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🛰️ Microsoft’s cloud grows fast, but capacity bites
Azure Growth Meets Capacity Limits, AWS Targets Legacy with Agentic AI, Curiosity-Driven GTM Insights from Cy Khormaee
Aimply Team & Zack Tembi
November 03, 2025
Azure Growth Meets Capacity Limits, AWS Targets Legacy with Agentic AI, Curiosity-Driven GTM Insights from Cy Khormaee
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Welcome to this week’s edition of CIOsurge!
This week:
Microsoft’s cloud surges, but capacity and outage risks mean we should pre-reserve, diversify regions/providers, and tighten SLAs for AI workloads.
AWS’s Transform aims agentic AI at mainframe/.NET/VMware modernization—treat it as an accelerator with strict KPIs, code-quality gates, and exit clauses.
From my chat with Cy Khormaee: GTM is zero-sum attention, hire for curiosity, prove new plays with working proofs, and outlearn the market.
Let’s make this week a game-changer.
Stay sharp. Stay ahead.
💡 Guest Expert Insights: Cy Khormaee
🧭 Curiosity Wins in GTM
Cy Khormaee is a 3x founder and former Google product director across Safe Browsing and reCAPTCHA, now co-founder of AegisAI. His through-line is simple: new tactics beat old muscle. Early in his career he out-performed by leaning into whatever was new: automation, cheap social channels, list-building hacks, while everyone else was dialing for dollars. The lesson holds: GTM is zero-sum attention. If you use the same tools and sequences as everyone else, you will get the same diminishing returns.
Hire and promote for “teach me something I do not know.” Rig the culture so reps and PMMs surface fresh plays (AI-driven personalization, novel data sources, unconventional channels) and show working proofs, not decks. Curiosity is a competency, not a vibe.
The payoff compounds: novel tactics open doors, and the people who find them signal they will keep you ahead as platforms, algorithms, and buyer behavior shift under your feet.
🛰️ Microsoft’s cloud grows fast, but capacity bites
Microsoft posted $49B cloud revenue (+26% YoY) as Azure grew 40%, Copilot MAUs hit 150M, and 900M users touched AI. Yet an Azure capacity shortage—despite ~$35B quarterly capex—tempered growth and may persist through FY26. An hourslong outage and a looser OpenAI pact add operational and partnership volatility.
Capacity constraints change planning. Reserve capacity early, diversify regions/providers, and tighten SLAs and credit protections for AI workloads that can’t tolerate queueing.
On adoption, validate Copilot/Foundry ROI by role. Track GPU availability and price movement in renewals, and keep exit ramps if the OpenAI-Microsoft alignment continues to loosen.
- Zack Tembi
🏗️ AWS aims agentic AI at legacy modernization
AWS launched Transform, an AI agent platform to upgrade mainframe, .NET and VMware estates. It discovers apps, plans migration waves, handles replication, and self-debugs failed conversions. Reported wins: Toyota converted 40M COBOL lines to Java ~50% faster; Thomson Reuters modernizes 1.5M .NET LOC/month with 30% cost savings and 50% less tech debt.
Treat Transform as an accelerator, not turnkey. Pilot on a bounded app with clear KPIs: defect density, performance, cutover time, and debt retired. Enforce code-quality gates, automated tests, rollback plans, and SLAs on conversion accuracy and throughput before scaling.
Lock in governance. Require cost guardrails, data residency and IAM mapping, change windows, and exit clauses. Benchmark against Azure Migrate and services-led options. Sequence waves where savings fund the next phase so modernization momentum survives budget reviews.
- Zack Tembi
🗞️ At A Glance
💡 CIO Spotlights
Guidehouse appoints Ron White as CIO to advance AI-led transformation
Ron White joins Guidehouse as CIO, bringing over 35 years of experience in enterprise tech, data strategy, and AI deployment.
White will lead IT, cybersecurity, and cloud initiatives while driving AI integration across the firm’s professional services.
CEO Scott McIntyre praised White’s visionary leadership, citing his track record in aligning innovation with business outcomes.
DCM Services appoints Curtis Rebelein as Chief Information Security Officer
Cybersecurity veteran Curtis Rebelein joins DCM Services as CISO, bringing nearly 30 years of IT and security experience.
Rebelein previously served as CISO for the Metropolitan Airports Commission and held roles at UnitedHealth Group, Target, and Medtronic.
He’ll oversee security strategy, risk management, and compliance to strengthen DCM’s data protection framework.