First of all, most important, total cloud backlog was up 30% to about $88 billion — very, very strong momentum going into the future. This is similar to what other companies call their RPO, remaining performance obligation. This is contracted business, locked in, but not yet recognized as revenue. Cloud revenue was up 26% for the year to $24.2 billion, so across the board, doing great.
01:57 — Within that, the Cloud ERP Suite was up 32% to $20.8 billion, and the closer-in current cloud backlog up 25% to $24.2 billion. Based on those strong numbers, Christian Klein revealed a 5-point growth plan. He said these backlog deals go out up to four years, and often customers add more. This gives SAP’s on-prem customers confidence as they move to the cloud.
03:03 — Klein said when customers migrate to the cloud, SAP often gets a two- to three-times boost in revenue as customers add more applications. He also cited a booming mid-market ecosystem through partners.
03:53 — Finally, he said the most strategic parts of future growth will be Business AI and the Business Data Cloud. In Q4, 90% of SAP’s 50 largest deals included one or both.

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