The first WorkDay: Monday

Former PeopleSoft head Dave Duffield will release his software startup Workday only on Monday, but it hasn’t kept industry media from buzzing about the launch since Friday morning. Heck, for months, really. Maybe years.

Back in 2003, Duffield, Aneel Bhusri and others who would form the core group of Workday defected from PeopleSoft in order to produce ASP ERP software. According to the blogger over at Systematic HR, “From various sources, it seems that Dave may have seen the Oracle writing on the wall. He was already heading towards doing an ASP ERP as the future of PeopleSoft, but seeing a possible acquisition attempt, he may have wanted to keep this venture under his control. Therefore he spun it off.”

What the unknown blogger (someday, there will certainly be a Tomb Of The Unknown Blogger) is referring to is, of course, another subsuming of a software firm by the monster known as Oracle. Softwarezilla consumed the company in March 2005. Originally (and audaciously) called DavesNextMove.com, the embryonic Workday.com was founded the same month.

Eighteen months down the road, the end result of Duffield’s efforts will be made available Monday at workday.com or, as Computing UK would have it, will “come out of stealth mode.”

The importance of the Workday product is in its originality; Computing, echoing most others weighing in on the matter calls it “a litmus-test for the potential of enterprise applications running online.” Duffield himself has called the business “a new generation of on-demand ERP.” The ERP biggies, i.e. SAP, You Know Who, have yet to release anything resembling the complete on-demand ERP that Duffield and co. are promising.

What exactly is promised? A complete business management service using XML, web services and service-oriented architecture; solutions for finance, procurement, supply-chain planning, and invoicing; solutions “built using the most modern technologies, providing an unparalleled level of agility, ease of use, and integration capabilities.”

Well before the full-on release thing started happening, Duffield came out guns blazing. From the WorkDay homepage: “Enterprise applications were not built for today’s dynamic business environment. They rely on a static and aging data model that was developed more than ten years ago. They are rigid, inflexible, and built with yesterday’s technology. Customers are forced to make large upfront investments for software, hardware, middleware, database and professional services, and then suffer through elongated implementations and complex, costly upgrades.” Duffield and the WorkDay guys are promising to change all that.

The opinions of insiders, competitors and commentators regarding Duffield’s odds of bringing off success with this venture, naturally, vary. The prism of opinion isn’t very wide on Duffield, however, and it seems that at least some success is expected due Duffield’s nice connections and his swell treatment of employees.

The Computing UK piece contains lots of good quotes; NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson was particularly effusive, saying “Given Dave Duffield’s deep knowledge of the HR space, they will have good insight as to how to apply a software-as-a-service model to the HR problem … The biggest challenge they will have will be the length of time it will take for them to build a complete solution.”

The Systematic HR guy predicted that “it will be about five years before WorkDay gets to that kind of market penetration. However, there are ex-PeopleSoft employees standing in line to go back to work for Dave. (As solid proof, the WorkDay staff currently consists of 35 employees. Twenty-five of these were formerly employed at PeopleSoft.) “Dave has an incredible network of software CEOs that are committed to his success. He has an abundance of potential partnerships that he can use to hook up ancilliary software modules to WorkDay.”

In anticipation of the grand opening, TypePad’s own “The Ponderings of Woodrow” blog (almost always worth a peek) wrote that, “Long-time industry observers know that Duffield is about as well respected in the industry as you can get. First, he founded a trio of successful companies [Integral Systems, Information Associates, and PeopleSoft]. Second, with each company he drove even greater success. Third, and most importantly, Duffield is beloved by a greate many of his former employees…”

The funniest quote on WorkDay has got to be from Steve Garnett, chairman of Salesforce.com in Europe: “It’s great to see another player joining the business web.” (Seriously, Mr. Garnett, aren’t you just a bit threatened?) Garnett goes on to espouse the Salesforce party line with, “It is further testament to the power of the on-demand multi-tenanted model, reinforcing the fact that organisations around the globe continue to abandon the old model of software licensing to reap the benefits of efficiency, innovation and reduced costs.”

Of course, Garnett has a point here. Most sources believe that Duffield and chums have created WorkDay based on the Salesforce.com model.

Workday’s first suite of hosted services is Workday Human Capital Management. Future offerings include Workday Financial Management, Workday Resource Management and Workday Revenue Management. This threesome of products are slated for 2007 release.

“Workday,” pledges the earnest website, “will provide ongoing support and system upgrades as part of its subscription license, enabling companies to finally get off that costly upgrade treadmill. … Workday is built with a global core to support the governance, compliance, legislative and reporting needs of today’s multinational organization.”

We’ll see. And that’s to be taken literally; few products in the past couple of years (outside anything bearing the Microsoft name, that is) have received this much anticipation. And we can watch, too. On Monday at 1p.m. Eastern Standard Time, Workday will host a webcast to officially kick things off. Hosted by Duffield and Bhusri, the ‘cast will unveil product, customers and partners. To register, click here. (The show number is 310915. For conference audio via telephone, call 1.866.878.8229 and punch in conference code 8605451.)