There’s an important concept here at Workday that impacts our entire community called the Power of One. If you’ve spent time with Workday or attended Workday Rising, you know this is a concept we speak of often. Why are we so passionate about the Power of One? We thought we’d take a moment to define it and why it’s at the heart of everything we do.
At Workday, we have one version of software, one customer community, and one codeline. Together, these things empower us all in ways that weren’t possible in the legacy software industry. But before we do a deep dive into the Power of One, let’s look at why a new approach was so badly needed.
Workday Co-Founders Aneel Bhusri and Dave Duffield conceived the Power of One when they started Workday to eliminate some major issues they identified in the world of legacy enterprise applications. In that world, a vendor’s software development organization, partner ecosystem, and customer base is split among supporting different versions of applications and database platforms, with different customizations and maintenance schedules.
This approach doesn’t empower a community, it drains it. Vendors and their partners have to split their resources among too many things. Customers have entirely different experiences from one another, which hinders communication, collaboration, and ultimately, innovation.
At Workday, all customers are on one version of software. Right now they are on Workday 24, encompassing our most up-to-date financial management, human capital management, and analytics applications. In the fall, we will all move to Workday 25. When Workday delivers new features and innovations to these applications between our major releases, they become available to all.
As the result, there is just one community. Customers and partners share ideas, collaborate, and help one other in ways that aren’t possible in the fractured legacy software world. In true democratic fashion, members of our community even suggest and then vote on new features. The Workday Brainstorm is an incredibly innovative program, with our customers having contributed hundreds of ideas to our products through the years.