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In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I recap key developments from Workday Rising.
Highlights
00:11 — Recently, at Workday Rising, there was a combination built around massive opportunities in the AI era, focusing on M&A, new agents, key partnerships, and a greater emphasis on the AI work Workday has been doing over the last 10 or 12 years. It has pulled all of that together into Illuminate AI, the master brand for all its AI initiatives across its apps, solutions, and platform.
00:59 — Another big development was the rollout of four new agents across key areas in HR and finance. Regarding Salesforce, we’ve talked about the unified data sets that allow customers to use agents to access both Salesforce and Workday data and automate processes. Then there’s the Equifax partnership and the acquisition of Evisort, an AI-native document intelligence platform.
02:37 — Aneel Bhusri said in his keynote that he and co-founder Dave Duffield wanted to start a technology company. He said, “We’ve been in AI and machine learning, doing a lot of this research, for a long time.” Illuminate AI, now as a new brand, and this full set of capabilities, gives Workday a master brand identity across all its AI efforts, which I think is very important.
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03:17 — Workday, which has never been known for bragging about what it’s doing, was a little more assertive this time. It’s going to be bigger and more bullish in the AI agents field, partnerships, and unlocking new value for customers. The ecosystem is expanding, with ongoing M&A activity. It’s not making giant deals, but it’s picking off some very interesting companies.
04:12 — Aneel Bhusri presented a Lifetime Customer Achievement Award to Dave Smoley, former Flextronics CIO, Workday’s first big customer. Dave went from Flextronics to AstraZeneca, where he also worked with Workday. After that, to Apple, where he also worked with Workday. It was a celebration of bold new initiatives and customer recognition, a big part of what Workday does.
