Tech

Workday's CEO thinks people will flee NetSuite now that Oracle owns it

Aneel Bhusri, CEO of Workday.
Mark Neuling | CNBC

Workday's CEO is hoping that Oracle's acquisition of NetSuite could have customers knocking on his door.

"NetSuite was a really good company," Aneel Bhusri, co-founder and CEO of Workday, said on Wednesday. "All the people that chose NetSuite specifically chose not to be working with Oracle. Oracle is not known for its high levels of customer satisfaction. I think it's going to create a great window for us."

Bhusri spoke from the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom conference, where he addressed a merger between the two Larry Ellison-backed companies. Ellison, who is "famously competitive," vowed during the acquisition that he will pull out all stops to stay ahead of rivals, according to The New York Times.

Oracle declined to comment to CNBC.

To be sure, unless you're a veteran of the world of corporate accounting or human resources management, it's hard to know who's right. But Workday, which provides human resource and financial management software for large companies, prides itself on "very high levels of customer satisfaction," Bhusri said.

Bhusri has hustle in his own right — he told the audience he's been using the evenings to make sales at nearby bars. The company has been shifting its strategy on its entire corporate accounts team, Fortune reports, and has tried to stay ahead of the curve on changes in the accounting industry that may "tip" the market, Bhusri said.

"I think at the high end of the market we're becoming the de facto standard," Bhusri said. "We have to earn that every day ... but there's a reason that Wal-Mart chose us, Amazon chose us, Deutsche Bank."

Bhusri said executives he's spoken to are set on the cloud, but some are unhappy with forced upgrades from SAP and Oracle.

"Neither of them have viable cloud platforms," Bhusri said "These forced upgrades ... are going to start accelerating our opportunities."

But just like Oracle CEO Mark Hurd, Bhusri said it's the combination of all Workday's capabilities that is prompting customers to shift providers. He said he's a fan of Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, who has expanded Salesforce's reach.

"They've moved into other clouds," Bhusri said. "Do a good job with the customer and that earns you the right to move into other areas. We haven't done the acquisitions that [Salesforce has] done, we've been focused on organic growth, but maybe we will do some acquisitions over time."

Just like other tech companies, Workday is working on integrating new features with machine learning. He said while the term "artificial intelligence" is overused, the business of making predictions using algorithms and mathematics is here to stay.

"We had this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to grab as much market share at a time," Bhusri said. "The world is our oyster, ... we have this great product."