After operating for more than a year in partial stealth-mode, former PeopleSoft CEO Dave Duffield launched on Monday in the US his newest company's first product -- an on-demand enterprise resource planning software suite.
The new company, called Workday, will compete with the likes of Salesforce.com and recent on-demand moves by enterprise applications titans SAP and Oracle.
Duffield is apparently ready to continue duking it out with Oracle. He founded PeopleSoft in 1987 but stepped down as its chief executive in 1999. Duffield returned to the PeopleSoft CEO post in 2004, during the long-running takeover battle with Oracle.
The hostile takeover bid by Oracle for PeopleSoft was marked by mudslinging and accusations between the two business software makers.
In December 2004, PeopleSoft's board agreed to a US$10.3 billion takeover by Oracle after more than 18 months of hostilities between the two companies. Duffield resigned as CEO shortly thereafter.
With Duffield's official return to the enterprise applications industry, industry observers have said he brings a deep knowledge of HR applications to Workday.
Software applications that are accessible on-demand have been growing in popularity, as companies seek to lower their costs by tapping into a service where they pay a monthly bill, rather than buying the software and installing it onto their systems.
Workday, which targets medium- to large-size companies, released on Monday its Workday Human Capital Management suite. Another three suites -- Workday Financial Management, Workday Resource Management and Workday Revenue Management -- are scheduled to debut next year.
"The combination of today's dynamic business environment and major technology advancements has offered us a great opportunity to create a new breed of ERP -- one that is not beholden to aging technologies and business models," Duffield, who is Workday's chief executive and co-founder, said in a statement.
All four suites will also have global capabilities, native reporting and analytical tools, automatic auditing that aids in tracking changes required under regulatory compliance rules, and standards-based integration capabilities for Web services integration.
Workday's Human Capital Management suite is designed to address such areas as staffing, compensation and performance management.
Workday noted that it has already lined up two production customers and several partners, including Microsoft and Accenture.
Workday and Microsoft initially are focusing on integrating the on-demand ERP provider's service offerings with Microsoft Office Outlook, Exchange Server and Office SharePoint Server.
