I watched Dave Duffield and Aneel Bhusri kick off this year’s Workday Rising conference yesterday morning, and their stuff was spectacular. While unfortunately I can’t give you all the cool details (I’ll let them break the hot news, and trust me, there’s some good stuff coming), I’ll take a few moments and share some high-level notes.
Dave Duffield
- Stressed keeping Workday’s commitments despite economic slowdown. Workday continues to invest and hire.
- Drew parallel between the emergence of SaaS/on-demand and the client/server revolution that pushed big iron away from computing’s leading edge.
- Spoke about how the SaaS business model is particularly relevant in today economy. This comes from the obvious cost savings, but also the not-so-obvious shifting of datacenter and IT operations to specialized companies.
- From a study with current customers, showed data illustrating that Workday is 50% less expensive versus legacy on-premise applications.
- 67 customers and rising steadily.
- All four updates this year have been delivered on-time to customer population.
- Reasons Dave is optimistic (but realistic) about 2009: (1) shift to SaaS gaining momentum; (2) Workday is financially stable; (3) dedicated focus on customers’ continued success; (4) experienced management team; and finally (5) customers, who are the best salespeople Workday has (seems Workday truly understands the power of word-of-mouth).
Aneel Bhusri
- Headcount has enjoyed an amazing growth from 141 to 319 since 2007’s Workday Rising conference.
- Heavy staffing within the development ranks, which differs from other SaaS players and legacy app vendors.
- Huge investment in Quality Assurance, which is the fastest-growing part of the company.
- Workday had a fantastic year from press and analysts.
- Four main technology drivers for Workday: (1) cloud computing moves into megatrend status; (2) mobile phones (thanks to iPhone, BlackBerry Storm) are finally ready for enterprise apps; (3) user interface evolution; (4) social networking – it’s not just for kids anymore. (Facebook’s fastest-growing user demographic is 35-54 year olds. Who knew?)
- Aneel optimistic about 2009 because: (1) cloud computing is bigger than just SaaS; (2) technology initiatives open brand-new frontiers; (3) Workday is close to reaching functional parity with legacy apps; and (4) customers.
These are just rough notes; there was so much good information dumped on us that I couldn’t record it all. The customers were thrilled about the company’s continued investments and clarity of direction, and Workday, in return, was clearly thrilled to have such plugged-in, progressive customers. It’s a symbiotic ecosystem all the way around.
It was great stuff, and coming on the heels of Dreamforce, it’s becoming downright impossible to be a SaaS naysayer with a straight face. All day long I met with clients who were running Workday’s HR app and were considering its Financials. And let me tell you: once Workday cracks the Financials code, it will be a brand new wave of validation for the SaaS model as it relates to mission-critical enterprise app functionality. To me, that’s the big tipping point.
Questions, comments? I’d love to hear them.
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Wow, seems like good news out of Workday. With all the doom and gloom all around it’s nice to see that they are firmly facing into the wind. I’m looking forward to see what the next year brings for the new apps mentioned and the next gen of cloud computing.
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