A recent blog from SaaS expert and ZDNet.com blogger Phil Wainwright regarding the launch of Workstream 7.0 has generated significant attention among technology pundits in the blogosphere. SmoothSpan publisher Bob Warfield is one of many to comment on Workstream’s use of virtualization technology in its new 7.0 talent management suite. Specifically, Bob raises issues around customization of enterprise applications within a single-tenant environment. Bob’s case in support of multi-tenancy is a reasonable one, and while Workstream agrees with some of the thinking outlined in Bob’s post, the Workstream philosophy is and will continue to be to provide the best solution for each customer, whether that means delivering talent management solutions in a single-tenant or multi-tenant fashion.
Workstream 7.0 (and prior releases) has been architected in such a way that is highly configurable, and we have developed an extensive set of configuration tools to exploit this. If and when we experience an important functionality gap for a client that cannot be handled through existing configuration, our implementation and development model allows for incorporation of new client needs into the core code base. As a result, today we do extremely little customization. Among other things, this addresses the historical problems faced by companies that manage many different, customized code bases (including upgrading and code support challenges).
We leverage multi-tenancy extensively where it is appropriate, and strong and rapid configuration is key to this model as well. But, even when a company addresses the configuration issue as Workstream has, there are other powerful drivers that argue for single-tenant, virtualized environment. These include elegantly addressing thorny concerns over security and data partitioning. For some clients, these concerns are paramount. A very real example is the use of talent management solutions by government agencies involved in law enforcement or intelligence gathering. For these enterprises, multi-tenancy simply is not an option.
SaaS is a relatively new phenomenon in the talent management arena. While virtually all of our recently added clients have purchased Workstream solutions as a service, Workstream—and many other talent management vendors—continue to have clients that have deployed on-premise and have not yet taken advantage of the benefits of SaaS and virtualization. As these companies migrate to the new SaaS model, Workstream will continue to grow its ratio of software-to-services revenue.
