SaaS moves to enterprise as Workday wins 200,000 users
According to InformationWeek, “On-demand software startup Workday has clinched its biggest deal yet — and the largest known in the software industry — to provide an electronics company with a human-capital management software service for 200,000 employees. It’s the strongest proof yet that large companies have started to embrace the software-as-a-service delivery model.”
This is pretty interesting as its (a) ERP software that we are talking about (and not the popular CRM or collaboration) (b) its a large enterprise deal (and not small businesses) and (c) Workday beat SAP and Oracle to the deal.
A recent SearchCIO-Midmarket.com survey found that although 22% of CIOs plan to purchase an ERP system this year, only 9% of those plan on a SaaS product and 15% plan on a hosted product. A full 52% plan to use a traditional on-premise product and the rest selected “I don’t know.”
Though, ERP is tightly integrated into the business process its much harder for companies to move to an on-demand model. Common concerns are integration, security, lack of customization, business critical information hosted remotely. Though, this deal puts these to rest. Sooner or later, businesses will have to move to the on-demand model - why bother about data centers, development, integration, etc. when you can cut cost, pick someone else’s brain and focus on the things that you do best!
Its amazing to see a startup come this far. I attended Workday’s presentation by Dave Duffield & Aneel Bhusri at last years (2007) SaaSCon in Santa Clara, California.
