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.
This episode is sponsored by Acceleration Economy’s AI Ecosystem Course, December 14. Discover how AI has created a new ecosystem of partnerships with a fresh spirit of customer-centric cocreation and renewed focus on reimagining what is possible.
In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I examine SAP and Microsoft’s potentially expanding partnership, and what it means for generative AI (GenAI) and the Cloud Wars.
Highlights
00:20 — I think SAP and Microsoft have decided that they’re on the verge of expanding their longtime strategic alliances, this time in a broad data-sharing deal to help power the GenAI solutions that both companies are developing. This follows a recent announcement when SAP and Google Cloud got together.
01:14 — This is all driven by the fact that the new GenAI solutions that every company is eager to get require massive amounts of data. So, SAP has just got an incredible volume of data that they can anonymize and use to help in these GenAI solutions.
01:53 — Klein was describing ways in which SAP’s new GenAI offerings are going to be very powerful. He was describing this play for data. He said, “I met yesterday with Satya Nadella, and Microsoft is extremely interested in how our two companies can join forces to further combine our data to be able to provide unique and unmatched solutions.”
03:17 — It also reflects, I think, ways in which these companies are realizing that the needs and demands of customers are changing so fast, that it’s going to require these big companies in the Cloud Wars Top 10 to constantly be on the lookout to see where enhanced partnerships could create more value for customers that no individual company could do for itself.
04:07 — We’re going to see more of these partnerships that are somewhat expected, like this one with SAP and Microsoft, and more of the type that are unexpected, where companies will agree that in many cases, vendors like Microsoft and Oracle will compete intensely in various areas, but also cooperate.
