20 industry analysts/pundits were invited today to a special technology briefing by Workday. Herewith are my highlights from the morning half of this event:
- The Workday target customer is clearly the SAP and Oracle install base. Workday is targeting large enterprises with its SaaS, multi-tenant products. Aneel Bhusri, the Co-CEO of Workday, intimated that the gloves will be coming off as early as next month. Specifically, Workday sees the ‘cloud’ messages of many ERP vendors to be confusing to the marketplace. Frankly, I’d agree that there’s a lot of confusion out there so much so that I coined a term months ago in a blog: SaaS-querade.
- Workday will not be delivering a PaaS (platform-as-a-Service) that customers or integrators will be able to use to develop complementary applications. Workday appears to be quite comfortable as an applications vendor and not a platform provider. Note that Workday has a close relationship with Salesforce.com (specifically with its CRM cloud app) and its founder Marc Benioff. It appears that Workday will not develop its own CRM solution.
- Workday will not be going into the manufacturing applications software space for the foreseeable future. Aneel indicated that this was a challenge when he was at PeopleSoft and wouldn’t rush to repeat this at Workday.
- Workday is contractually obligated to bring an additional cloud center up by the first of the year. They currently have one center today and a recovery center.
- Workday will likely enter Australia later in 2010. The next expansion wave will likely occur in Japan, Korea, Germany, France, Scandinavia and India. The key to opening new markets will the presence of large numbers of Multi-National Companies (MNCs) within a geography.
- The company has just closed its first higher-education client.
- Workday execs indicated the firm has seen a new level of interest from systems integrators. Three of the world’s largest integrators have recently seen their proposals to implement on-premise ERP solutions fail to win with clients. Clients want new methods, new approaches, lower cost implementations, etc. SaaS solutions will require systems integrators to re-invent themselves in the age of the cloud and multi-tenancy. Two of the three referenced integrators have apparently seen the light and are discussing new relationships with Workday.
- Workday has come close to developing a couple of SaaS BPO deals with third parties.
More later.
Brian is currently CEO of TechVentive, a strategy consultancy serving technology providers and other firms. He is also a research analyst with Vital Analysis.
Disclosure
Brian Sommer
I am co-owner of TechVentive, Inc. The company has been engaged on numerous consulting engagements, often for technology firms, service firms and litigators. As a general rule, I do not write about current clients of TechVentive. Should that occur, I will note this in blogs. Readers should assume that I have had client relationships with many ERP and other technology providers. Some of these relationships may be quite small and short-lived while others more significant.
One of TechVentive's business units publishes research reports about technology providers. As a result, this business receives small amounts of revenues from a wide variety of software firms, software buyers and others when they purchase copies of reports. Some firms do secure reprint rights to these reports. None of these purchases, individually, represents a significant amount of total revenue for me and the nature of it is hard to predict where it will come from. I also provide some marketing strategy and/or market segmentation work for software firms as I have developed a unique database that segments the largest 4000+ technology buyers in the world. Many technology firms periodically engage me for unique views into this database for future marketing campaigns. I do not blog about these efforts and do not blog about client firms while they are active clients unless some pressing news story erupts. If that event occurs, I will indicate any perceived or real conflict of interest.
Occasionally, I will develop unique intellectual property pieces for technology or service providers. If I should blog about a vendor with whom I have recently developed a special information product, I will note this in a blog to avoid any appearance, real or unintended, of bias.
For the most part, I have no investments in technology firms. While I've been offered friends and family stock and other inducements in the past, I have steadfastly refused these. I used to be a partner with Andersen Consulting and had no ownership stake in the firm for many years. I frequently refer to this in my blogs and do not hide my prior association with the company. I did purchase a few shares of Accenture and Cognizant stock in late - 2008. I have sold some of those positions in late 2009.
Readers should assume that most software conferences that I write about involved some measure of fees waived and/or travel reimbursement. I do not charge vendors to attend these events nor will I accept payment for same. I do get reimbursed for many speaking engagements. I generally note at the end of blogs whether the vendor reimbursed me for travel expenses. Generally, this includes airfare and hotel. I do not request, receive nor accept travel perks such as first class airfare.
Biography
Brian Sommer
Brian is in a unique position to diagnosis the winners and the losers in technology and services. He was the longest running (10 years) and most senior director of Andersen Consulting's (now Accenture's) global Software Intelligence unit - a position that required him to pick the best possible software solutions for hundreds of clients globally. He advised the firm on ERP software market forecasts and helped establish manpower planning estimates by vendor for deployment globally.
Brian continues to remain close to technology buyers and sellers. When he left Andersen Consulting, he co-created a dot-com with blogger and former arch-enemy at Price Waterhouse, Vinnie Mirchandani. That firm helped broker efficient services contracts between software buyers and systems integrators. Since then, he's created TechVentive, Inc. - a company that helps technology firms better understand their markets - and Vital Analysis - the research and publishing arm of TechVentive.
Brian still travels the world and publishes an impressive number of articles, research reports and blog posts annually to help software and services buyers make better business decisions. He can be reached at: brian @ vitalanalysis.com
