As an admitted technology junkie, I love watching as companies such as Google, Salesforce.com, Apple, Facebook and a revitalized Microsoft continue to deliver innovation at such an unrelenting pace. I’ll openly admit to having a first-edition iPad, Droid and even a Palm Pre (which is a better device than its market traction suggests).

I am generally an optimistic person, and looking ahead at 2010 things feel pretty good. Conversations with HR and IT professionals are more upbeat than they’ve been in a long time. And even though analyst predictions for IT spending are only looking a little better than last year, companies seem to be back to planning and starting projects.

2009 has been another year of milestones for Workday. We’ve now passed the 100 customer mark and in spite of the toughest economic environment in a generation Workday is on track to grow bookings more than 50 percent this year. Customers are not just embracing Software-as-a-Service in large enterprises -- in the past quarter we are starting to hear large companies considering SaaS as a lower-risk option to an on-premise ERP deployment. That’s a huge change in perspective from a year ago.

The Workday team, like any SaaS provider or IT organization, does everything possible to eliminate the possibility of unplanned system failures. We also have detailed plans in place for getting customers back online as quickly as possible in the event of an unplanned outage.