Workday says it's got a PaaS in its pocket and is ready to party

Matches Salesforce and pals with API-fest and promise of apps built on SaaS

Workday says it's got APIs in its pocket and is ready to join the PaaS party HR-centric enterprise SaaS concern Workday will enter the platform-as-a-service business.

Workday founder CEO and founder Aneel Bhusri teased a PaaS play in July 2017, but in a Wednesday keynote at the company's “Rising” conference revealed that the PaaS will debut in early 2018.

Dubbed the “Workday Cloud Platform”, the PaaS will be built on new RESTful APIs that make it possible to access Workday's core functions and customer data. Users were promised the ability to use those APIs with the development tools of their choice, then build custom apps that look like Workday but may also pipe in third-party cloud services. The company also plans a marketplace that will allow sharing of custom apps.

The platform won't scare the cloud's infrastructure-as-a-service led titans, as they could profit from it and don't much care about PaaS. Nor will Workday's rivals shiver, because some already have PaaS. SAP, for example, recently unveiled Cloud Platform while Salesforce acquired Heroku in 2010 and connected it with its Force.com development environment in 2014.

Bhursi said the PaaS “will become a significant revenue stream” and represents an important evolution “from an apps company to more of a platform company.”

The platform is currently in closed beta, with details and pricing to come at launch time in early 2018. ®