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Another $75m Poured into Cloud Computing Start-Up

Industry analyst Amy Wohl says she expects Workday "to be the new SAP eventually"
By Maureen O'Gara
Article Rating:
May 4, 2009 10:45 PM EDT
Reads:
 2,791

Workday, PeopleSoft founder Dave Duffield's latest company, has just gotten another $75 million in funding, a sum that would bring its total to more than $150 million and must make it the most royally financed SaaS venture on the face of the earth.

The new money, Workday's fifth round, came from New Enterprise Associates as well as existing investors Greylock Partners and Duffield himself.



The company, which rents out enterprise-class HR and financial software online, means to spend it extending its product portfolio and supporting its market expansion.

To push that market expansion Workday has named Clark Newby VP of marketing. Newby was plucked out of the same job at Fortify Software. It's a job he did for PolyServe before it was acquired by HP. He's been in marketing through stints at Mercury Interactive, Kintana and the old SGI.

Industry analyst Amy Wohl says she expects Workday "to be the new SAP eventually."

The company, started in 2005 after PeopleSoft went unwillingly to Oracle for $10.3 billion, has so far collected 80 customers, from mid-sized organizations to global Fortune 500 businesses like Chiquita Brands and its bananas. Some of them ripped out their PeopleSoft installations to go with Workday.

The start-up should break even in 18 months and told the New York Times it wants to IPO.

Presumably in two-three years, when Workday should be ready, Wall Street's appetite for IPOs will have returned.

Workday revenues have doubled to $50 million and the company is expanding to Europe.

Workday competes against the Larry Ellison-funded NetSuite, which burned through around $125 million before going public, as well of course as the old guard.

Duffield remains Workday's major stockholder so any repeat of an Oracle takeover is pretty dim.

Published May 4, 2009 – Reads 2,791
Copyright © 2009 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
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More Stories By Maureen O'Gara

Maureen O'Gara the most read technology reporter for the past 20 years, is the Cloud Computing and Virtualization News Desk editor of SYS-CON Media. She is the publisher of famous "Billygrams" and the editor-in-chief of "Client/Server News" for more than a decade. One of the most respected technology reporters in the business, Maureen can be reached by email at maureen(at)sys-con.com or paperboy(at)g2news.com, and by phone at 516 759-7025.

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