It’s been another busy week in the technology world, one that included new gen AI market trends and Cisco Systems Inc. revealing a plan to cut thousands of jobs as it beat its earnings forecast.

These developments were key topics for theCUBE Research industry analysts John Furrier (pictured, left) and Dave Vellante (right) in the latest episode of the CUBE Podcast.

“Dave, we’re living in a market where it’s just competitive,” Furrier said. “Look at Cisco. They’re a bellwether, right? And Nvidia comes out of nowhere … the landscape has completely changed.”

Keeping an eye on gen AI market trends

Amid a new gen artificial intelligence wave, companies such Amazon Web Services Inc. find themselves adjusting to a new landscape and various gen AI market trends. The developers and startups that made Amazon successful now have large enterprises using the cloud, according to Furrier.

“It’s a whole other ballgame. What’s even better is, I think the opportunity for AWS and others is that in this wave, new brands emerge,” he said. “Things will come out of the woodwork that we’ve never seen before.”

The new way is coming, and it’s gen AI. There’s also no doubt that the user experience will be impacted, Furrier added.

“Search is the killer app, Dave. Google Search. Find what you’re looking for, and be productive. That’s the theme that we’re seeing,” he said. “Again, all the action is at the hardware infrastructure level. We are seeing a massive, massive turnover from a technology perspective, at the infrastructure, compute, storage, networking, that will propel a rewriting of a middleware layer.”

It’s a very exciting time right now and hard to predict the winners and losers, according to Vellante. It also is a time that is significantly different compared to the dot-com bubble.

“These hyperscalers have so much money. Apple and Amazon and Google and Microsoft and Meta have so much cash on the balance sheet,” Vellante said.

At the time of the dot-com bubble, companies took on massive debt. Today, these companies are taking it off their balance sheet, Vellante added.

“They’ve just got tons of cash; they’ve got nothing better to do with it. And even after they spend all these hundreds of billions of dollars, they still have tons of cash because their cash flow is so amazing,” he said.

Is Matt Garman Belichick or Carroll?

Back in May, Matt Garman took over AWS from Adam Selipsky. As Garman seeks to navigate AWS through a new period of gen AI market trends, it’s worth examining what sort of a leader he is, according to Furrier.

“He ran the compute business as a product manager, and so he’s the kind of leader where he can go into engineering meetings and go deep, and at the same time, walk into a room with CEOs and talk about strategy and transformation,” he said. “Garman’s a multi-tool player, OK? I can tell you that right now, in interviewing him many times and getting to know him.”

The question, in Furrier’s eyes, involves a metaphor. Is Garman former New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick, or Pete Carroll, another former Patriots coach?

“Bill Parcells had a bunch of disciples, if you follow football. Bill [Belichick] was a defensive coach for Bill Parcells when the Patriots hired Bill Parcels. Then he got fired, and they hired Pete Carroll,” Furrier said. “Matt Garman could be the Bill Belichick, the understudy to Jassy, OK? And he can potentially build the next dynasty for AWS.”

The debate around buying more bitcoin

In recent months, there have been interesting conversations around the future of cryptocurrency, including during a Nashville bitcoin conference that included a speech from former U.S. president Donald Trump. There’s all kinds of action coalescing around bitcoin right now, according to Furrier.

“I said there was going to be a gap, and that gap seems to be closed. That bitcoin and blockchain, specifically, is becoming now financial distributed infrastructure. So this is happening,” he said.

In the grand scheme of things, bitcoin is still a sliver of financial instruments, according to Furrier. When one considers bonds and other instruments, it’s still tiny on the global scale.

“It’s a very interesting conversation and debate, Dave. And because, remember, if we bogart the bitcoin in the U.S., we’re essentially taking away other countries from getting it. It’s a scarce resource, which means the price will shoot up through the roof,” he said.

Snowflake and Databricks vie for dominance in the data cloud market

Furrier and Vellante also discussed the ongoing competition between Snowflake and Databricks, drawing insights from a recent theCUBE Research and ETR survey. They explored how these two companies are leading the charge in data innovation, with Snowflake building on its strong customer base and AI capabilities, while Databricks aggressively pushes forward with its open-source initiatives. There is increasing pressure in the data cloud market, particularly as both companies vie for dominance in a rapidly evolving landscape, according to our analysts.

Tying this battle into the broader context of Supercloud, Vellante and Furrier stressed the significance of these developments for the future of cloud computing. The discussion also touched on the need for AWS, Google and Microsoft to address the growing demand for data lakes and unified governance frameworks, as developers continue to play a critical role in shaping the next generation of cloud applications.

“Go watch our Supercloud 7 [event], and you’ll get all the data on our analysis, which is right on for Databricks versus Snowflake,” Furrier said.

Watch the full podcast below to find out why these industry pros were mentioned:

Jonathan Davidson, advisor to the CEO at Cisco
Jeetu Patel, EVP and CPO of Cisco
Matt Garman, CEO of AWS
Andy Jassy, president and CEO of Amazon
Adam Selipsky, former CEO of AWS
Larry Ellison, chairman of the board and CTO of Oracle
Lina Khan, chair of the FTC
Jerry Chen, general partner at Greylock Partners
Bill Belichick, former coach and GM of the NFL’s New England Patriots
Pete Carroll, former NFL coach and current advisor for the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks
Bill Parcells, former NFL coach
Tom Brady, former NFL quarterback
Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway
Ginni Rometty, co-chairman of OneTen, former CEO of IBM
Frank Slootman, chairman of the board of directors at Snowflake
Ali Ghodsi, co-founder and CEO of Databricks
Benoit Dageville, co-founder and president of product at Snowflake
George Gilbert, principal analyst at theCUBE Research
Robert Hof, editor-in-chef at SiliconANGLE Media
Bill Tai, venture capitalist, athlete, adjunct professor
Tim Scott, U.S. senator from South Carolina
Donald Trump, 45th U.S. president
Kamala Harris, 49th U.S. vice president
Michael Saylor, founder and executive chairman at MicroStrategy
Satoshi Nakamoto, the name used by the presumed pseudonymous person or persons who developed Bitcoin

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Photo: SiliconANGLE