Cloud Wars CEO Outlook 2025 with Workday's Carl Eschenbach

AI Adoption and Business Value


Eschenbach explains that there's been a shift from experimental
AI phases to practical implementation. The shift means that
"customers are going to look to go to trusted partners, partners
they have an existing relationship with, partners that they know
have a highly curated set of data." Workday has such a curated
data set. Further, as part of the shift, there's now a need for
ROI and total cost of ownership analysis in AI investments.


CEO Priorities for 2025 


AI, enterprise consolidation, and talent are Eschenbach's key
priorities for 2025. When it comes to talent, he says CEOs and
other leaders need to think about how "that talent is going to
ultimately peacefully coexist with AI and things like agents in
the future." He also discusses Workday's AI mindset — it's not
just about delivering it to customers but also successfully
integrating AI internally — along with AI's role in driving
productivity. Customers are looking to do "more with less." They
want to consolidate point solutions onto more comprehensive
platforms like Workday.


AI Deployment and Talent Integration 


CEOs should foster an AI-first culture. Eschenbach provides
examples of AI use cases, such as job description automation and
recruiter agents, showcasing the tangible ROI and productivity
gains in HR and finance. Integrating AI with existing talent
helps drive business benefits.


Competitive Advantages and Market Position 


Workday's success stems from its technology, large client base,
and on-time delivery. "Our customers have greater than a 95%
on-time delivery of the Workday platform and on budget,"
Eschenbach points out "We know how to deploy this at scale across
the biggest companies in the world, which gives us a leg up
versus our competition, who, at times, have very complex data
sets and environments and can't implement at the speed and pace
and at the dollar value that a Workday can." Other Workday
attributes include its platform's open architecture, as well as
its strong company culture and high levels of employee
engagement.


Partner Growth and International Expansion 


Eschenbach reports significant growth in the partner community
and its impact on business. "Historically, we've had really good
partners . . . 10% of our new business in New ACV [annual
contract value] last quarter came from our partners. Our partners
are having a meaningful impact on our business. We have grown our
partner community by five times in 18 months." He speaks about
the focus on selling through hyperscalers and forming strategic
partnerships, as well as the potential in international markets
and continued investments in new sectors, such as the U.S.
federal market.


Data Set and AI Partnerships 


"We're opening up the aperture," Escenbach says, explaining how
Workday is tackling AI. "We're thinking about AI in multiple
ways." Curated data is essential for AI tools. Eschenbach
discusses the Workday platform's integration with Slack and
Microsoft to enable agent-to-agent communication, underscoring
that data is important in powering AI tools and delivering
customer benefits.


Innovation and External Concerns


In the face of the potential impact of global macro situations,
there's a need to stay focused on innovation."We focus on
innovation, and we focus on each other here inside the building
and our workmates, and we continue to support our partner
ecosystem on a global basis. So while there are some concerns out
there, if you focus too much on them, it's a distraction."


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