Welcome to the Cloud Wars Minute — your daily cloud news and commentary show. Each episode provides insights and perspectives around the “reimagination machine” that is the cloud.
In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I take a look at how Workday is prioritizing quality over quantity in the emerging race to deploy agentic AI solutions.
Highlights
00:24 — Agentic AI is going to give businesses a remarkable level of innovation around the processes they use, how those processes run, and the ability to unleash their human workforce to do higher-value work, while the digital workforce, represented by agents — AI agents — handles more of the basic stuff.
01:04 — Workday stands out because while others are talking many dozens, or hundreds, or thousands of AI agents, Workday is keeping its sights very low. They’re talking about eight AI agents: four they introduced last year, four this year.
AI Agent & Copilot Summit is an AI-first event to define opportunities, impact, and outcomes with Microsoft Copilot and agents. Building on its 2025 success, the 2026 event takes place March 17-19 in San Diego. Get more details.
02:38 — At a recent Workday event for industry analysts, it met the CIO of the University of Florida, a terrific guy. He said, “You know, we could go out and do a few dozen AI agent projects. What we really want to make sure of is that we get a couple in, get them working really well, and win the confidence of everybody across that enormous organization.”
03:41 — It has nothing to do with Workday not being bullish about AI. Quite the opposite. Co-founder and Chairman Aneel Bhusri at this recent Workday Innovation Summit said that AI is the most consequential technology ever.
04:22 — It believes customers want a small number to get the kinks worked out, ensure that their data estates are equipped to handle agents, work with them on all the governance, security, and so forth to get that worked out. So, an interesting case here: Workday standing out and making a strong stance for being a little more restrained on the agentic AI boom.
