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 offer insights into the upcoming fiscal Q4 results for Workday, Snowflake, and Salesforce.
Highlights
00:43 — Last quarter, Workday said that its total subscription revenue backlog was 31%. A big number, an over $18 billion backlog. That follows a quarter before that with a 32% growth in its total subscription revenue backlog. A clear indication that customers are signing on. So I’m looking for a very good quarter from Workday.
01:28 — Snowflake’s Frank Slootman said that over the past few months, he has seen among customers a much more ambitious and open attitude about spending, partly because they don’t want to miss out on what’s happening with the AI revolution and GenAI. I think Snowflake is going to match its product revenue growth rate from last quarter, 34%.
Ask Cloud Wars AI Agent about this analysis
02:25 — Now, at Salesforce, on the last quarter’s earnings call, Marc Benioff was auditioning for a role as Hamlet. He couldn’t make up his mind. On the one hand: “We don’t want to give anybody any reason to think there’s cause for optimism or that this tight market among customers is changing.” In the next breath: “I was just in Japan, it was great. People were excited, they’re ready to go.”
03:05 — So, Benioff wants to tamp down expectations. But at the same time, he said, everything is moving. I think we’re going to see in the Salesforce report, revenue growth climbing from last quarter’s 11% up to 12%. If that happens, that would reverse a decline in the growth rate.
04:17 — Overall, across the Cloud Wars Top 10, we’re seeing reinvigoration among the customer set and more desire to be sure that they don’t miss out on the AI wave, that they’re building the basis to be the digital AI-powered businesses they need to be in the future.
