Cloud Wars Live with Bob Evans

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I dive into Oracle's remarkable Q4 earnings report, where the company delivered results that exceeded expectations across the board.

Highlights

00:02 — We had a monster Q4 report from Oracle yesterday, absolutely crushed their numbers for Q4, led by an astonishing leap in their backlog or remaining performance obligation (RPO) of $638 billion, That's an increase of 363%. And no, those are not misprints.

00:29 — RPO represents business that's fully contracted, not yet recognized as revenue, so it's pipeline backlog, as opposed to revenue, which has already been posted for what has happened in the past. So I wanted to quickly pop out a couple highlights here that go along with that. Just remarkable RPO growth, cloud revenue overall was up 47% to 9.9 billion.

00:56 — Within that, cloud applications grew 10% to 4.1 billion, and the big star of the company, now their cloud infrastructure business was up 93% to $5.8 billion. One other number that Oracle put in its Q4 press release, that is pretty darn impressive, their multi-cloud AI database business, they said, was up 404% and they said that now makes this the fastest growing product in the company's history.

02:11 — Looking ahead a little bit, Oracle guided in Q1, they said their cloud business will grow between 57 and 63% so caught about 60% and that extends a long running streak of fast growing numbers there for Oracle's cloud revenue or cloud business.

02:33 — Oracle also said in its Q4 press release that it will be doing no more borrowing to fund its data center expansion throughout for calendar 2026, certainly possible for next year, but for this calendar year, no more borrowing. I think most people would yawn or overlook that fact. There have been a lot of folks on Wall Street, though as I've mentioned, that this has caused them fainting spells and pearl clutching, because they, nobody's done this before.

03:44 — Now, I don't know, I don't think there's a lot of companies that have run into that challenge before. It's a delightful challenge to have, but it is not something that you know a lot of companies can just, you know, reach into the petty cash box and say, you know, here's $100 billion $200 billion dollars to fund it.

Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I analyze how Sana is helping Workday transform from a system of record into a system of action.

Highlights

0:00 — Workday has announced two new agents: Sana for IT Service Management, or ITSM, and Sana Travel Agent. To recap, Workday acquired Sana at the end of 2025, and since then, the technology has evolved into Workday's employee AI layer, what the company describes as its "front door for work."

0:42 — Sana for ITSM automates workflows for tasks like employee onboarding, off-boarding, access changes, and standard IT requests, while the Sana Travel Agent helps employees plan work trips, book travel, and manage expenses. Both agents are built directly on Workday, meaning they have the same security and governance protocols by default, and tap into the bespoke contextual company data and policy information contained within the platform.

00:57 — Cloud Wars founder Bob Evans commented on the development in the official Workday press release: "Extending agents into adjacent workflows like onboarding, travel, and expenses, where Workday already has the people and finance data and policies, is not only practical but also a transformational way to help HR and finance leaders meet and exceed their objectives."

01:25 — Workday's acquisition of Sana was a pivotal moment in the company's recent history and accelerated its push in the enterprise AI era. The deal signaled a strategic evolution beyond Workday's traditional role as a system of record for HR and finance processes.

01:44 — At the same time, that deep system of record foundation is exactly what makes Sana's autonomous AI agents such a strong fit, because the agents can operate with rich context, permissions, policy, and workflow data already embedded within the platform.

 

 

Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I analyze how a trillion dollars in cloud backlog is driving innovation beyond technology and into corporate finance.

Highlights

00:03 — In the Cloud Wars, all sorts of crazy things are going on with the technology, what customers are doing with it, but also in how this whole remarkable time is being funded. I want to talk a little bit today about how Google Cloud and Oracle are choosing to fund this unprecedented market demand and why new possibilities require new ways of doing things.

01:25 — In Oracle's most recent quarter, it reported that its RPO, or Remaining Performance Obligation, similar to backlog, is over $550 billion. For Google Cloud, it had an amazing jump as well in its most recent quarter, ended March 31, $462 billion in backlog, almost double what it had been a year before that. So there's amazing demand, these two companies totaling a trillion dollars.

02:09 — Six months ago, Oracle reached out and said, “No, no, we're going to go to some outside funding, some borrowing, to do that.” But the market reacted with a panic. “Oh my God, nobody's ever done this.” And, you know, "What if they can't pay it back?” So there was a lot of skepticism about Oracle's plan six months ago.

02:58 — Now, a week ago, we see Alphabet step up and say, “Hey, we're going to do some equity financing. We're going to take $10 billion from Warren Buffett and some other places. We need this money. We think it's the best way to pursue funding our own data center expansions, our own CapEx needs, which will be somewhere between $185 and $190 billion.” Oracle's will probably be around $75 billion.

04:37 — Oracle and Google Cloud have risen to the top of the Cloud Wars Top 10 because they brought innovation at levels in technology and go-to-market, how they think about customers, deployment models, and so forth, that have really set the new standard for what's happening in the AI cloud business now. Seeking outside funding to meet this demand shows another way to do it.

Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In this special report, John Siefert, CEO, Dynamic Communities and Cloud Wars, speaks with Robbie Morrison about Velocio's acquisition of Domain Six and what the move means for customers, partners, and the broader Microsoft ecosystem. Morrison explains how the acquisition expands Velocio's enterprise capabilities, vertical-industry expertise, and delivery capacity while strengthening its ability to help organizations modernize around cloud, data, and AI.

Velocio Expands Expertise

The Big Themes:

Domain Six Expands Velocio's Reach: Velocio's acquisition of Domain Six represents more than a simple expansion of headcount. Robbie Morrison describes the acquisition as a strategic move that adds highly skilled consulting talent, enterprise delivery capabilities, and valuable intellectual property in specialized vertical markets. Domain Six brings expertise in areas such as rental businesses and professional services, allowing Velocio to broaden its market reach while deepening its industry-specific knowledge. Consulting is fundamentally a people-centric business, making the addition of experienced professionals especially valuable.

Customers Gain Access to Broader Expertise: One of the biggest benefits of the acquisition is the expanded access customers receive to specialized talent and services. Morrison notes that existing Velocio customers will gain access to Domain Six's industry expertise, while Domain Six customers will benefit from Velocio's larger global team and deeper Microsoft platform knowledge. The combined organization can now offer expertise spanning Azure, Dynamics, Microsoft 365, Fabric, data platforms, and business applications.

Governance Has Become a Competitive Advantage: Data governance is no longer just a security requirement. Morrison explains that governance, access controls, documentation, and process discipline have become business enablers. Proper governance ensures that the right employees can access the right information at the right time, allowing organizations to move faster and make better decisions. As AI systems increasingly depend on organizational data, governance frameworks become essential for both compliance and performance.

The Big Quote: “Everything that we do is people-centric. We're a consulting business at heart, and a consulting business is built on the knowledge and the abilities of the people you bring in, so bringing in that great team at Domain Six was key."

More from Velocio and Robbie Morrison:

Connect with Robbie on LinkedIn, read the press release about the Domain 6 acquisition,  or check out the Velocio website.

Visit Cloud Wars for more.

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I look at how ServiceNow's AI strategy, open platform, and workflow data fabric are driving its next phase of growth.

Highlights

00:02 — ServiceNow is off to a hot start, not only with its quarterly results, but also in how CEO Bill McDermott is framing where the company is right now and, in terms of that, how that new position, which he says is, "We're 100% AI native," is going to allow them to pursue five what he called hyper-growth markets for quite some time.

01:06 — Who is AI native, and who is just sort of glossing over, applying some AI lipstick to their traditional solutions and technologies? The term that ServiceNow uses to refer to that latter category is AI sidecars, where they say that's just a little AI glomming onto traditional technology, and that's becoming less appealing to customers.

02:34 — Among the highlights he pointed out to support the strength of the company, he said, "We've got a $28 billion RPO, remaining performance obligation, that grew 23.5% in Q1." In addition to that, he said, "We've got the most open enterprise platform."

03:14 — First, its core ITSM business. He said with the complexity that's going on in enterprises and the more reliance on data that's going to be taking place here in the AI era, we're going to see a 50x —not 50%, 50x — boom in the number of tickets that are being sent through for IT support.

04:12 — He talked about what's going on there with Moveworks and the changes that ServiceNow has made to that, and how that's going to simplify things and help bring down the anxiety some people have about AI. And finally, he said, "Our workflow data fabric," which helps pull all the data together, is so essential for what's going on now with AI.

Visit Cloud Wars for more.