Workday Jumps Into ERP Powered by Agents + AI

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I look at Workday’s bold pivot into the ERP market — after 20 years of steering clear.

Highlights

00:14 — Workday has been having a lively week here in San Francisco at its big Rising event. But I think the biggest news here is that Workday says that after 20 years of saying, "Hey, we don't do ERP," now Workday’s going into the ERP market. But they say it's ERP for the AI Era, it's going to be powered by agents and AI.

01:05 — It introduced a fleet of new agents that will become available later this year or into 2026. Workday introduced its own Data Cloud. Workday is striving, it said, to be the most open platform company, the most open agents-and-applications company. They're applying more AI into all parts of their core platform and their existing applications.

01:59 — They're making it easier for developers to jump into this new AI and ERP world, where they are leveraging very aggressively 20 years of HR and financial data. And of course, now, with their Agent System of Record, Workday says it can not only help you manage your people and your money, but also your agents. So again, all of this is bound into their new approach to ERP.

03:06 — Now, Snowflake calls itself the AI Data Cloud. It's had a partnership with Workday. It's expanded that so Snowflake users can easily access all their Workday data and vice versa. Workday will make it as easy as possible for customers to take full advantage of its data, to tie processes together, to get agents to work together in seamless ways, and more.

04:06 — It's always been moving in this direction, but with its full embrace now of ERP, rather than in the past, when it either tried to pretend ERP didn't exist, or that it was above that, and they were leaving that to what they always referred to as the legacy players, or the dinosaurs.

05:00 — The good news is, with all of this, ERP continues to be — in its new modular form — agent-driven. It continues to be an essential force for companies to run their businesses as well. Glad to see Workday get into this. The competition is going to be great for Workday. It's going to be great for its competitors.

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