Workday (WDAY) is a provider of software as a service for human capital management, financial management and big data analytics. It was founded by Aneel Bhursi and Dave Duffield. Bhursi was the chief strategist at PeopleSoft and Duffield was the founder and CEO of PeopleSoft.
Founded in 1987, PeopleSoft initially focused on human resource management and then grew into supply chain management and finance. PeopleSoft grew rapidly to challenge Oracle (ORCL) enterprise resource planning business. It was a classic battle of David vs. Goliath and David was winning.
In 2003, PeopleSoft merged with a smaller rival but a major player in the ERP business, JD Edwards.
In the software business, hostile takeovers are rare because the software business is heavily dependent on the talent and it is difficult to hold the talent after a hostile takeover. Not to be deterred, facing a major challenge to its ERP business from PeopleSoft, in 2003 Oracle launched a hostile bid for PeopleSoft. After a lot of bad blood and a law suit by the Department of Justice against the Oracle bid, Oracle completed the acquisition in December 2004 for approximately $10.3 billion. The bad blood was made worse because the initial offer was $13 billion and right after the acquisition Oracle fired 6,000 of PeopleSoft’s 11,000 employees.
Workday was born in 2005. In October 2012, Workday conducted its IPO, pricing shares at $28. They rocketed to $48.69 on the first day of trading. As of this writing the stock is trading at $111.58.
On Wednesday, Workday reported earnings after the market close. A study of this earnings report and the conference call shows that Workday has reached an inflection point and is now well on its way to becoming a top tier software supplier…Read more at Forbes