Send this story Print this story

Adjust text size

Workday buys Stoneridge Corporate Plaza
Shuns San Ramon initiative to stay in Pleasanton, expand workforce

by Jeb Bing

Workday, a software company headed by Dave Duffield, is purchasing the cluster of five office buildings comprising Stoneridge Corporate Plaza on Stoneridge Mall Road and will move its offices there from a building it now leases nearby at 6230 Stoneridge Mall Road.

Out of space and with a growing workforce now numbering 1,000, Workday was looking at office space in San Ramon. Although San Ramon city leaders and commercial real estate associates offered assistance, Pleasanton City Manager Nelson Fialho said his economic development team, including Economic Development Manager Pamela Ott, prevailed.

Workday will gradually move its workforce, expected to grow to 4,000 over time, into the new corporate plaza, giving tenants there time to find other space. Tenants in the corporate plaza include the Pleasanton branch of the University of San Francisco.

Duffield has long favored Pleasanton for his business endeavors. Founded in 1987, PeopleSoft was originally headquartered in Walnut Creek before Duffield moved it to Pleasanton's Hacienda Business Park. In December 2004, Oracle announced that it had signed a definitive merger agreement to acquire PeopleSoft for approximately $10.3 billion. A month after the acquisition of PeopleSoft, Oracle cut over half of PeopleSoft's workforce, laying off 6,000 of PeopleSoft's 11,000 employees. Many were re-hired by Oracle after that company decided to keep its Pleasanton operations. Others joined Duffield again when he started Workday.

Workday is an on-demand (cloud-based) financial management and human capital management software company. Founded both by Duffield and former PeopleSoft chief strategist Aneel Bhusri following Oracle's hostile takeover of PeopleSoft, it differs from other cloud-based software providers in that it targets the customers of rivals Oracle or SAP by offering them "online services at a fraction of the cost of upgrading from their incumbent vendors." It launched a successful initial public offering that valued it above better-known software companies that have gone public in 2012, including Groupon and Zynga.

As of spring 2012, Workday had more than 310 customers, ranging from mid-sized businesses to Fortune 500 companies. Last October, Workday launched its initial public offering (IPO) on the New York Stock Exchange with ticker symbol WDAY. Its shares were priced at $28 and ended trading Friday, Oct. 12, at $48.69, and propelled the start-up to a market capitalization of nearly $9.5 billion including unexercised stock options. It sold 22.75 million Class A shares, raising $637 million. The IPO raised more cash than any launch in the U.S. technology sector since Facebook's $16 billion IPO in May 2012. Its shares surged 74% in their IPO, underscoring investor interest in cloud computing.

Workday has released 17 updates to its product line as of July 2012.