During Workday Rising, Workday showed itself from a completely different angle. Previously, it was a quiet, reliable SaaS provider of HR and finance software. That quietness is gone; Workday wants to compete at the highest level. Workday is becoming a platform with an Agent System of Records. It is rapidly making acquisitions, bringing in a lot of new talent, and the ambition is flying around. Is this feasible, or are they being too ambitious?
If we are to believe Carl Eschenbach (CEO) and Peter Bailis (CTO) of Workday, Workday will become the platform and application interface of the future for every employee. Today’s platform companies, such as SAP, Salesforce, and ServiceNow, have been warned because Workday is coming.
In the video above, we grill Workday’s CTO about their strategy. This article is also based on that interview. This video is also available as a podcast. Subscribe to Techzine Talks on Tour.
Agent System of Records
Bailis argues that Workday is best positioned to become the enterprise AI platform. Simply because it is already the system of records for people. The logical extension of this is the Agent System of Records. Workday already keeps track of who works in the company, in which department, who their manager is, their entire employment history, their job title, and their performance reviews.
The logical next step is to add AI agents to this. Which agent is it, which team is it part of, who is the agent’s manager, how do people rate this AI agent, what permissions and rights does the agent have, and so on. The AI agents are also included in the HR system as virtual employees and are also evaluated.
Identity providers, such as Okta and soon Entra ID, already use Workday to verify whether an employee is still employed, which department they are part of, and which groups and rights belong to them. Workday wants to continue this line of thinking for AI agents, so that they also receive the correct permissions and rights.
It is a good idea to control the rights and access that AI agents have, as well as which employees have access to which agent. Technically, Workday can do this within its own platform, but it is difficult on third-party platforms. Bailis expects that there will be more standards for AI agents in the near future. We already have the MCP and A2A protocol for agents to communicate with each other, but that is not enough.
Acquisitions to develop the platform
Workday has made several acquisitions to expand its platform. As mentioned, the company is very ambitious and wants to become the standard platform for enterprise organizations. For example, Workday has acquired Flowise, an open-source low-code platform that makes it easy to build AI agents and apps. The platform will remain open-source and available in its current form, but Workday will utilize the technology to further develop it’s platform. It is therefore to be expected that Flowise will provide the technology stack that will enable organizations to quickly and easily build apps on the Workday platform.
During Rising, Workday announced the first tools for building AI agents and apps with Workday Build. However, we have been told that this is only the beginning.
SANA
Workday also announced at Rising that it has acquired SANA, a Swedish company that offers a number of essential tools that every platform needs. First of all, enterprise search, which makes it possible to search through all kinds of different data sources that many organizations use, such as SharePoint, OneDrive, Confluent, Asana, Slack, Box, Salesforce, and the like. It also has a knowledge management system that allows employees to easily convert company information into simple courses and slideshows.
According to Bailis, the most essential part of SANA is the user interface for AI. That is clearly the reason why Workday has paid $1.1 billion dollars for the company. It is a modern, simple interface for interacting with AI. For non-technical users, SANA is the perfect tool for using AI. Bailis has high expectations for SANA and believes that with this user interface, it can become the platform of choice.
David vs. Goliath
Although there is clearly a new wind blowing at Workday, and the enthusiasm and ambition are quite contagious, we are critical of what Workday wants to achieve. It’s a bit like David vs. Goliath. The competition that Workday is now seeking out involves players that are five times larger and are also innovating at a rapid pace.
Nevertheless, Bailis is convinced that the way the development teams are organized at Workday, they can make the difference. They are small, efficient teams that all actively use AI during development. Bailis has only been with Workday for four months, and in week two, he equipped all developers with Cursor AI, an AI-powered IDE. This has made development many times faster than in recent years. Furthermore, he responds to our criticism by saying that, according to that theory, all startups would be doomed from the start, which is, of course, not the case.
Primary vs. secondary platform
We believe that large organizations will make choices about which AI platform they want to use primarily to develop their own AI agents. However, we believe that this choice will be driven by the most primary platform within the organization. A manufacturer that works extensively with SAP S4HANA will build its agents on SAP, a sales and service organization will be more likely to choose Salesforce, and an organization that has been developing workflows in ServiceNow for ten years will want to stay there to accelerate its existing automation with AI.
In that respect, we think Workday is more in the second row. HR and Finance are a core part of any organization; you can’t do without them, but they are not what the business revolves around. They are support services that enable an organization. Making them your primary AI platform doesn’t make sense to us.
Workday disagrees. Both Eschenbach and Bailis believe it is indeed possible. Bailis points in particular to the future interface for work that he wants to build with SANA. According to him, Workday is wall-to-wall in the organization. Every employee has access to Workday, and if you add the right storefront for AI, things can move very quickly. We’ll have to wait and see, because we’re not there yet. The SANA acquisition still needs to be finalized. Next year, we’ll see the first SANA integrations in Workday, and then we’ll find out who’s right.
Workday’s strong portfolio of AI agents for HR and Finance
Whether or not Workday becomes the largest platform, it maintains a strong position in the areas where it has been active for years. During Rising, dozens of new agents were announced that will make the work of HR and finance employees easier. Workday is investing heavily in the development of high-quality AI agents that can take on complex tasks.
It is also becoming increasingly easier for organizations to utilize data from Workday and integrate it into other business processes and third-party solutions. We had a good conversation with the CEO about this.
Read also: Workday CEO acknowledges integration errors and announces open platform
We also spoke with Workday’s Global CTO, Joe Wilson, about the product developments and announcements during Workday Rising. You can watch that conversation below: