We run into each other at various industry conferences - a group of industry analysts, consultants and bloggers focused on enterprise software. Rarely though 20 of us are we in a room for a whole day - many of us have competitive business models, others honestly cannot stand each other. So, it is even more unusual we would (mostly) agree about - and even admire what was on display.
Few vendors have the guts to be open to such a smart and opinionated bunch as Workday was during its Technology Day yesterday. Like a marathon tennis match with plenty of volleys and lobs and aces, the back and forth was something to watch. As you can see from the Twitterstream and blog posts from the day a wide set of angles were covered - object models, user interface design, change management processes, analytics and integration tools (in a SaaS market where both are still weak), stuff from the labs - tablet and voice interfaces, mobile applications - and more.
I would like to have to heard more about how they plan to scale their compute/storage infrastructure, more about their application management people and process and on their implementation experiences. Sure others in the room have their own follow up lists.
Honestly, though the last time I can remember such an energetic session was during a visit to SAP in Walldorf in 1997. And that was restricted to Gartner analysts so we did not have the breadth of coverage that the Workday session had. Some recent SAP blogger sessions have come close in terms of openness, but not in quality of the products or the presenters.
So, I left wondering why more vendors don't have such sessions. It would accomplish two goals - brief market influencers in an intense session and get plenty of feedback for product improvement.
Part of the reason is they don't have Workday's co-founders - Aneel Bhusri and Dave Duffield. Aneel, with recent Greylock venture capital experience has access to impressive market intelligence and talent and it was on display throughout the day. Dave brings the humility and openness he has long being known for - and that was equally on display (though he only came in for a bit and sat at the back). While the expectation was some of the items during the day would be off the record, the tally of such items at the end of the day was zero.
