Welcome to the Cloud Wars Minute — your daily news and commentary show, hosted by Cloud Wars Founder Bob Evans. Each episode provides insights and perspectives around the “reimagination machine” that is the Cloud.
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In this Cloud Wars Minute, Bob Evans does a comparative review of the remaining performance obligation (RPO) metrics from four of the Cloud Wars Top 10 companies in the enterprise apps industry — Oracle, SAP, ServiceNow, and Salesforce.
Highlights
01:06 — After reviewing the RPO metrics — a predictor of future growth — for a few of the Cloud Wars Top 10 companies, it is very clear that Oracle, SAP, and ServiceNow are all doing very well, and Salesforce is not doing very well.
01:20 — On the total RPO, which is a measure of business that has been contracted:
- Oracle, up 68%, to $61.2 billion. In the case of Oracle, not all of the RPO is from Oracle Cloud
- SAP, up 35%, to $35.7 billion
- ServiceNow, up 25%, to $14 billion
- Salesforce, up 10%, to $40 billion
02:55 — Going back to the quarter that ended July 31, 2022, for Salesforce, the company’s RPO was about $41.6 billion, and the growth rate was 15%. Take this in conjunction with Salesforce’s recent quarterly results, “it paints a picture of some trouble,” notes Bob, who adds that Marc Benioff will have to find a way to deal with that.
03:40 — Bob adds that it is also fascinating to see SAP’s RPO of $35.7 billion is all “cloud backlog.”
04:10 — The larger point aside from the comparison is that these numbers continue to show that business leaders across many industries recognize the cloud as an essential, indispensable part of their growth and innovation strategy, even during difficult times.
