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AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud battle about to get chippy

Larry Dignan
Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights Constellation Research

About Larry Dignan: Dignan was most recently Celonis Media’s Editor-in-Chief, where he sat at the intersection of media and marketing. He is the former Editor-in-Chief of ZDNet and has covered the technology industry and transformation trends for more than two decades, publishing articles in CNET, Knowledge@Wharton, Wall Street Week, Interactive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Temple University and a member of the Advisory Board for The Fox Business School's Institute of Business and Information Technology.  Constellation Insights does the following: Cover the buy side and sell side of enterprise tech with news, analysis, profiles, interviews, and event coverage of vendors, as well as Constellation Research's community and…...

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This post first appeared in the Constellation Insight newsletter, which features bespoke content weekly.

Hyperscalers are getting chippy as they compete for generative AI workloads. It's not that cloud providers were ever exactly collegial, but as growth hits the law of large numbers, enterprises optimize cloud spending and generative AI threatens market share standings you can expect sniping between the big vendors.

This chippy reality was made clear during AWS CEO Adam Selipsky's keynote at re:Invent. He made a handful of not-so-veiled references to Microsoft Azure, its ties to OpenAI and its recent foray into custom silicon.

When Selipsky talked about Graviton4, he noted that "other cloud providers have not delivered on their first server processors." With new versions of Trainium and Inferentia processors he said something similar. The snark revved up when Selipsky was talking about model choices and Amazon Bedrock.

"You don’t want a cloud provider that’s beholden primarily to one model provider, you need a real choice. The events of the past 10 days have made that very clear,” said Selipsky.

When talking security, Selipsky cruised by a headline about Microsoft and OpenAI.

Clearly, the OpenAI fiasco made it clear that you may not want to hitch your generative AI wagon to one model. Microsoft's investment in OpenAI gave the company a head start in generative AI and copilots, but that innovation bet almost backfired when OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was booted, hired by Microsoft and then reinstated at OpenAI. You'd be a fool if you were an OpenAI customer and not thinking about diversification.

However, it's also worth noting that Azure has its own plans for model choice and models as a service. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has gone out of his way to say that the company's AI plans go beyond OpenAI and there are multiple models available.

For AWS, which has been the cloud leader from the launch of the industry, the competition from Azure must feel odd. Perhaps Selipsky's swipes work out over time. In my experience talking trash can work, but often doesn't. In technology, the only executive I've seen really pull off the chippy vibe is Oracle CTO Larry Ellison. You can argue that Ellison's version of the truth is sometimes stretched, but he has a knack for punching competitors in the head.

Frankly, I'm a bit surprised that Oracle didn't rent out the Sphere during re:Invent. Or maybe Google Cloud just beat Oracle to it.

Where is all this headed? You already know. It's a return to the fear, uncertainty and doubt age. Here are a few techniques you can use to navigate the new sniping between cloud providers:

Think "The Art of War," arguably the best business book ever written (even though it was technically about war). That Art of War lens gives you insights into the Oracle-Azure partnership. I'm pretty sure Microsoft and Oracle are far from chummy, but they have mutual enemies in AWS and Google Cloud. And Oracle Cloud Infrastructure isn't big enough to threaten Azure yet, so the Satya-Larry bromance is in full bloom.

Fact checks. Cloud providers could go full election mode and that requires that you fact check statements from executives.

Remember how you were treated in the "optimization" phase. The last 18 months have seen enterprises optimize their cloud spending plans. Remember the hyperscalers that worked with you to hit budgets and act accordingly. Trust matters.

Diversify and play cloud giants off each other. All of those enterprise software lessons such as waiting until the last minute of a quarter, evaluating rivals and working discounts will apply to cloud negotiations. You may also consider on-premises options too. Bottom line: You should be able to get a discount.

Generative AI has the potential to rewrite the cloud standings and hyperscalers are going to scrap it out accordingly. For the record, here's a look at the hyperscaler growth rates in their most recent quarters:

  • Microsoft Cloud fiscal Q1 revenue was $31.8 billion, up 24% from a year ago. Microsoft Cloud includes Azure and other cloud services, Office 365 Commercial, the commercial portion of LinkedIn, Dynamics 365, and other commercial cloud properties.
  • AWS Q3 revenue was $23.1 billion, up 12% from a year ago.
  • Google Cloud (IaaS and Workspace) Q3 revenue was $8.4 billion, up 22% from a year ago.
  • Oracle Cloud (IaaS and SaaS) Q1 revenue was $4.6 billion, up 30% from a year ago.

Here's the week from the Constellation Research team at re:Invent.

Data to Decisions Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Innovation & Product-led Growth Tech Optimization Future of Work Next-Generation Customer Experience AWS reInvent aws Google Google Cloud Microsoft amazon SaaS PaaS IaaS Cloud Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP CCaaS UCaaS Collaboration Enterprise Service AI GenerativeAI ML Machine Learning LLMs Agentic AI Analytics Automation Chief Information Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief AI Officer Chief Analytics Officer Chief Product Officer

UiPath's bets paying off: Here are the key Q3 takeaways

Larry Dignan
Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights Constellation Research

About Larry Dignan: Dignan was most recently Celonis Media’s Editor-in-Chief, where he sat at the intersection of media and marketing. He is the former Editor-in-Chief of ZDNet and has covered the technology industry and transformation trends for more than two decades, publishing articles in CNET, Knowledge@Wharton, Wall Street Week, Interactive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Temple University and a member of the Advisory Board for The Fox Business School's Institute of Business and Information Technology.  Constellation Insights does the following: Cover the buy side and sell side of enterprise tech with news, analysis, profiles, interviews, and event coverage of vendors, as well as Constellation Research's community and…...

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UiPath is gaining momentum as high profile partnerships, AI and automation and a focus on large enterprises and industries pay off.

The automation platform company reported better-than-expected third quarter sales of $326 million, up 24% from a year ago, and annual recurring revenue of $1.38 billion. UiPath reported a net loss in the third quarter of $31.54 million, or 6 cents a share. Non-GAAP earnings in the quarter were 12 cents a share.

For the fourth quarter, UiPath projected revenue between $381 million to $386 million.

Constellation Research analyst Holger Mueller said:

"UiPath is on strong growth trajectory, fueled by the need of enterprises to streamline processes. The current AI hype has helped UiPath further and that is slowly but steady growing its way to productivity."

Mueller added that if UiPath Co-CEOs Rob Enslin and Daniel Dines can continue growing revenue faster than costs they'll delight investors.

Indeed, UiPath closed a record number of third quarter deals over $1 million in ARR. Customers with $1 million or more in ARR grew 31% to 264, while customers with $100,000 or more in ARR increased to 1,974.

Here's a look at the key takeaways from UiPath's third quarter results.

UiPath landing more C-level conversations. Enslin, an SAP and Google Cloud alum, knows how to sell and he's revamped UiPath's sales approach to focus on value, platform plays and prioritizing "organizations that have a meaningful runway to invest in enterprise automation over the long-term." Partnerships with SAP and Deloitte are also putting UiPath on the CXO radar earlier in the budget cycle.

"Because we are having these conversations in the boardroom to the C-level suite, we are much earlier in the budget cycles than we previously been," said Enslin.

Simply put, much of UiPath's success can be attributed to a better go-to-market ground game. UiPath has a large enterprise installed base that started with robotics process automation (RPA) and is receptive to UiPath's automation platform and other tools such as document understanding, test suite and process mining.

UiPath adds AutoPilot generative AI to its automation platform: Here's what it means | Every vendor wants to be an automation platform | Constellation ShortListâ„¢ Robotic Process Automation

UiPath's SAP partnership showing early returns. The SAP-UiPath partnership is still young, but the combination has yielded some benefits. Notably, UiPath is involved in more transformation discussions with SAP and systems integrators. The primary use case highlighted is the automation of testing in big SAP environments.

SAP buys LeanIX, aims to couple it with Signavio, system transformation

Industry-focused use cases. UiPath is landing large healthcare and federal government deals. Enslin walked through multiple customer references--some named and others not. He cited a large non-profit US health system that has garnered more than $250 million in ROI since starting in 2018 with RPA. That health system is now using document understanding, process mining and centralized automation on UiPath.

UiPath's Enslin noted that UiPath has launched industry playbooks and 70 solution accelerators in its marketplace. Government customers cited were Veterans Affairs, Coast Guard, the IRS, Department of Homeland Security and US Department of Agriculture.

Document Understanding a focus area. UiPath's Document Understanding product line revolves around getting RPA to recognize documents, classify them and process them. The idea is Document Processing can automate paperwork tasks. UiPath has now launched Intelligent Document Processing (IDP), which is an AI-powered feature where generative AI can annotate documents, classify them and extract information to answer questions and summarize.

The term document understanding was mentioned 16 times during UiPath's third quarter earnings conference call. For context, RPA received 7 mentions and process mining had two. There's a reason Document Understanding is getting some play. Dines said:

"Our next-gen IDP permits almost anyone to train Specialized AI models for specific domains and document types, and our internal benchmarking shows that our next-gen IDP experience accelerates model training time by up to 80% from a week to a day for complex scenarios, or down to minutes for simpler forms."

AI and automation are connected and giving UiPath a boost. Enslin said CXOs realize that AI by itself won't generate the returns without automation. He added that in many cases, AI spending is going along with automation conversations.

He said:

"The AI communication that's happening in the market allows us to have meaningful conversations with customers and they see why the platform is relevant. Customers can really look at processes and tasks and understand how to drive value with the automation platform."

Dines added:

"AI plus automation is the thing that drives the biggest outcomes for our customers."

Related:

Data to Decisions Future of Work Innovation & Product-led Growth Tech Optimization Next-Generation Customer Experience Chief Information Officer

Amazon Q Puts GenAI Inside Redshift, Coming to AWS Glue

Doug Henschen
Former Vice President and Principal Analyst Constellation Research

Doug Henschen is former Vice President and Principal Analyst where he focused on data-driven decision making. Henschen’s Data-to-Decisions research examines how organizations employ data analysis to reimagine their business models and gain a deeper understanding of their customers. Henschen's research acknowledges the fact that innovative applications of data analysis requires a multi-disciplinary approach starting with information and orchestration technologies, continuing through business intelligence, data-visualization, and analytics, and moving into NoSQL and big-data analysis, third-party data enrichment, and decision-management technologies. Insight-driven business models are of interest to the entire C-suite, but most particularly chief executive officers, chief digital officers,…...

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It’s a wrap at AWS Re:Invent, but here’s my take on two more data-and-analytics-related announcements from Las Vegas: Amazon Q in Redshift and Amazon Q in AWS Glue.  

 

Amazon Q Recap

 

To my mind, Amazon Q was the most broadly compelling and exciting GenAI announcement at AWS Re:Invent 2023. Amazon Q is a multi-purpose AI assistant for businesses that’s designed to develop a company-specific understanding of information including data, text, code, and technology systems in use. At this point there are 40 connectors to enterprise applications and systems including Salesforce, Zendesk, ServiceNow, Office 365, Dropbox and more.

 

Amazon Q is also designed to deliver a personalized experience to the individual user, limiting access to information based on their role and data-access permissions. The assistant will be available within a growing number of interfaces. Behind the scenes, Q will choose from a variety of GenAI models available in Amazon Bedrock based on the context of where it’s used. Exposed withing the AWS Console, for example, Q will help with cloud troubleshooting and best-practice recommendations. Within an integrated development environment (IDE), Q will help developers generate, test and troubleshoot code. Exposed through Amazon QuickSight (one of the first use cases announced this week), Q will support natural language (NL) query and explanations powered by GenAI.

 

 

Amazon Q in Redshift and Q in Glue

 

This brings us to Amazon Q in Redshift, which will be exposed through the Amazon Redshift Query Editor, the data warehouse service’s web-based SQL editor. Users will simply ask NL questions and Amazon Q will generate SQL recommendations, using the appropriate large language model (LLM) from Amazon Bedrock.

 

According to AWS, Amazon Q will use different techniques, such as prompt engineering and Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), to query the model based on context including the database instance, the schema, the user’s query history, and, optionally, the query history of other users connected to the same endpoint. What’s more, Q will remember previous questions and can be used to refine a previously generated query.

According to an AWS blog: “The SQL generation model uses metadata specific to your data schema to generate relevant queries. For example, it uses the table and column names and the relationship between the tables in your database. In addition, your database administrator can authorize the model to use the query history of all users in your AWS account to generate even more relevant SQL statements.”

From a security perspective, Q won’t share query histories with other AWS accounts and it won’t train underlying GenAI models with any data coming from customer AWS accounts. Amazon Q in Redshift is in preview in two U.S. regions (East and West).

Also announced at Re:Invent was Amazon Q in AWS Glue, which is the cloud vendor’s extract, transform, load (ETL) data-integration service. Here, too, the GenAI will generate SQL code, but in this case for ETL jobs and pipelines rather than queries. Q will also support troubleshooting and help assistance. This service is “coming soon” and is not yet available in preview.

MyPOV on Amazon Q in Redshift and Glue

Writing queries and developing SQL ETL jobs and pipelines is tedious, time-consuming work. Code generation, whether for SQL, Python or any other language, has already been proven to be a time- and labor-saving use case for GenAI. Competitors are also pursuing this use case, with Google Cloud having announced GenAI in RedShift rival BigQuery via Duet AI with BigQuery and Duet AI in BigQuery Studio, both of which are in preview at this writing. And in the integration space, vendors including Boomi, Informatica, Snap Logic and Software AG have already jumped on the GenAI bandwagon. 

There are no charges for Amazon Q in Redshift while it’s in preview, but it’s a fair guess that once this feature is generally available, AWS will pass through compute costs, at a minimum, likely through consumption of Redshift Processing Units (RPUs). To my mind the costs of natural language code generation, testing and troubleshooting, and querying and explanation will be well worth it, but it will be up do organizations to understand the value of time savings and making people that much more productive. The danger is that the bean counters and budget holders will have a knee-jerk reaction when the costs of GenAI start to emerge.

While 2023 will go down as the year of GenAI previews, 2024 promises to be the year that the GenAI bills will start to come due. Will need the proverbial business-IT collaboration to develop a clear-eyed understanding of what’s really delivering value.  

Related reading:
AWS Expands Zero-ETL Options, Adds AI Recommendations for DataZone
AWS Introduces Two Important Database Upgrades at Re:Invent 2023
Google Sets BigQuery Apart With GenAI, Open Choices, and Cross-Cloud Querying
 

Data to Decisions Tech Optimization Innovation & Product-led Growth Future of Work Next-Generation Customer Experience Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity AWS reInvent aws ML Machine Learning LLMs Agentic AI Generative AI Robotics AI Analytics Automation Quantum Computing Cloud Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain Leadership VR Chief Information Officer Chief Analytics Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief AI Officer Chief Product Officer

Dell Technologies delivers mixed Q3, but strong demand for AI-optimized servers

Larry Dignan
Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights Constellation Research

About Larry Dignan: Dignan was most recently Celonis Media’s Editor-in-Chief, where he sat at the intersection of media and marketing. He is the former Editor-in-Chief of ZDNet and has covered the technology industry and transformation trends for more than two decades, publishing articles in CNET, Knowledge@Wharton, Wall Street Week, Interactive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Temple University and a member of the Advisory Board for The Fox Business School's Institute of Business and Information Technology.  Constellation Insights does the following: Cover the buy side and sell side of enterprise tech with news, analysis, profiles, interviews, and event coverage of vendors, as well as Constellation Research's community and…...

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Dell Technologies' infrastructure unit saw strength in AI-optimized servers, but revenue in the third quarter for the data center group was down 12% from a year ago.

The results highlight the moving parts for data center vendors. AI-optimized gear is selling well as traditional storage and server systems lag. HPE saw similar issues in its quarter.

Overall, Dell Technologies reported third quarter earnings of $1 billion, or $1.36 a share, on revenue of $22.3 billion, down 10% from a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings were $1.88 a share.

Wall Street was expecting Dell Technologies to report third quarter earnings of $1.45 a share on revenue of $22.9 billion.

In a sign of its revenue model transformation, Dell said it had remaining performance obligations of $39 billion. Recurring revenue in the quarter was up 4% from a year ago and deferred revenue was up 7%.

Infrastructure group revenue in the third quarter was $8.5 billion, down 12% from a year ago. Server and networking revenue was $4.7 billion and storage revenue were $3.8 billion.

According to the company, AI optimized servers accounted for 33% of total server orders revenue. Demand was driven by AI focused cloud providers and companies in key verticals. AI optimized server backlog nearly doubled in the third quarter from the second quarter.

Dell's PC business had third quarter revenue of $12.3 billion, down 11% from a year ago. The company said an aging installed PC base and AI-enabled systems from Intel, AMD and Windows on ARM should drive a refresh cycle.

Jeff Clarke, chief operating officer of Dell Technologies, said the company expects fiscal 2025 to show revenue growth as systems are upgraded for generative AI use cases.

Clarke said in prepared remarks:

"The demand environment for traditional servers improved over the course of the quarter, and demand for AI servers continues to be strong across a wider range of customers. Demand for storage was down, as expected."

He added that Dell Technologies was seeing sequential growth in AI optimized services. Clarke said the company "began to convert more PowerEdge XE9680 backlog into revenue."

"For the quarter, we shipped over half a billion dollars of AI optimized servers, including our XE9680, XE9640, XE8640 and R750 & 760xa servers," said Clarke, who added that "demand remains well ahead of supply."

Clarke was optimistic about AI driving demand for Dell systems.

"AI continues to dominate the technology and business conversation. Customers across the globe are turning their operations upside down to see how they can use generative AI to advance their businesses in meaningful ways. These AI initiatives are being driven at the CEO and board levels. And as a result, we are at the front of a significant TAM expansion."

Data to Decisions Tech Optimization Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Innovation & Product-led Growth Future of Work Next-Generation Customer Experience dell SaaS PaaS IaaS Cloud Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP CCaaS UCaaS Collaboration Enterprise Service AI GenerativeAI ML Machine Learning LLMs Agentic AI Analytics Automation Chief Information Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief AI Officer Chief Analytics Officer Chief Product Officer

Amazon's Vogels says 'cost awareness is a lost art' as AWS launches optimization tools

Larry Dignan
Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights Constellation Research

About Larry Dignan: Dignan was most recently Celonis Media’s Editor-in-Chief, where he sat at the intersection of media and marketing. He is the former Editor-in-Chief of ZDNet and has covered the technology industry and transformation trends for more than two decades, publishing articles in CNET, Knowledge@Wharton, Wall Street Week, Interactive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Temple University and a member of the Advisory Board for The Fox Business School's Institute of Business and Information Technology.  Constellation Insights does the following: Cover the buy side and sell side of enterprise tech with news, analysis, profiles, interviews, and event coverage of vendors, as well as Constellation Research's community and…...

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"Cost awareness is a lost art. We need to regain that art," said Amazon CTO Dr. Werner Vogels, speaking at Amazon Web Services' re:Invent conference. AWS also launched a new tool to manage application resources within the AWS Management Console as well as CloudWatch Application Signals to automatically instrument applications.

Vogels talk revolved around cost optimization of compute resources and aligning business and technology decisions. The keynote, which used multiple lessons learned from building AWS services, focused on being a frugal systems architect. By focusing on costs and continual improvement, Vogels argued enterprises can be more sustainable, evolve more quickly and pay down technical debt.

The subtext of the talk also seems to indicate that AWS is leaning into its strengths of being a low-cost cloud provider. Enterprises have been optimizing cloud spending, consolidating vendors and focusing on efficiency. This optimization of cloud spending does not appear to be a passing fad.

As Vogels spoke, AWS launched Amazon CloudWatch Applications Signals in preview. The service automatically instruments applications to monitor latency, availability and performance. Amazon CloudWatch Applications Signals aggregates metrics, traces, logs, real user monitoring and puts together telemetry.

In addition, AWS announced the general availability of myApplications, which is part of the AWS Management Console. MyApplications provides a summary that analyzes costs, usage and resource usage across AWS.

Vogels argued that enterprises should be able to track costs throughout applications, web pages and data flows.  "In AWS, each of the resources that you've been using, comes with a total associated cost of every single one of the surfaces. We know the cost of the whole system," said Vogels.

Other key cost points from Vogels chat:

  • Cost is a close proxy for sustainability. "We pay for each individual resource we're using, and this is a pretty good approximation to the resources that you've used," said Vogels, who added that builders need to architect systems for sustainability. "We want to be frugal in a way that these resources are sustainable."
  • Cost is a non-functional requirement. Vogels said building systems boil down to design, measure, and optimize. "The most important thing here is that cost needs to be a nonfunctional requirement. If you think about non-essential requirements, you know, there's all these sorts of classical ones: security, compliance, performance, reliability. But the ones that you have to keep in mind at all times. Sustainability should be another one.

  • Align business and technology decisions as well as costs and revenue models. "Make sure that your business issues and the technology decisions are in harmony with themselves," said Vogels. If business and technology are aligned, you should be able to grow revenue while optimizing costs.
  • Pay off technical debt. To design systems that can evolve you will need to pay off technical debt. Like economic debt, the interest compounds and at some point, crushes you, said Vogels. "You and I are creating technical and economic debt," added Vogels, who said enterprises have to continually retire tech debt.

Vogels argued that enterprises will need to build cost aware architectures that are continually optimized.

Werner also talked a bit about developer productivity in the age of generative AI as well as SageMaker features. He said there's a new age of developer productivity ahead, which incidentally also plays into cost optimization, and elaborated in a blog. 

Constellation Research analyst Holger Mueller said:

"Long gone are the re:Invents when the Dr. Werner Vogels keynote had half of the announcements. The Amazon CTO has pivoted to developer and architecture best practices. Last year's key theme was all about moving to an event driven architecture (EDA) -- most roadmap items did not get delivered due to the focus on GenAI -- so this year was all about a focus on cost consciousness. At the same time it was up to Vogels to show where AWS will embed Q to help developers become more productive. Vogels balances the inherent fear of developers over AI replacing them with pointing out to the upside. Three product announcements made it to his keynote. Not bad for the cloud veteran, who is a developer favorite and maybe even an idol." 

Here's the week from the Constellation Research team at re:Invent.

 

Tech Optimization AWS reInvent aws amazon SaaS PaaS IaaS Cloud Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP CCaaS UCaaS Collaboration Enterprise Service Chief Information Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Executive Officer

Humanizing AI Commerce | Impact TV Episode 4

R "Ray" Wang
Principal Analyst and Founder Constellation Research

R “Ray” Wang is the CEO of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He co-hosts DisrupTV, a weekly enterprise tech and leadership webcast that averages 50,000 views per episode and blogs at www.raywang.org. His ground-breaking best-selling book on digital transformation, Disrupting Digital Business, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2015. Ray's new book about Digital Giants and the future of business, titled, Everybody Wants to Rule The World was released in July 2021. Wang is well-quoted and frequently interviewed by media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Cheddar, and Bloomberg. Short Bio R “Ray” Wang (pronounced WAHNG) is the Founder, Chairman, and Principal Analyst of Silicon Valley-based Constellation…...

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📺 Watch the latest episode of Impact TV: Humanizing AI Commerce

Co-hosts R "Ray" Wang, founder of Constellation Research and Teresa Barreira, CMO of Publicis Sapient explore the powerful synergies between #technology and the human touch, and how this fusion can impact the #digital commerce landscape and the people it serves...

Ray and Teresa sit down with the following #data and #AI experts to learn more:

00:00 - Introduction
01:56 - Simon James, Head of Data and AI, Publicis Sapient
18:45 - Indy Cho, AVP of Data Products & Data Science, Costco Wholesale

🗓️ Are these insights and recommendations helpful? Follow our page to catch Impact TV episode 5 coming down the pipeline in a few weeks! #technology #business #trends #cxos #commerce

On <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6PftXAnt4TY?si=DsJ2x_Z4LlAobuqW" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Snowflake says demand stabilizing in better than expected Q3

Larry Dignan
Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights Constellation Research

About Larry Dignan: Dignan was most recently Celonis Media’s Editor-in-Chief, where he sat at the intersection of media and marketing. He is the former Editor-in-Chief of ZDNet and has covered the technology industry and transformation trends for more than two decades, publishing articles in CNET, Knowledge@Wharton, Wall Street Week, Interactive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Temple University and a member of the Advisory Board for The Fox Business School's Institute of Business and Information Technology.&nbsp; Constellation Insights does the following: Cover the buy side and sell side of enterprise tech with news, analysis, profiles, interviews, and event coverage of vendors, as well as Constellation Research's community and…...

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Snowflake reported better-than-expected third quarter earnings and CEO Frank Slootman said the company sees "a broadly stabilizing macro environment."

The company reported a third quarter net loss of $214.25 million on revenue of $734.17 million, up 31.8% from a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings for the third quarter were 25 cents a share, compared to estimates of 16 cents a share.

As for the outlook, Snowflake said product revenue would be up 29% to 30% in the fourth quarter compared to a year ago. For fiscal 2024, Snowflake sees product revenue of $2.65 billion, up 37% from a year ago.

The company said it had 436 customers with trailing 12-month revenue of more than $1 million.

On a conference call with analysts, Slootman said:

"Generative AI is at the forefront of customer conversations, which in turn drives renewed emphasis on data strategy in preparation of these new technologies. We said it many times, there's no AI strategy without a data strategy. The intelligence we're all aiming for results in the data, hence the quality of that underpinning is critical."

"One of the interesting things is that customers are now getting preoccupied with their data estates because they have to get them into shape where they can productively take advantage of the newer technologies."

Data to Decisions snowflake Big Data Chief Information Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Information Security Officer

Salesforce delivers solid Q3, focuses on operating margins

Larry Dignan
Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights Constellation Research

About Larry Dignan: Dignan was most recently Celonis Media’s Editor-in-Chief, where he sat at the intersection of media and marketing. He is the former Editor-in-Chief of ZDNet and has covered the technology industry and transformation trends for more than two decades, publishing articles in CNET, Knowledge@Wharton, Wall Street Week, Interactive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Temple University and a member of the Advisory Board for The Fox Business School's Institute of Business and Information Technology.&nbsp; Constellation Insights does the following: Cover the buy side and sell side of enterprise tech with news, analysis, profiles, interviews, and event coverage of vendors, as well as Constellation Research's community and…...

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Salesforce is projecting fourth-quarter revenue growth of 10% after reporting better-than-expected third quarter earnings.

The company reported third-quarter earnings of $1.25 a share on revenue of $8.72 billion, up 11% from a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings for the quarter were $2.11.

Wall Street was expecting Salesforce to report third quarter earnings of $2.06 a share on revenue of $8.72 billion.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said the company is "bringing CRM, data, AI and trust together in a single, integrated platform." CFO Amy Weaver said the company is maintaining its focus on operating margins. Salesforce projected fiscal 2024 operating margins of 14.5% (30.5% non-GAAP).

As for the outlook, Salesforce projected fourth quarter revenue of $9.18 billion to $9.23 billion, up 10% from a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings will be $2.25 a share to $2.26 a share in the fourth quarter.

For fiscal 2024, revenue will be $34.75 billion to $34.8 billion, up 11% from a year ago. Non-GAAP operating margins will be 30.5% with non-GAAP earnings of $8.18 a share to $8.19 a share.

Speaking on the earnings call with analysts, Benioff said:

"We have 80% growth in deals more than $1 million. That is far exceeding our expectations, that we were able to pull together all of these different clouds into this kind of what we call a cocktail. The customers were wanting to buy Tableau, Slack, MuleSoft, the Data Cloud, Sales Cloud, the Service Cloud, all that we're able to build these big transactions."

Indeed, 9 out of the top 10 Salesforce deals in the quarter included six or more clouds.

Benioff also said that it added 1,000 Data Cloud customers in the quarter and ingested 6.4 trillion records. He also said Einstein GPT Copilot has performed well across the platform.

Internally, Salesforce has been able to use copilots to resolve more than 200,000 manual approvals this year and resolve employee related queries.

Other items:

  • Benioff talked up MuleSoft as the way customers are connecting applications and data stores. He added that MuleSoft is becoming a key part of enabling Data Cloud.
  • 17% of the Fortune 500 is using Einstein GPT Copilot.
  • Weaver said:

"Companies are still really focused right now in this environment, on productivity, on automation, on time to value. You certainly see it from the CFO as my counterparts around the world. Real focus on every dollar that's being spent. We're now entering our sixth quarter of measured customer buying behavior and we're saying that this has been continuing recently. And that does reflect, particularly in areas like SMB, self-serve, create and close, you see this in professional services."

By the numbers for the third quarter:

  • Sales Cloud revenue was $1.91 billion, up from $1.72 billion a year ago.
  • Service Cloud revenue was $2.07 billion, up from $1.86 billion a year ago.
  • Platform and other revenue were $1.686 billion, up from $1.51 billion.
  • Marketing and Commerce Cloud revenue was $1.23 billion, up from $1.3 billion.
  • Data revenue, including data analytics, Tableau and MuleSoft, was $1.24 billion, up from $1.02 billion. Data revenue was up 22% from a year ago.
  • Americas revenue was $5.86 billion and remains the bulk of Salesforce's sales.

Data to Decisions Marketing Transformation Innovation & Product-led Growth Future of Work Tech Optimization Next-Generation Customer Experience Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity salesforce ML Machine Learning LLMs Agentic AI Generative AI AI Analytics Automation business Marketing SaaS PaaS IaaS Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP finance Healthcare Customer Service Content Management Collaboration Chief Information Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief AI Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Analytics Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Product Officer

Generative AI Spotlight: Interview with Matt Candy, IBM Consulting

R "Ray" Wang
Principal Analyst and Founder Constellation Research

R “Ray” Wang is the CEO of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He co-hosts DisrupTV, a weekly enterprise tech and leadership webcast that averages 50,000 views per episode and blogs at www.raywang.org. His ground-breaking best-selling book on digital transformation, Disrupting Digital Business, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2015. Ray's new book about Digital Giants and the future of business, titled,&nbsp;Everybody Wants to Rule The World&nbsp;was released in July 2021. Wang is well-quoted and frequently interviewed by media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Cheddar, and Bloomberg. Short Bio R “Ray” Wang (pronounced WAHNG) is the Founder, Chairman, and Principal Analyst of Silicon Valley-based Constellation…...

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Constellation founder and analyst R "Ray" Wang interviews Matt Candy, Global Managing Partner for IBM Consulting about the latest initiatives and solutions happening at IBM around generative AI. Candy about data governance and IBM's future plans for scaling it's AI solutions.

This segment is also included in ConstellationTV episode 69. Watch the full episode here: https://youtu.be/vRVe3ZfCR_o

On ConstellationTV <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/EjcnNktJAgA?si=2xl1_qF7hWquCsu8" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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AWS reInvent, Generative AI Research, Tech News | ConstellationTV Episode 69

Liz Miller
Vice President & Principal Analyst Constellation Research

About Liz Miller: Liz Miller is Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation, focused on the org-wide team sport known as customer experience. While covering CX as an enterprise strategy, Miller spends time zeroing in on the functional demands of Marketing and Service and the evolving role&nbsp;of the&nbsp;Chief Marketing Officer, the rise of the Chief Experience Officer, the evolution of customer engagement and the rising requirement for a new security posture that accounts for the threat to brand trust in this age of AI. &nbsp;With over 30 years of marketing, Miller offers strategic&nbsp;guidance on the leadership, business transformation and technology requirements to deliver on&nbsp;today’s CX strategies. She has worked with global&nbsp;marketing organizations to transform…...

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Holger Mueller
Vice President and Principal Analyst Constellation Research

Holger Mueller is VP and Principal Analyst for Constellation Research for the fundamental enablers of the&nbsp;cloud, IaaS, PaaS and next generation Applications, with forays up the tech stack into BigData and Analytics, HR Tech, and sometimes SaaS. Holger provides strategy and counsel to key clients, including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Product Officers, Chief HR Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, sell-side firms, and technology buyers.&nbsp; Coverage Areas: Future of Work Tech Optimization &amp; Innovation&nbsp; Background: Before joining Constellation Research, Mueller was VP of Products for NorthgateArinso, a KKR company. There, he led the transformation of products to the cloud and laid the foundation for new Business Process as a…...

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Hannah Mason
Marketing Director Constellation Research

Hannah Mason is a marketing director at Constellation Research. She oversees brand positioning, creative direction, and content development across digital platforms, events, and campaigns. Her work spans branding and design—including graphics, sales collateral, and event presentations—along with website content management, newsletters, and Constellation Insights. Mason also manages surveys and produces Constellation’s video collateral, including ConstellationTV. Her role ensures that the Constellation brand is communicated with clarity, creativity, and consistency across all channels. &nbsp; &nbsp; Contact Hannah at [email protected]. ...

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🎬 ConstellationTV Ep. 69 has dropped! This week, catch co-hosts Liz Miller and Holger Mueller analyzing the latest #enterprise tech news, then learn IBM's latest #GenerativeAI research & initiatives during an interview between R "Ray" Wang and Matthew Candy, IBM Consulting Global Managing Partner. Next, hear Holger Mueller's real-time takeaways from #awsreinvent2023 and round out the episode with hilarious bloopers!

00:00 - Introduction
01:37 - Tech News (UKG announcements, Verint bots, AI application,)
14:01 - AI Spotlight: Interview with Matt Candy, IBM Consulting Global Managing Partner
18:55 - AWS re:Invent analysis with Holger Mueller
29:17 - Bloopers!

ConstellationTV is a bi-weekly Web series hosted by Constellation analysts. The show airs live at 9:00 a.m. PT/ 12:00 p.m. ET every other Wednesday. 🔔 Subscribe to Constellation's YouTube channel here:  @ConstellationResearch 

On ConstellationTV <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vRVe3ZfCR_o?si=nayKJuiH6MudF37b" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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