Workday卧薪尝胆，甲骨文严阵以待

    商业领域的反击往往干脆而迅速。比如，业绩欠佳的公司首席执行官会突然惨遭解雇。然而人力资源软件开发商Workday却是一个“文火慢熬”的例子。

    Workday于2005年由联合首席执行官安尼尔•布斯里和戴夫•达菲尔德一手创建。该公司开发的人力资源软件不仅可以分析员工成本，还能管理员工薪水。几年来，这家公司发展迅猛，营业收入已达上亿美元，而且数次实现盈利。成长过程中，Workday需要与强大的竞争对手甲骨文（Oracle）和SAP展开“厮杀”。此外，它的成功在某种程度上不啻为一记重拳，有力地回击了几年前的一系列颇具戏剧化的事件，而正是这些事情才催生了它的问世。

    2004年，布斯里和达菲尔德还在执掌另一家人力资源软件机构仁科公司（PeopleSoft）。彼时，甲骨文（Oracle）的老板拉里•艾里森欲以100亿美元的高价恶意收购仁科，公司的独立董事们纷纷屈从于其“淫威”。迫不得已，布斯里和达菲尔德很快便离开了这家自己亲手创建的公司。不到一年之后，为了帮助遭到解雇的前仁科员工，这两位动用自己的资金成立了Workday。达菲尔德拿出从出售仁科获得的6亿美元中拿出了1,000万美元，，而布斯里和格雷洛克风险投资公司（Greylock Ventures）提供了余下的部分，启动了Workday。

    仁科诞生之时，正赶上许多商业应用从大型机平台转向个人计算机。数年后，Workday的目标没变，但是其软件并非运行于客户机房的计算机上，而是远程运行于部署在客户公司以外的服务器上。他们坚信，下一次软件大迁徙将是从个人计算机转向云端；而且，他们自己打造的“软件作为服务（SaaS）”总将成就一番事业——只要它能提供有竞争力的用户体验，让用户少付钱却能获得更多的软件升级。企业级软件一向背负着更新换代速度慢如蜗牛的恶名，他们预测，10年内，企业市场对上述软件的需求将飞速增长。

    说的一点不错。约翰•伍基说：“我认为，云计算是一个伟大的创新：我们坚信云将是正确的部署模式。”他是Salesforce.com的高级应用执行副总裁，亦曾在甲骨文和SAP担任高管。Salesforce.com是企业级软件领域另一家颠覆传统的公司，也采用依托于云的软件部署模式。去年，该公司宣布与Workday建立合作伙伴关系，试图将其自己的社交网络Chatter等特性与Workday的软件进行绑定。

    目前，Workday为近300家企业提供服务，客户包括AAA公司、英杰华集团（Aviva）、金吉达公司（Chiquita）、以及《财富》杂志（Fortune'）的母公司时代华纳集团（Time Warner）等。2010年，该公司营业额为1.6亿美元；2011年，它预计营业额至少会翻番，达到3.2亿美元。市场研究机构弗雷斯特研究公司（Forrester）的分析师保罗•哈默曼估计，现在，这家公司的用户群年增长速度已经接近100%，其中约半数的客户都来自甲骨文或者SAP等竞争对手。同时，布斯里曾透露，Workday有可能于今年底上市。但公司发言人则拒绝对此发表评论。

    In business, revenge is often swift. Take the sudden firing of a poorly performing CEO, for instance. In the case of Workday, it's been more of a slow-burn.

    Founded in 2005 by co-CEOs Aneel Bhusri and Dave Duffield, Workday offers human resources software that can analyze workforce costs and manage staff pay. In a few years, the company has surged and generated hundreds of millions in revenues and has at times been profitable. In the process, Workday has found itself rivaling much larger firms Oracle (ORCL) and SAP (SAP). And, that success has been retribution of sorts for the cinematic events that led to the company's founding.

    In 2004, Bhusri and Duffield were at the helm of another human resources software firm, PeopleSoft. When Oracle chief Larry Ellison made a hostile $10 billion takeover bid, PeopleSoft's independent board members capitulated. Disenchanted, Bhusri and Duffield left the company they had built soon after. Less than a year later, they used their own money, including $10 million of the $600 million Duffield received from the buyout and additional funds from Bhusri and Greylock Ventures, to help laid-off PeopleSoft employees and jumpstart Workday.

    PeopleSoft had come along when many business applications were migrating from running off of large mainframe computers to personal computers. Years later, Workday had similar aims, but instead of having the software run on machines housed at a customer's location, it would operate from remote, off-site servers. They believed the next great software migration would be from PCs to the cloud, and that their so-called "software as a service" could take off so long as it offered a comparable user experience, with more frequent software updates, for less cash. They predicted that demand for such software in the notoriously slow-moving enterprise side of software would skyrocket in 10 years' time.

    They were right. "I think that was a big innovation: the belief that the cloud was the right deployment model," says John Wookey, executive vice president of advanced applications at Salesforce.com (CRM) and a former Oracle and SAP executive. Salesforce.com, another disruptive company in the enterprise software space with a cloud-based model, announced a partnership with Workday last year, tying together features like its private social network Chatter with Workday's software.

    Workday currently serves nearly 300 businesses including AAA, Aviva (AV), Chiquita (CQB), and Fortune's parent company Time Warner (TWX). In 2010, the company reported $160 million in billings, and in 2011, it anticipated at least doubling that to $320 million. Forrester (FORR) analyst Paul Hamerman estimates the company's user base is now growing nearly 100% year-over-year, with half of those clients likely coming from competitors like Oracle or SAP. Bhusri has said the company could go public by the end of the year. A spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.