Transcription Provided By Otter.ai – There will be typos and grammatical errors.
Announcer 00:00
Welcome to the Ultimate Guide to partnering in this podcast Vince Menzione. a proven industry sales and partner executive brings together technology leaders to discuss transformational trends and to deconstruct successful strategies to thrive and survive in the rapid age of cloud transformation. And now, your host, Vince Menzione.
Vince Menzione 00:23
Welcome to or Welcome back to The Ultimate Guide to partnering where technology leaders come to optimize results through successful partnering. I’m Vince Menzione, your host, and my mission is to help leaders like you unlock the leadership principles and learnings of the best in the business to get partnerships right, optimize for success and deliver your greatest results. As a technology leader. If you’ve ever wondered how the top cloud technology companies rank and compare during this age of accelerated transformation, then you won’t want to miss this episode. My guest for this episode of the podcast is Bob Evans, a leader on a mission to provide customer centric analysis about business technology, the digital economy, and where the world is headed. Bob is the creator of cloud wars, and through his publications, podcast and reports focuses on updating us and how these top technology organizations operate, accelerate, innovate and enable business to do things they never could do before. In this episode, you’ll learn about cloud wars, and Bob’s journey to get here, how he ranks the top players and where he sees the greatest growth and challenges and lessons that have shaped his journey. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I enjoyed getting to know Bob Evans. Bob, welcome to the podcast. Hey, Vince, great to be with you. I am really excited to have you as a guest here on Ultimate Guide to partnering. As you might know, we focus on the technology sector from a partnering lens. And I love the analysis and work you put out into the universe on this ecosystem of cloud providers, and transformation. So, so excited for our discussion today.
Bob Evans 02:09
Then Thank you. Pleasure to be here. And thanks for helping build such a fascinating industry. It keeps it really interesting to follow and comment on Well,
Vince Menzione 02:18
we’re both having a lot of fun, I gather, you know, you call it cloud wars. So for our listeners who might not know you and your work, can you tell our listeners a little bit about you, your background, and cloud wars? Sure, sure. Vince,
Bob Evans 02:31
I had covered the enterprise technology space for quite a long time I was in the media business. And so I’m not a technologist. But I always wanted to look at it from the business strategy, Business Innovation point of view. And then about 10 years or so, events, I decided to want to get into the technology industry instead of just looking at it. So I worked for a year at SAP to help them talk more about what their customers were doing instead of just about their code. And then I was recruited over at Oracle and I worked there for almost five years, I was their first chief communication officer. So I’ve seen the tech business from sort of the media perspective and also inside the industry. And then after about five years at Oracle, I thought this has been a blast. But I want to do my own thing, because I think there’s a gap in how the medium properties were looking at this Vince rights somewhere way too technical, I think for business people, others didn’t really dig into it or know enough about it to offer some compelling perspectives on it. So I started two businesses. One, I do some consulting for companies to help them position themselves. And then with cloud was, that’s a full fledged media company, right? We got articles, daily articles, podcasts, videos, newsletters, and so forth. So it’s really been a blast to try to follow this wild, highly disruptive and innovative business.
Vince Menzione 03:51
I love the way you referred to it as while disruptive and innovative business. And you’ve been this independent set of eyes and ears. And to your point, nobody was really covering it from that lens from that set of optics, I would say, you know, you had the deep technologists covering the technology and maybe particular ecosystems, you had people in the channel covering the channel ecosystems, but nobody kind of holistically looking at it as a cloud ecosystem. So being this independent set of eyes and ears for cloud and technology for many, we’re coming out of a time, hopefully coming out of a time like no other. What are you seeing now that you didn’t expect to see,
Bob Evans 04:29
Vince? Yeah, I think you’re right there about the unprecedented times we’re in so I certainly didn’t expect that there would be this sort of 16 month hyper acceleration event that took place across the globe. But I did believe quite fervently, Vince that there was just got to be a better way to do things. Right. So I thought that the cloud would become without question the predominant way that businesses like to use technology and that that that would be something that was going to set in it just happens so much Faster, as we’ve all learned over the past year and a half about this. So the speed at which not only the big tech companies accelerated their cloud development plans, but then on the customer side, right? I think businesses in every industry in every part of the world realize now, if I got to move as fast as the world around me and be nimble and agile and adapt and move at the speed of my customers, I have to find a different way to do this. And I think the cloud has fit that bill very nicely.
Vince Menzione 05:27
You know, I, I am in so much agreement with you here. You know, we’ve been talking about this, I was at Microsoft talking about the cloud over 10 years ago. And we saw, we didn’t see the acceleration the first several years. And it started the last few I call it a real, more rapid acceleration. But it seems like we crossed the chasm in a very big way over these last 16 months or so. And so, you know, you talk about this race between the hyper scalars. And so it’s top of mind for me, what are you seeing? And how are things shaping up from your perspective?
Bob Evans 05:58
Sure, Vince, that’s a great question. You know, I think over the last few years, I have seen every one of these big tech companies accelerate and intensify their involvement in their investment in their partner ecosystems, I think they realize, on the one hand, right, if the cloud lives up to its promise, then this world class technology is going to be available to companies of every size, you don’t just have to be a fortune 500 company to be able to afford this world class technology. So they’re going to reach more people. And those people are going to have higher levels of expectations, they’re going to want to move faster, they got to be more interested in specific and so on like that. And that’s just a scaling issue that the tech companies themselves couldn’t handle. So the partner ecosystems, I think, have stepped in, you know, beautifully here. And they are doing, you know, work on a number of levels, right, Vince, they become a force multiplier, reaching more customers with more specialized perspectives and more unique solutions. And they also, I think, bring a sense of, right, you know, that the cloud technology is sort of removed from customers, which I think a lot of customers are happy about, but they don’t want to feel like they’re out somewhere on an island. Right? So the partners provide that close up expertise, the innovation that you know, wherever it’s necessary, the hand holding, but more importantly, that ability to help those customers continue to adapt, continue to innovate, continue to reimagine what could happen. So it’s been fantastic, I think for not just Microsoft, but all of those big vendors.
Vince Menzione 07:34
Yeah. And in fact, you just had a recent post on LinkedIn. It was posted, it was an article about Deutsche Bank, and the work and the innovative work they’ve been doing around Google’s cloud. Can you comment on that for our listeners?
Bob Evans 07:46
Absolutely. Yeah. You know, Deutsche Bank has been around for over 150 years, Vince, and they, like so many big financial institutions, they became really good at what they had done for a long time. And they believed in this sort of business strategy that I think now is outmoded, right? Which is that that thing of moats, if I just sort of build these moats around me, you know, nobody’s going to be able to attack. And that’s just kind of silly these days. Because one of the great benefits of the cloud is it puts the power, again, this world class technology that used to be available only to the biggest and wealthiest companies in the world. Now it’s available to entrepreneurs, small businesses, disruptive startups, and so forth. And then we as consumers, Vince, we don’t want to do things the same way. It’s funny, I laugh with my kids, when I talk about this old fashioned notion of bankers hours. And when I use that term, they sort of look at me like, what is this? So I’d explained, well, banks are open Monday to Friday, nine to three. And you know, it’s nice work if you can get it, but Gosh, the, the new the, from the fintechs, to the demand from us as consumers, I, you know, we want a better experience, one A better approach. So Deutsche Bank had to find a way to take all the great things that had done this past, but move those into a very different future. So in close concert with Google Cloud, they have completely rebuilt it, they don’t want to just be a bank that uses some cloud, they want to be a cloud based bank, that is able to adapt to things. They’ve changing the nature of their relationships with not only their customers and clients, but fintechs and other partners from being closed shops to being open. And I’m sure there’s some huge roles and opportunities in there for the partner folks as well. You know, it’s
Vince Menzione 09:31
a great example, because I’ve found that the brick and mortars banks have struggled with this transformation. And that’s where you’re starting to see the evolution of these online only banks. And it seems like Deutsche Bank is really sparking it. They’re really driving driving the transformation themselves.
Bob Evans 09:49
It’s interesting, Vince, right. That’s that take a look at that. You know what you just said because it’s 100% true. And sometimes I think we’re all a little too quick to slap labels on people or organizations, right? Because they think Deutsche Bank 150 years, versus these online only banks, or they’ll never make it. So they turned to a couple people who came out of what in the tech industry is called, like the legacy companies, right, who’s the CEO? At Google Cloud. It’s Thomas kurian, he spent 27 years at Oracle, which is supposedly a legacy company, who is the best hire that Thomas kurian made a couple months after he joined Rob enslin, head of sales at SAP for 27 years. So these 227 year veterans of these legacy companies came into Google Cloud, which is sort of seen as the cloud native champion, and then over at Deutsche Bank, somebody hired a couple years ago, their chief, I think its innovation data and Technology Officer burned luchar, he spent almost a decade at SAP. So out of these big and supposedly legacy companies has come these fantastic leaders who are willing to look at the future and what needs to happen there and then connect the past to this emerging future, thence in ways that are really exciting. And so I just think it’s a fantastic example of how a big existing business regardless of what industry it is, you got that power of incumbency. And if you can just harness all that those relationships, the capability, the brand reputation, the industry knowledge that they have, into a future state, built around the cloud, there’s there’s tremendous opportunities, then for those companies.
Vince Menzione 11:30
It’s a great example of true transformation, right? As opposed to innovation. I love that I love that example. Taking coming from the legacy having the experience on both sides, and then applying
Bob Evans 11:39
Vince one of the things that burn bluecurve said about the the advantages that have come out of their working relationship with Google Cloud, he said it very, very specifically, he said, it is a culture change here, right and the culture not only in how people work and how the organization has been flattened, to match up with the new realities, but he said, we have seen now we also wanted to make this project become more of a magnet for global world class talent. And he said, we are seeing that happen right away. And again, he said, this is a cultural idea, we want to go from being perceived as sort of an old fuddy duddy to being this is a hot new place for great young talent to flock to,
Vince Menzione 12:21
you know, I cover mindset quite a bit in this podcast. It’s one of the operating principles for me of what makes successful partnerships. And it sounds like this, is it here? They’ve actually they’ve made a shift in their mindset as an organization, would you say?
Bob Evans 12:34
Absolutely. Vince would probably be right, you know, from all the work you’ve done in your expertise, and all the companies you’ve worked with, right? You can buy all the fancy technology in the world, you can buy five times as much as your top competitor. But if you don’t have the culture, right, if you don’t have the org structure, right, if you don’t have the right sort of leadership, all the technology in the world isn’t going to help you. It’ll just make your crash a little more spectacular. And and, you know, infamous, I
Vince Menzione 13:04
think so much a bit applies to both organizational as well as partnership strategies. I love this. I love this. So let’s talk about the top 10 list, like new publish a list, which I think is such so bold, and so out there in such a great way. And you have it actually right on your website on your on your main page. Can you take us through? Like what is that all about? And how do you rank these organizations?
Bob Evans 13:28
Sure, events? You know, it’s been a lot of fun. And I’ve I wish I had been smart enough to remember to keep some of the questions I’d get from people or comments, people when I started this lab four years ago. You know, some people would say you can’t compare an infrastructure company with an applications company. You can’t you should make 10 different top 10 lists. And you break up. And you might I guess, Vince, you know, what I thought about is, there’s tons of these really incredibly specific things from like inside the Silicon Valley bubble inside the tech industry bubble, you can go into as much depth on four letter acronyms as you want. I tried to take a step back from that Vince and say, well, well, how do the customers see this? Right? If the customer chooses between the big applications company and like this application is going to help me do things I could never do before then I think they say all right now what’s the best infrastructure to pair that up with. And then Meantime, Vince, each of those 10 companies has said, I call it sort of the law of the cloud, which is expanded to as many layers of the cloud as rapidly as you can and as aggressively as you can. So companies that a few years ago, were just applications company. Now they have applications and platform. And companies that were just infrastructure now have infrastructure and platforms. They’re meeting in the middle. And then there’s a few like Oracle and Microsoft and Google Cloud that actually played all three levels. So from a customer perspective, When is that more valuable? When is that more helpful? When is that more of the right choice to play with? So I do think there was very much a case for ranking these companies in terms of customer relevance, customer value, and the willingness for customers to say these are going to be these are the horses I want to bet on for this fairly risky race into the future. I tell people, I do have a number of different factors that are evaluated there, I would be lying to events, if I said, I had this codified in some, you know, whiz bang algorithm, that, you know, I push a button and it cranks out, you know, the heavy data analytics, I’m relying on a lot of decades of my own experience, lots of people that I talked to about it. And I think that’s also just looking at things like, you know, you and I talked a few minutes ago about leadership and culture, right? Well, Google Cloud has for a decade been, you know, a preeminent leader in technology. But until Thomas curien, join two and a half years ago, the company was really not able to forge a good commercial relationship with customers that didn’t have enough sales, people didn’t have a good, go to market presence and didn’t have a good partner ecosystem. They had great technology. But I think they felt that, hey, we’re Google, everybody should just come to us, they should just come to us and buy our stuff. And Thomas also said that there was a bit of a cultural mindset within Google Cloud, where they laugh at or disrespect customers is saying, why would anybody go out? And over 50 years by, you know, one of everything and have this mismatched infrastructure in this complex, heterogeneous, massive stuff? That has to be why didn’t they do it, like we did at Google? And Thomas said that he had to tell everybody, look, there’s not a single it executive on Earth, who ever set out to create that complexity, but it was the nature of the unfolding of the enterprise tech business, right? Yeah, old stuff was used to be new, then it got old quickly by some of the new stuff put in it. And then a new thing came along, and somebody else in one of these, one of those and all of a sudden, they had this Franken structure that they had to try to pull together. And Thomas said, Vince, and this is I think, was the key. That’s why Google Cloud is gone in a very short time from number nine on the top 10 to number three, he said, it’s not our job to judge our customers, it’s our job to help understand where they are, meet them where they are, and then become their guides into the future. So again, it’s not just the technology, leadership, vision, culture, partners, and a sense that customers are valued are valued in ways that I think you know, more so than ever before. It’s not a transaction. You hear these big companies now talk about the partnerships they have.
Vince Menzione 17:49
I love what you had to say here. First of all, the Frank Franken structure, I think it was a Frankenstein approach where you cobbled together all these different technologies, because you had to, and everybody’s was different, because you all came at it from different time, and you had a different version of SAP. And you ran this backup, and you had this, everybody had a different set of vendors, which made the complexity even higher and greater. And then Google coming at it. We’ve had Eric Rosencrantz here just recently talking about their meteoric rise, I mean, just amazing to see a lot of friends there. By the way, a lot of former Microsoft colleagues, they really Thomas is really investing. I also know you have a podcast, and I was I wanted you to share that with our listeners, and you do a pretty regular rhythm around your podcast, and you’ve had Thomas on In fact,
Bob Evans 18:37
yeah, vintage called Cloud wars live. And we’ve done I think now about 325 episodes. And it’s just a nice way to sort of let those leaders speak in their own words. Yeah, we’ve had all the top CEOs on and it’s been so interesting vents, right, you ask open ended questions. One of the first things they choose to talk about is very revealing about each of these companies and their cultures and what it is that the first things that come out of these leaders mouth.
Vince Menzione 19:08
Yeah, I love what you do to you. Also, you also do like a video a minute, I guess. Is it a daily video minute minute on? Like a daily update on what’s happening?
Bob Evans 19:17
Yeah, we do. Thanks, Vince mesh that late February, we started some it’s called Cloud wars minute and our promises, you know, you give us three minutes, and we’ll give you some unique insights into the greatest growth market the world’s ever known. Vince, if I could tell you funny, I think it’s funny story. I was thinking about this, right sort of as an extension of a build out of the podcast and I thought, okay, we use zoom in, I’ll set something up, I’ll get the background lighting. I’ll send this over to the producer who edited blah, blah, blah, you know, this that, you know, come around. I was talking to my daughter. She’s an entrepreneur has her own digital marketing agency. And there was a long pause after I told her my idea and I knew that what isn’t a good thing by Ellison. Yeah, I think you make this a little too complicated. Then I said, Okay, well, what would you suggest? And she said, I tripod, put your phone on it and record the videos, send it to me by text. I’ll post it on LinkedIn and Twitter.
20:16
I love it.
Bob Evans 20:19
That’s, that’s what we’ve done, Vince. So we’re averaging now over 4000 views per episode. And it allows me I think, a chance we caught our daily news and commentary show. So take a piece of news, don’t just reiterate the headline, what’s behind that? What does that mean? What does it point to? How does this play into larger trends? And I think again, right, we’ve, we’ve all been through over the last 16 months, not that anybody’s going to get any benefit about looking at my ugly face. But there’s something just a little more personal about a little quick video blurbs, there was somebody, it’s almost like you get to know the person perhaps there’s a little bit of trust that’s built up, as well as an information sharing. So
Vince Menzione 21:03
that’s that’s the premise. Well, we’re going to provide links to both this and the podcast in our show notes. I’m going to I’m going to continue I just started following along with myself, I think it’s just terrific content. So let’s talk let’s talk more about what’s been happening in the industry like what do you see, like in this top 10 ranking? It’s like a horse race. Right? So what’s been like, who’s who’s starting to take lead? You talked about Google moving from nine to three? What are you starting to see in the rankings? Like, are some players undervalued or overvalued?
Bob Evans 21:32
What do you see? Sure, sure. And events? You know, I think when I started the rankings A few years ago, I had Amazon is number one. And I think, you know, Amazon, AWS, they continue to do a terrific job. I have no, no quarrel, no complain about anything that they do. It’s just Microsoft has performed. You know, I think you could probably make a case, right? If you were a technical financial analyst, you could probably make a case that Microsoft’s performance over the last five or six years now, I don’t know that any company in any industry ever has delivered the sorts of financial performance that Microsoft has. So you had on the one hand, Vince, right, these prevailing themes of like, oh, Amazon is the king of the cloud. And then Microsoft quietly sort of step by step came up Microsoft’s cloud revenue is somewhere between 25 and 30%, larger than that of AWS. But AWS has this legacy idea that it’s the king of the cloud. And I think a lot of people in the media and a fair number of analysts also equate infrastructure to cloud. On these research companies that show the cloud leaders, it’s Amazon whatton, front, good for them. They are the category King, no question. But they’re not taking into account all the things that go on with platform and database and data management, data, clouds and applications and so forth, which is really where the differentiation is going to happen for businesses up up the stack in the software side. So I think Microsoft has been phenomenal. Google Cloud has soared up there. Amazon continues do a great job. Salesforce is is extraordinary. I think, Vince, an interesting thing about Salesforce is how Marc Benioff says no, no, we said we focus on one thing CRM, but it’s pretty funny how the definition of CRM expands every year to fit the need for, you know, for Salesforce to achieve Marc Benioff goal of doubling from 25 billion in revenue to 50 billion in revenue in a short period of time. And, Vince, one slightly wonky detail I’d offer about this is Salesforce is so well known for its big applications, cloud, right sales, service, marketing, commerce, but the biggest part of Salesforce business is not any one of those SAS clouds, its platform and other so it’s now mule, soft, and Tableau, what they’re doing with Einstein. And it’s, it’s just been extraordinary what they’ve done. So I think, to look at them and say, oh, they’re an applications coming. It’s true, but it’s not completely true. And I think that is the overriding store events for a lot of the companies in the top 10. They’re evolving really fast. Anybody who thinks that they they’re the same as they were a year ago, just a little bit bigger, that’s not true. They’re all morphing as rapidly as they can to align more with the needs of their customers. Whereas in the early days, they came out and each one of these big tech companies said, Well, I got a couple of cloud things over here and a couple over there. I’ll weave a story that says, hey, you should buy my stuff because, well, this is the stuff I have. So you should buy it and not evolved been forced to say, I’ve got a set of products and services that are aligned to your needs. It’s very different, very healthy, I think for the industry.
Vince Menzione 24:54
I love your point of view on this. By the way, you know you mentioned about AWS is preeminence I guess early on right And it was it was infrastructure as a service. And they would break apart the Microsoft numbers and say, well, that a lot of that is m 365, or this or that ad, whatever. And then, you know, when you talk about Microsoft, I’ve spent a lot of time here. In fact, I’ve had Dr. Michael Gervais, who was the high performance coach who worked with Satya his leadership team. He’s featured in hit refresh Satya his book. And you know, the whole conversation where this comes back to mindset. Again, Satya set the tone I worked in both the bomber days and the Satya days. And the, the tone, he changed the tone, change the culture in the organization, he broke down the silos, he had everybody thinking about mindset, and growth mindset. And then also getting, you know, getting the competition out the the internal competition out of the organization, and then you say very quietly going about this and the growth, which is amazing.
Bob Evans 25:51
Yeah, then says that’s a terrific point that you’ve made there. And I think what’s interesting, you watch such an Adela and he seems like a man, you know, he’s the guy sort of a sweetheart, right. And Jesus said, I’d like him to be my kids soccer coach. And so, you know, all of that could be true, but you don’t change, you know, a company that had been building the image and likeness of Bill Gates and Steve bomb, you don’t change that unless you are also a very tough, determined hard nosed leader, but you don’t have to always lead with that rough edge. So I think he’s set a very hard course, he’s been uncompromising in his expectations for what the company needed to do. But he’s done so in a way that really dug into the culture there. And as you said, I think they were killing themselves with that internal competition. And it also I think, more and more customers would look at this, and a lot of customers, I bet that hate Microsoft, if you could spend half as much time helping me, as you do fighting each other internally, we’d be a lot better off. But if you’re so focused on, you know, killing each other inside, fine, but I’m going to take my business elsewhere. It was only when Nadella led this sort of sweeping as you described it reorganization, get rid of the silos, build the structure of the company, in the image of what customers are trying to do. And, Vince, if I could real quick here, there’s a recent example of that. Alyssa Taylor, corporate vice president spoke at an investor’s conference about seven or eight weeks ago, and the beginning, you know, the host said, Hey, tell us a little bit about what you’re doing said, I’ll be happy to it. By the way, it just changed pretty dramatically a couple days ago. So Alyssa had been in charge of dynamics 365, and then also some of the industry’s thing, and then it was power platform. And then earlier that week, they also put under Alyssa, the data business, the AI business, and the augmented reality business. So I think that was done, you know, it Microsoft wasn’t trying to save a few nickels on an org structure. They’re trying to say this is how customers are going to be looking at what we offer, you know, we’re going to align what we have to match what customers want and need. And again, Vince, I think you’re gonna see more of these big tech companies do that. It’s hard, and it’s painful, but they have to do it or they’re going to be left behind.
Vince Menzione 28:16
Yeah. And Alyssa has been a guest here on the podcast, we had our love loved having her as a guest. And to your point, they’re, they’re recognizing the customers and buying the silos, they were buying a holistic approach, like the industry, cloud also needs services. It also needs partners, it needs all these other components. And they’re bringing it all together this way.
Bob Evans 28:37
Yeah. Vince, you know, is, I think two or three earnings calls ago, but there was one financial analyst smart guy, but he kept wanting to dig into this thing about Yeah, but when are you going to see the specific growth in you know, your enterprise applications, you know, shouldn’t just be growing faster. And Nadella and Amy hood both answered a couple times. And finally such now I said, Look, you’re looking at this in too narrow a perspective. Right said, You’re asking about business applications, but customers think about business processes. And business processes involve Yes, applications, but they also involve Azure. And they involve teams, and they involve power platform, and so on like that. And he said, we look at it from the point of view of the customer, not our own individual product lines. And so I think there again, Microsoft and Nadella are out in front of where I hope the whole industry moves rapidly and unconditionally.
Vince Menzione 29:42
Absolutely brilliant response, by the way, on his part, yes, we can spend the whole day here I have some other things we could talk about, too, about the way they’ve approached the street. But this is the ultimate guide to partnering. And, you know, it looks like we’re both having a blast here covering our aspects of what’s going on in the tech sector. I was curious what your perspective was on partnering. And how would you rate each of the cloud war? giants? I guess the top 10 on how they partner.
Bob Evans 30:10
Okay, then so one is a I don’t seems like a lifetime ago, I have some affiliation with the whole partner side of things. I was the founding editor of crn. I don’t know. 100 years ago, I think it was, Oh, yeah,
Vince Menzione 30:27
I remember those days. You know, Vince,
Bob Evans 30:29
it’s so funny, right? You know, Dad heard the same things, but anywhere from like, 567 years ago, four years ago, three years ago, we were hearing, oh, the cloud is going to kill the channel, the cloud will kill partners, because right, nobody will need it anymore. And it’s like everything in life, right? If you, if you expect that, yeah, the world around you is going to change but not you, you’re going to stay exactly the same, then I think that’s going to be an unhappy ending. So the partner business, it seems, is booming, right, there’s more opportunities than ever before, but they are different. They’re clearly different from what they used to be. And I think now there’s a chance. It’s, you know, so much, Carl farbod, the chief partner officer from SAP recently said, You know, I pee is the new implementation, and that they’re giving these partners you know, huge opportunities to go out and build new solutions, build new capabilities make themselves even more valuable to the end customers here, which I think is great, then Vince, another thing in there that I thought, Wow, it is, right. So now you get some big corporate customers who not only consume those products from Microsoft, but they build their own. And then with the help of Microsoft, for example, and now SAP is doing it. They can commercialize those products. So a big corporation can become a customer, then they build their own stuff, they become a partner. And then they’re able to sell that create new revenue lines. So what was a partner before is a little different today, and I’m sure two or three years from now, you know, you’re going to be chronicling all the great new stuff that’s happening here. But that is I think the one big thing that the best of the top 10 companies are doing is recognizing this isn’t just another funnel or another pipeline out to the market. This is a source of innovation, IP, and growth for both the customer and the partner here. So I think Microsoft’s done a world class job with this. I don’t know really the case at AWS and how well they are or not doing Google Cloud Thomas has embraced partner and more important role significant role relevant role for partners since the day he arrived two and a half years ago, Salesforce seems to be expanding that aggressively. SAP clearly is turned it upside down into call far back over the last couple of years even Oracle which you know, likes to play the rugged individualists they’re number six on the list. Oracle’s completely now changed its tune and is embracing partners more aggressively. And I think up and down the line everybody, you know, that’s just become the it’s not just something that companies feel they have to do. They’re eager to do it, they want to do it because they see how what a force for innovation, growth, customer intimacy, customer experiences, the partners can be provided those partners are wanting to come along with this, the new adventure, right? That it’s, it’s about all those opportunities to create new value and new IP for customers.
Vince Menzione 33:33
Yeah, you said some really important things here. And I just want to repeat a couple things, right. So the customer is becoming a partner, the customers creating repeatable IP started to see this in healthcare and some other verticals, but it’s really transcended. Now, the transformation, I believe that partnering is going to be the key accelerant to continuing this transformation, it’s already been a key accelerant to your point. Seems like everybody’s embracing partner now, even the ones that were maybe less partner centric. And, you know, we’re going to continue to see this rapid, you know, state of transformation, and it’s going to continue, technology will continue to drive the transformation of our society in our world.
Bob Evans 34:11
Yeah, I think there’s no question I know that, you know, in some ways that the challenges that some partners might face along this way is one of, as you’ve described, you know, everything’s gonna keep evolving. Here we are in a state right now, that isn’t the end state, it’s a transitional point from, you know, go back 18 months, right before the pandemic hit, things are moving pretty fast. And we’re pretty crazy, pretty disruptive, then, you know, two months later, the great acceleration that nobody in the world could have predicted the changes that have happened, and that that exists right now here today. So you know, I don’t know anyone who’s smart enough to say, Oh, I know what the next couple of years will bring. But we do know that as we as individuals get more of a taste of what can happen In a great relationship with a company you buy stuff from, then you just want more of that. Right? You know, why doesn’t everybody make it easier? I know that airlines are trying like, like mad to revise what they do and how they do it. I think there’s, you know, some airlines are talking about, we got to become more like a retail business. Instead of it being get in line, we’re gonna pass out, you know, the rules and regulations, you will comply with them, you will pay whatever we choose to charge you. And you’ll take it and you’ll like it, you know, those days are gone. You talked about before with Deutsche Bank’s and the other big brick and mortar banks, how fast Dave change health care. Right was such a con now the biggest and most important of all the vertical industries is healthcare. And he said, you know, we’ll never go back, you know, it’ll be telemedicine led AI LED, then if necessary, you have the face to face visit. And, you know, Vince,
Vince Menzione 35:57
will there be hospitals in 10 years as we know them now? It’s so many good points here, Bob, really amazing what we’re starting to see. And I think about telemedicine is a great example, because nobody was using telemedicine 18 months ago, right? Nobody was you wouldn’t, you know, you wouldn’t think to go on your computer and dial up your doctor, right. But now, it’s prevalent.
Bob Evans 36:18
Well, Vince one, exactly to your point there. And if I can say one thing that too is, I think points to some of these incredible opportunities for partners here is, if you go, I think it was the year 1956 was the first time in an academic conference, that somebody mentioned the term artificial intelligence and ai 65 years ago, but it really remained obscure to most people and attainable, you know, for most companies to tap into, you know, we knew it was there. But it was inaccessible to most of us. Now, the cloud in the last month full of years has become the perfect delivery vehicle for this great innovation. So AI non touches, probably a couple billion people around the world every day. Health care, as you described, a telemedicine would be the way to go. Well, we’ve talked about it for decades. But it was really the cloud that has enabled telemedicine to become a reality. And that’s one of the things that I think is so fascinating about the cloud. And this opportunity for partners is stuff that has been remote and accessible, just unfathomable. It’s unrealistic. The numbers don’t match. In the past, the what we’re seeing is that the cloud is shattering a lot of those barriers and is making possible what in the past was impossible. And I think, again, for your huge number of listeners across your partner ecosystems and the companies that work with them. We’re just seeing bit Vince the very beginning of what’s possible here, right? For all the growth, all the wild stuff that’s happened, this is just the beginning, such a fun conversation and topic area.
Vince Menzione 37:56
Bob, I am going to invite you back, by the way, in six months, because I think we’re gonna I want to, I want to monitor together with you where we’re going with this. I think we have such a great intersection between our two audiences. And I did want to shift here for a moment, because you might know that from listening to other episodes, and I’m fascinated with people’s career journey, you talked a little bit about your background. But was there a pivot point that got you to the spot? Like was there something that happened? And you said, You know what, I think I want to go do this?
Bob Evans 38:26
Yeah, Vince there was I had been at Oracle for more than four years, I was really enjoying it, there were a couple things that were starting to arise there that I I wasn’t enjoying it as much because I think I’m more of a builder than a manager or maintainer. And a couple of days I had in the company decided, no, we’re not going to try that. So I said, Okay, fine, cool. And then you have to realize for yourself, right? It’s not any employers job to make me happy. It’s my job to make me happy. So I said, I have a desire to do this. Where I currently am that it’s not of interest to them. That’s perfectly okay. I’m going to go do you know, some new things on my own. And that’s when I decided I was going to leave, start a couple things on my own. So I was 16 years old when I became an entrepreneur. And I have had over the last four and a half, five years, more fun than I’ve ever had before. And it’s I’ve been incredibly lucky throughout my career to have had a lot of fun and a lot of places. But it’s nothing like this and what I’ve done. So I’ve been incredibly fortunate in that way. And, you know, I just am so blessed that this industry is an endlessly fascinating and continues, I think, to provide a sense of excitement and wonder and awe. So I just feel incredibly blessed. I’ll keep on doing what you’re doing was Was there one piece of advice on this journey? Like Was there some thing that someone said or, like, was there something that helped along along the ways, I guess is what I would say. I think cumulatively events and you know what, I I sort of extracted from different people and what they’d send in different ways and also that I try to pass along to other people as you know certain things in your head, but about your career and what you want to do. And the advices got to be ruled, I think by your heart, you know, whatever makes your heart thump a little bit faster, a lot faster. That’s what you should try to do.
Vince Menzione 40:15
I love that. I love that it looks like you are like we both are, which is amazing. I love it. I love it. Yeah, we’re gonna have to get together in Brooklyn. You know, you’re in Brooklyn, my daughter is in Brooklyn. So we’re gonna have to have a Brooklyn, maybe we’ll do a live broadcast at some point as you’re right under the Williamsburg Bridge. I love it. I love it. So I love to have a little fun with you, you are having a dinner party. And you know, we’re kind of at a period now where we can unmask and we’re beyond COVID. And you can invite any three guests to this dinner party from the present or the past to attend. How would you invite to the dinner party? And why?
Bob Evans 40:57
Oh, Vince, that’s a good one. You know, I’m tempted to cheat here and say I can’t limit it to three, but you asked for three. So I would say thence and I think it’d be a pretty lively discussion. So United States Marine Corps officer named chesty puller, I believe he was the most highly decorated service member in a branch, the US military. And I know at one point at a ferocious battle in World War Two young private came running up to him and said, Sir, sir, he said, we’re completely surrounded. And polar padded, that kid on the shoulder, he said, Great, he said, Now we know exactly where the enemy is what, you know, it was his perspective on things. So Vince, I think he brought a sense of fearlessness to what he did, right? And which I think is so important. That’s going to be a common theme with my other two, I would invite Martin Luther King to join us because certainly you talk about fearless guy, visionary. And you know, he was so young, and to have achieved what he did take the risks that he did take the stands that he did. And you hear his words today, and they were just so prophetic from someone so young, at, you know, at some difficult times. So I think his his vision and his courage and his moral clarity, were things that were important than I think they’re equally important now. I’d love to be able to sit down and hear some of that from him. And the third person I’d invite Vin is my mother. And I think that one of the things that I always sort of feel about her and she had seven crazy kids including six knuckleheaded boys, and my mother’s belief was you should live your life joyfully and fearlessly. If you do that. Everything’s going to turn out fine. joyfully and fearlessly. I
Vince Menzione 42:41
love that for mom. Yeah, you know, I love I love your answers at the time. I don’t know chesty puller. Is that his last name? That’s a new one for me, Martin Luther King, I have the same sense of feeling about Martin Luther King, and he was in his 30s. Your, to your point, he was like, in his early mid 30s, when this was all happening. And your mom, I think that’s absolutely amazing.
Bob Evans 43:02
And if you look at a chesty puller, that will probably work as his nickname, but I believe his formal name is Louis Burwell polar.
Vince Menzione 43:11
We are gonna we’re gonna put a link to this in the show notes, because I got to research this one. Bob, I got to thank you so much for joining us today. This has been a blast for me personally, and to have you as a guest, I’m so honored that you could join us. I love the work you’re doing, which is why I reached out, I said, I’ve got to have you on this podcast. And I want to have you back too. So
Bob Evans 43:30
thanks again for joining Ultimate Guide to partnering. Vince, it’s been my pleasure. You’re wonderful guy to chat with fantastic questions. And I’m really honored to be here and have a chance to share some ideas with your audience. I hope I didn’t blab too much.
Vince Menzione 43:43
You did not hope I can’t wait to share it with the world. So thanks again, Bob. Thank you so much, Vince All the best to you. As with each of my episodes, I appreciate your support. Please subscribe on your favorite platform, like comment, tell your friends about Ultimate Guide to partnering and where they can find us and i’d love your feedback. Please like the podcast and provide comments or reach out to me at Vince Menzione on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. You can also like and follow Ultimate Guide to partnering on our Facebook page, or drop me a line at Vin Sam at ultimate dash partnerships.com this episode of the podcast is sponsored by ultimate partnerships. Ultimate partnerships helps you get the most results from your partnerships. Get partnerships right, optimize for success, deliver results. For more information, go to ultimate dash partnerships.com
Announcer 44:44
thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Ultimate Guide to partnering with your host Vince Menzione online at Ultimate Guide to partnering calm and facebook.com slash Ultimate Guide to partnering. We’ll catch you next time on The Ultimate Guide to partnering