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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