Given the disruption theme of this blog, I am pleased to welcome Workday to the past and present gallery of innovators and disruptors who sponsor this and the New Florence. New Renaissance blog.
Workday was founded by Dave Duffield and Aneel Bhusri following Oracle’s hostile $10.3 billion takeover of PeopleSoft in 2004. They started it with the belief that customers deserved better than the traditional on-premise software model and its inherently high costs related to up-front licensing and maintenance fees and long, complicated software upgrade cycles.
Six years later, Workday is one of the most interesting companies in the often ho-hum area of enterprise software. Workday’s primary products are Human Capital Management and Payroll, and it’s growing its customer base for a new product, Workday Financials. As I blogged recently, one of their major differentiators is delivery of new features to customers several times a year in updates that typically take just a few days, rather than the often painful, months-long upgrade cycles associated with traditional software.
Another differentiator: while SaaS/cloud computing is often considered SME focused most of Workday’s nearly 200 customers are large or mid-size companies, some of which have tens of thousands of employees using Workday across the world.
Disclosure: Blog sponsor policy is outlined here
