PeopleSoft founder David A. Duffield is all set to launch a new company called Workday. Duffield called the business 'a new generation of on-demand ERP,' akin to such companies as San Francisco-based Salesforce.com and San Mateo-based NetSuite. He claims the goal of the new company is to replace traditional enterprise resource planning platforms with Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) tools.
Figure 1: David A. Duffield
Workday will take on the ERP market with hosted applications using a subscription-based licensing model. It will offer human capital management applications initially, with finance management tools due next year, and resource management and supply-chain applications to follow. It's a business model that Salesforce.com turned into a fast-growth strategy in CRM, and that software vendors such as Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP have only selectively employed. But the complexity of ERP will likely make this area a tougher sell than salesforce-management and customer information application, he said.
"Not many people in this conservative technology environment dream of starting the next big ERP company," says Bruce Richardson, chief research officer at AMR Research.
Duffield, who describes the hosted applications suite as a 'modern day ERP system' isn't your typical startup CEO. The 66 year old made his fortune already with PeopleSoft, which Oracle bought for USD 10.3 billion, so he was able to invest in the new company alongside USD 15 million in venture capital when he founded it with Aneel Bhusri. For talent, Duffield tapped some ex-PeopleSoft employees, basing his 65-employee company in Walnut Creek, California. The basic technology to build and run Workday's object oriented business services was acquired from former PeopleSoft Chief Architect John Malatesta, who left the software company in 2000 to build the platform, the company said.
But the technology "couldn't have been more complicated," Duffield says. That's where Ken Morris comes in. Morris joined Workday as vice president and chief technology strategist in March 2005 and product development began November 2005. "I knew the technology because he had started a similar project at PeopleSoft know as PeopleTools", Morris says. Though Duffield champions the software-as-a-service vision, he says bringing together people like Morris and Bhusri has been his main contribution. "I believe in people, and I'm willing to take risks," Duffield says. "Ken is the technology visionary, and Aneel the true market and business visionary."
The object-oriented software, which will be hosted in a third-party data center Workday manages, incorporates entities such as 'employee' and business services such as 'hire', which are managed by an object management server. That gives the applications flexibility and allows companies to customise them—something that has been difficult to do with many software-as-service applications. Companies also will be able to integrate Workday applications with other IT systems using XML and Web services, and they'll have built-in data encryption for data privacy and security. An Ajax-based user interface will be more interactive than other on-demand applications, Duffield promises.
Workday also will look to key partners for support. It will launch with integration to Automated Data Processing's payroll service. Next year, customers can expect Workday applications to integrate into Microsoft Office 2007 for Outlook and SharePoint portal, the company said.
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