Dave Duffield, has stepped down as Chairman of Workday, the company he helped found. The news was reported by Reuters and the Leadership page was updated by Workday. His co-founder, Aneel Bhusri will step into the role of Chairman while retaining the CEO role he shares with Chano Fernandes. Duffield will remain Chairman Emeritus in recognition of his huge influence on the company that he founded with Bhusri. This is just the latest move away from day-to-day influence over the company. Duffield recently sold the Workday headquarters and several offices to Workday in a deal worth $172.5 million.

During his career, Duffield also founded PeopleSoft which was bought in an aggressive takeover by Oracle for $10.7 billion. When Duffield and Bhusri founded Workday they ensured that the voting rights would remain in their control to avoid a similar acquisition by one of the larger vendors.

Enterprise Times: What does this mean

Duffield turns 80 this year and it may be he has decided to hand over the reins completely. In recent years he has stepped slowly aware from the limelight. There are still some questions. Will Bhusri step down from his role as Co-CEO and let Fernandes run the company as sole CEO. That seems unlikely, while the shared role seems to be working well at the moment. It may well have been a trial period with Duffield always planning to leave this year.

 

 

 

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