Welcome to the Cloud Wars Minute — your daily cloud news and commentary show. Each episode provides insights and perspectives around the “reimagination machine” that is the cloud.
In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I share highlights from my conversation with Gerrit Kazmaier, Workday’s new president of products and technology.
Highlights
00:14 — I had a chance to sit down with the new president of products and technology at Workday last week, Gerrit Kazmaier. You’ll be able to see that full interview here on Cloud Wars. His big idea was how customers want help from the big tech vendors to future-proof their AI strategies. That was the basis of a number of the things that Gerrit and I talked about.
00:57 — Quick background: Gerrit joined Workday a couple of months ago from Google Cloud. Gerrit said there are three buckets where customers’ primary areas of focus are. He said the first is preparing to move into what the future of digital work is going to be all about. This is going to incorporate not only humans but also digital workers, primarily in the form of agents.
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02:17 — He said that customers have shifted from their early willingness to experiment a lot with AI. He said they’re now demanding that for any sort of serious financial commitment that they’re going to make with the tech vendor, the tech vendor must be able to demonstrate very clearly the business value that those customers are going to be able to get from AI.
03:03 — Gerrit and I talked about agentic AI, the way that Workday is incorporating agents now into its applications and solutions. Finally, one of the things we talked about was that Workday is advancing now not only its technology, but also how it positions, discusses, and describes itself as a platform company.
04:16 — He said the three-step process that Workday offers around AI moving forward with customers, and it’s also something that the ecosystem incorporates, is how it can help, first, assist customers moving into AI, then accelerate using a lot of things that are going on, and then move into the bigger, broader scale of transformation.
04:50 — Gerrit’s bullish. He’s optimistic. A few months ago, Workday announced the appointment of Rob Enslin, who will be the president and chief commercial officer. Gerrit handling products and technology, Rob handling customer engagements, revenue, and more. Rob, like Gerrit, comes from Google Cloud and SAP in the background.
