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1How the IBM SoftLayer Deal Will Help Workday Grow Its SaaS Business
2Workday Serves Big-Name Companies
3Workday Handles All Financial Facets
4Human Resources Recruiting and Payroll Are Key Components
Since Workday offers financial management tools, it’s perhaps no surprise the company also offers payroll services through the cloud. However, the company takes it a bit further by also handling human resources needs by managing benefits, determining compensation and helping HR professionals keep track of continuing education. It can even perform an analysis to tell companies when there are too many or too few employees.
5Workday Provides Strong Support for Mobile Devices
6A Project Management Tool
7Workday Connects IBM SoftLayer to Millennials
Although it mainly focuses on the enterprise, Workday includes a service for colleges and universities that handles admissions, recruiting, financial aid and student records. That last component is important. IBM, like Workday, is trying to connect with Millennials who are either in the workforce or joining it soon. Getting those people used to Workday’s software could make it easier for Workday to win new business. IBM can benefit by showing SoftLayer’s reliability and potentially sell young professionals on other cloud services when they reach the workforce.
8IBM’s Global Reach Can Help Workday Grow
9Workday Doesn’t Have to Do Business With a Cloud Competitor
Signing a deal with IBM has more benefits for Workday than simply gaining access to a new cloud infrastructure. IBM isn’t a direct competitor to Workday’s enterprise SaaS business, unlike Microsoft and Google that have their own huge cloud application services. Workday clearly doesn’t want to pay a competitor, and that’s not an issue with IBM.
10Workday Initially Using IBM Cloud for Test and Development
In a statement, Workday was quick to note that while its partnership with IBM would expand over time, the company initially is using IBM Cloud for testing and development. With IBM Cloud’s help, Workday says, it’ll be able to accelerate its testing on key new features that will eventually make their way to the finished product. Workday didn’t say how it plans to expand its IBM partnership in the future, but did say that over the long haul, it would increasingly rely on IBM Cloud.
11Workday Still Depends Partly on Amazon
While Workday’s deal with IBM SoftLayer is a boon for Big Blue, there’s a bit more to this story. Most important, Workday has not entirely abandoned Amazon Web Services and has not said whether it would move all of its resources to the IBM Cloud at some point in the future. Now, IBM must prove its cloud services are as least as strong as Amazon so that it can win more of Workday’s business and hold it beyond the initial seven-year agreement.