????商業領域的反擊往往干脆而迅速。比如，業績欠佳的公司首席執行官會突然慘遭解雇。然而人力資源軟件開發商Workday卻是一個“文火慢熬”的例子。

????Workday于2005年由聯合首席執行官安尼爾?布斯里和戴夫?達菲爾德一手創建。該公司開發的人力資源軟件不僅可以分析員工成本，還能管理員工薪水。幾年來，這家公司發展迅猛，營業收入已達上億美元，而且數次實現盈利。成長過程中，Workday需要與強大的競爭對手甲骨文（Oracle）和SAP展開“廝殺”。此外，它的成功在某種程度上不啻為一記重拳，有力地回擊了幾年前的一系列頗具戲劇化的事件，而正是這些事情才催生了它的問世。

????2004年，布斯里和達菲爾德還在執掌另一家人力資源軟件機構仁科公司（PeopleSoft）。彼時，甲骨文（Oracle）的老板拉里?艾里森欲以100億美元的高價惡意收購仁科，公司的獨立董事們紛紛屈從于其“淫威”。迫不得已，布斯里和達菲爾德很快便離開了這家自己親手創建的公司。不到一年之后，為了幫助遭到解雇的前仁科員工，這兩位動用自己的資金成立了Workday。達菲爾德拿出從出售仁科獲得的6億美元中拿出了1,000萬美元，，而布斯里和格雷洛克風險投資公司（Greylock Ventures）提供了余下的部分，啟動了Workday。

????仁科誕生之時，正趕上許多商業應用從大型機平臺轉向個人計算機。數年后，Workday的目標沒變，但是其軟件并非運行于客戶機房的計算機上，而是遠程運行于部署在客戶公司以外的服務器上。他們堅信，下一次軟件大遷徙將是從個人計算機轉向云端；而且，他們自己打造的“軟件作為服務（SaaS）”總將成就一番事業——只要它能提供有競爭力的用戶體驗，讓用戶少付錢卻能獲得更多的軟件升級。企業級軟件一向背負著更新換代速度慢如蝸牛的惡名，他們預測，10年內，企業市場對上述軟件的需求將飛速增長。

????說的一點不錯。約翰?伍基說：“我認為，云計算是一個偉大的創新：我們堅信云將是正確的部署模式。”他是Salesforce.com的高級應用執行副總裁，亦曾在甲骨文和SAP擔任高管。Salesforce.com是企業級軟件領域另一家顛覆傳統的公司，也采用依托于云的軟件部署模式。去年，該公司宣布與Workday建立合作伙伴關系，試圖將其自己的社交網絡Chatter等特性與Workday的軟件進行綁定。

????目前，Workday為近300家企業提供服務，客戶包括AAA公司、英杰華集團（Aviva）、金吉達公司（Chiquita）、以及《財富》雜志（Fortune'）的母公司時代華納集團（Time Warner）等。2010年，該公司營業額為1.6億美元；2011年，它預計營業額至少會翻番，達到3.2億美元。市場研究機構弗雷斯特研究公司（Forrester）的分析師保羅?哈默曼估計，現在，這家公司的用戶群年增長速度已經接近100%，其中約半數的客戶都來自甲骨文或者SAP等競爭對手。同時，布斯里曾透露，Workday有可能于今年底上市。但公司發言人則拒絕對此發表評論。

????In business, revenge is often swift. Take the sudden firing of a poorly performing CEO, for instance. In the case of Workday, it's been more of a slow-burn.

????Founded in 2005 by co-CEOs Aneel Bhusri and Dave Duffield, Workday offers human resources software that can analyze workforce costs and manage staff pay. In a few years, the company has surged and generated hundreds of millions in revenues and has at times been profitable. In the process, Workday has found itself rivaling much larger firms Oracle (ORCL) and SAP (SAP). And, that success has been retribution of sorts for the cinematic events that led to the company's founding.

????In 2004, Bhusri and Duffield were at the helm of another human resources software firm, PeopleSoft. When Oracle chief Larry Ellison made a hostile $10 billion takeover bid, PeopleSoft's independent board members capitulated. Disenchanted, Bhusri and Duffield left the company they had built soon after. Less than a year later, they used their own money, including $10 million of the $600 million Duffield received from the buyout and additional funds from Bhusri and Greylock Ventures, to help laid-off PeopleSoft employees and jumpstart Workday.

????PeopleSoft had come along when many business applications were migrating from running off of large mainframe computers to personal computers. Years later, Workday had similar aims, but instead of having the software run on machines housed at a customer's location, it would operate from remote, off-site servers. They believed the next great software migration would be from PCs to the cloud, and that their so-called "software as a service" could take off so long as it offered a comparable user experience, with more frequent software updates, for less cash. They predicted that demand for such software in the notoriously slow-moving enterprise side of software would skyrocket in 10 years' time.

????They were right. "I think that was a big innovation: the belief that the cloud was the right deployment model," says John Wookey, executive vice president of advanced applications at Salesforce.com (CRM) and a former Oracle and SAP executive. Salesforce.com, another disruptive company in the enterprise software space with a cloud-based model, announced a partnership with Workday last year, tying together features like its private social network Chatter with Workday's software.

????Workday currently serves nearly 300 businesses including AAA, Aviva (AV), Chiquita (CQB), and Fortune's parent company Time Warner (TWX). In 2010, the company reported $160 million in billings, and in 2011, it anticipated at least doubling that to $320 million. Forrester (FORR) analyst Paul Hamerman estimates the company's user base is now growing nearly 100% year-over-year, with half of those clients likely coming from competitors like Oracle or SAP. Bhusri has said the company could go public by the end of the year. A spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.