Workday

Founded in 2005, Workday was among the early cloud-technology companies in the SaaS applications industry spawned by Salesforce and NetSuite. With an annualized run rate of about $4 billion, Workday has become a powerhouse in the HCM business, while building a significant business for Financials applications as well. Co-founders Dave Duffield and Aneel Bhusri have always pushed emerging technologies into Workday’s products, both to deliver increased value to customers and to differentiate Workday from its two primary and much larger competitors: Oracle and SAP. At #8 on the Cloud Wars Top 10, Workday has grown rapidly because of its ability to pull off a difficult combination: first, win significant deals with huge global corporations, and then help those clients executive successful go-lives that quickly show significant new value. Bhusri was the first cloud-industry CEO that I heard speak passionately about the essential primacy of customer success and customer experience. While that’s now standard messaging, it’s been an indispensable element of Workday’s culture and business since its founding.

Workday’s cloud services

While Workday has developed a broad set of core PaaS services and has a number of customers doing beta-testing on the Workday Platform for extending and developing applications, the company at this time remains overwhelmingly a SaaS provider with Financials, HCM, Adaptive Insights Business Planning and Prism Analytics. All of Workday’s applications include the latest ML technologies as part of Workday’s commitment to advanced technology to prepare its customers for the future.

Why Workday has earned a spot in the Cloud Wars Top 10

Workday’s commitment to driving great success and experiences for its customers has allowed it to compete aggressively against much-larger competitors while establishing new models for customer-centered software development, sales and support. It is well-positioned to continue growing at above-average levels for years to come.