#CXOTALK: Workday CEO explains his top priorities
Workday is one of the few pure software-as-a-service vendors operating at large enterprise scale. The company’s products fall into two broad categories: human capital management and financials. Both HCM and financials are backbone applications used by every large organization, and Workday’s customers are among the biggest companies in the world. During a conversation with Workday’s […]
Future of SAP and SuccessFactors Consulting 2016 – SAP HCM (Part 1)
It has been another very eventful year in HR Technology and last year at this time, a group of friends and I collaborated to write The Future of SAP HCM and SuccessFactors Consulting – 2015. This year we will be splitting the report into a three-part series with Future of SuccessFactors Consulting – Core HR, […]
Building the Cult of You
You may have noticed LinkedIn recently made its largest acquisition so far, of Lynda.com for $1.5 billion. If you haven’t heard of Lynda.com, it’s a SaaS / subscription service for training and e-learning. One thing to note is who its co-founder is: Lynda Weinman. The Wall Street Journal called her “the mother of the Internet.” […]
Is 5x the New 2x in SaaS?
Back in 2012, when the SaaStr audience was about 1/30th of what it is today, I wrote a post that a lot of folks didn’t like: ”Workday is Growing 90% this Year. At $250m in ARR. So Wake Up: You Probably Need to Do A Lot, Lot Better.“ In fact, it was the first post […]
Workday: Linking technology design and user experience
Workday is among the most high-profile examples of a new breed of enterprise software, based completely in the cloud. Started by Dave Duffield and Aneel Bhusri, who led PeopleSoft prior to the acquisition by Oracle, Workday is now a public company. As part of the CxOTalk series of conversations with innovators, we spoke with Workday’s Chief Technology Officer, Stan […]
Can an 8-Person StartUp Sell to a CIO? Yes — If You Understand The Social Contract.
Recently Erick Schonfeld was kind enough to invite me to the DEMO conference to both serve as an Enterprise panel judge, and also to join a panel with 3 esteemed CIOs on how to Sell to Enterprise CIOs. I was the Start-Up Guy on the Panel. You can see the whole session below, with the […]
The Rise of the Cloud Stack
Something changed this week in the enterprise software world. In an industry known for ruthless competition, a number of players – Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce and NetSuite – introduced partnerships that portend a very different future. In very un-Larry Ellison-like fashion, something akin to harmony was proposed, “when customers choose cloud applications, they expect rapid low-cost […]
Hyperaggresiveness … Can You Do It?
Recently I’ve met with several of my friends who are moving on, or have moved on, to their next SaaS company after some real success in their first one. SaaS 3.0 entrepreneurs, I guess. They all have some measure of initial success in their next venture. To me, given their backgrounds, and their ability to […]
You Really Don’t Know if Your Market is Too Small For Quite a While
One of the things that causes a lot of anxiety in SaaS is market size. If you’re creating the latest Pinning app, or Social Network, the odds are surely against you. But in consumer internet, often you know if you hit it, however low the odds are, at least the market is huge (or at […]
Conference Report: Workday Rising
Last week I attended the analyst event organized along with Workday Rising 2012 conference. Workday Rising is Workday’s (previous CloudAve coverage)(Disclosure: Workday is the sponsor of CloudAve and this is my own personal opinion but they paid for my travel and stay) user conference and it was their attempt to interact closely with their customers […]
SAP and SuccessFactors – Proven Integration is Hype
Early last month I wrote The Real Truth about SAP and SuccessFactors Integration to try to clear up some of the confusion in the marketplace. To my surprise I had several SAP customers reach out telling me they were very surprised at my article as it contradicted the message they were getting directly from SAP. These customers […]
Workday Launches Version 18 – Quick Analysis
At the Workday Rising event being held in Las Vegas this week, Workday announced the latest version of its product, on top of which they held an analyst/influcner day that I was following remotely. I’ve got a few thoughts about the analyst day but first a recap of the news.
Workday is Growing 90% this Year. At $250m in ARR. So Wake Up: You Probably Need to Do A Lot, Lot Better.
The thing is, what you really have to ask yourself, if you are growing less than 100-150% YoY — all the way to $100m in ARR — is the market just too small? Or if not — am I just not well enough positioned in the market?
A Pictorial Tale of Two Conferences (and more)
Recently I’ve attended two conferences two weeks apart in San Francisco, and the difference in style is shocking. One did not even feel like a conference, rather a Festival – Woodstock, Mardi Gras, SXSW – your pick:-) The other a decidedly more “closed” traditional corporate conference, so much so, that fellow commentators actually compared it […]
The Workday IPO and ‘F You Money
The other day, a VC asked me about a founder he was thinking of investing in. He asked me if this founder had, quote, ‘F You Money. {I learned how this was spelled when a Businessweek article this week used the term, btw}. I wasn’t really sure if he meant this as a negative, but […]
