Big Data. Big Decisions
 InformationWeek
Special Coverage Series


Workday Rumored To File For IPO

ERP and human capital management software-as-a-service provider has confidentially filed for what would be the largest initial public offering since Facebook's.

By Doug Henschen InformationWeek
July 18, 2012 09:53 AM

Workday has filed confidentially for an initial public offering, Reuters reported Tuesday. An IPO by the cloud-based ERP and human capital management applications would be the first since Facebook's troubled May offering, which put a chill in demand for U.S. public offerings.

Workday's IPO is planned for October, depending on market conditions, sources told Reuters, and the banks running the offering will include Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and JP Morgan.

More Insights

Webcasts

More >>

White Papers

More >>

Reports

More >>

Pleasanton, Calif.-based Workday was co-founded by David Duffield, the founder and former CEO of PeopleSoft, and Aneel Bhusri, PeopleSoft's former chief strategist. Both executives left PeopleSoft following its 2004 acquisition by Oracle. Workday is financially backed by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.

Sources told Reuters that Workday filed for its IPO last week under the new Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act, which lets companies keep the financial details of their offerings confidential until 21 days before their IPO road shows.

[ Want more on Workday? Read Workday Courts Mobile Users, Large Enterprises. ]

Facebook's IPO sapped the confidence of many investors after the company's stock lost a third of its value after its May 18 debut. But corporate software companies, with stable, long-term subscription revenues, are faring well in an otherwise weak IPO market, Reuters reported.

Big data software provider Splunk's stock is up more than 50% since its April IPO. And collaboration vendor Jive Software had seen its stock more than double since its December debut at $12 before settling into the $18-to-$21 range in recent weeks.

Human capital management has long been Workday's strongest service offering, and it's a market that's consolidating with SAP's February acquisition of SuccessFactors and Oracle's April purchase of Taleo. Workday caters primarily to midsize firms, and its strongest industry segments include healthcare, higher education, the public sector, technology companies, and service businesses.

The timing of Workday's IPO could put the company in the limelight during rival Oracle's big annual Oracle Open World event. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison recently took swipes at Workday when he unveiled Oracle's cloud offerings. Workday executives declined to comment on Ellison's remarks.

, join the conversation


Related Reading

News

Commentary

Most Popular

On the Web

Slideshow

Video



Currently we allow the following HTML tags in comments:

Single tags

These tags can be used alone and don't need an ending tag.

<br> Defines a single line break

<hr> Defines a horizontal line

Matching tags

These require an ending tag - e.g. <i>italic text</i>

<a> Defines an anchor

<b> Defines bold text

<big> Defines big text

<blockquote> Defines a long quotation

<caption> Defines a table caption

<cite> Defines a citation

<code> Defines computer code text

<em> Defines emphasized text

<fieldset> Defines a border around elements in a form

<h1> This is heading 1

<h2> This is heading 2

<h3> This is heading 3

<h4> This is heading 4

<h5> This is heading 5

<h6> This is heading 6

<i> Defines italic text

<p> Defines a paragraph

<pre> Defines preformatted text

<q> Defines a short quotation

<samp> Defines sample computer code text

<small> Defines small text

<span> Defines a section in a document

<s> Defines strikethrough text

<strike> Defines strikethrough text

<strong> Defines strong text

<sub> Defines subscripted text

<sup> Defines superscripted text

<u> Defines underlined text

BYTE encourages readers to engage in spirited, healthy debate, including taking us to task. However, BYTE moderates all comments posted to our site, and reserves the right to modify or remove any content that it determines to be derogatory, offensive, inflammatory, vulgar, irrelevant/off-topic, racist or obvious marketing/SPAM. BYTE further reserves the right to disable the profile of any commenter participating in said activities.

Disqus Tips To upload an avatar photo, first complete your Disqus profile. | View the list of supported HTML tags you can use to style comments. | Please read our commenting policy.

Follow InformationWeek

By The Numbers

What Are Your Primary Concerns About Using Big Data Software?

Base: 417 respondents at organizations using or planning to deploy data analytics, BI or statistical analysis software
Data: InformationWeek 2013 Analytics, Business Intelligence and Information Management Survey of 541 business technology professionals, October 2012

What Do You Think?

What's your attitude about SQL analysis on top of Hadoop?
We want fast, standard SQL analysis capabilities on Hadoop ASAP
Hadoop is for unstructured data; SQL is for relational databases
We'll give SQL on Hadoop a try, but relational DBs will remain the mainstay
Given strong SQL support on Hadoop, we'd nix the data warehouse
We're not interested in Hadoop
No opinion



Related Content

From Our Sponsor

Five Big Data Challenges and How to Overcome Them with Visual Analytics

Five Big Data Challenges and How to Overcome Them with Visual Analytics

Business leaders often need a visual snapshot of data to quickly grasp and use it. This paper identifies five challenges in presenting data and how visual analytics can resolve them. Solutions are suggested to overcome the challenges of: speed, data clarity, data quality, displaying meaningful results, and dealing with outliers.

Game-Changing Analytics: How IT Executives Can Use Analytics to Create Innovation and Business Success

Game-Changing Analytics: How IT Executives Can Use Analytics to Create Innovation and Business Success

Today's competitive advantage requires a deeper understanding of your business, your market and your customers. As an IT executive, you can drive that knowledge transformation. In this white paper, learn how to make decisions as a strategic business leader and three steps to begin an analytics initiative within your enterprise.

Data Visualization Techniques: From Basics to Big Data with SAS Visual Analytics

Data Visualization Techniques: From Basics to Big Data with SAS Visual Analytics

High-performance data visualization turns sophisticated analyses into meaningful graphics, leading to faster and smarter decision making. In this white paper, learn how visual analytics can transform big data, with additional features such as real-time functionality, mobile compatibility, robust applications for technical groups and accessibility for nontechnical users.

Big Data: Lessons from the Leaders

Big Data: Lessons from the Leaders

Financial performance, competitive advantage, operational efficiency, strategic decision making - every business goal can extract value from big data, and the time for doubt or inaction has long passed. In this Economist Intelligence Unit report, in-depth interviews with data pioneers reveal the link between the effective use of big data and the bottom line among other results.

Decision-Driven Data Management: A Strategy for Better Decisions with Better Data

Decision-Driven Data Management: A Strategy for Better Decisions with Better Data

Which came first, the data or the decision? This white paper makes the case for having a decision in mind, then tailoring big data's volume, variety and velocity to achieve business results such as overcoming customer dissatisfaction or creating well-informed strategies in real time.

Informationweek Reports

Research: The Big Data Management Challenge

Research: The Big Data Management Challenge

The challenge of big data is real, but most organizations don't differentiate 'big data' from traditional data, and nearly 90% of respondents to our survey use conventional databases as the primary means of handling data. We'll help you understand what constitutes big data (it's not just size) and the numerous management challenges it poses.