News Analysis: Workday Wins Largest SaaS ERP Deal

Announced today, Workday's big win at Flextronics further bolsters the thesis that SaaS is more than just CRM and SMB. The 200,000 seat implementation for Flextronics and the 26,000 employee deal at Chiquita demystify the notion that SaaS ERP can not be successful.
Key points why 40 clients have considered WorkDay include:

  • SaaS model - Quick deployment, no data center to manage, and subscription pricing drive the case for this deployment option.
  • Web 2.0 level usability - User experiences are clean, elegant, and allow for a high degree of user configurability at the metadata level.
  • Strong HCM focus - WorkDay expands where PeopleSoft left off. Signature features include pre-developed interfaces that link their HCM with a growing network of employee benefits providers and deep HCM expertise.


The bottom line

On the journey towards cloud computing, the interim steps will be hosting and SaaS. As virtualizaton improves, we may find ourselves strangely back full circle to fully distributed computing models like the main frames of yester-year.