Whats interesting to me about all this is the description of Workdays application architecture:

Workday runs on an in-memory database [...] it uses a relational database (mySQL) only for persistence [...]. This persistent database has exactly three tables, one for data, one for metadata, and one for instructions. Yes, that’s right. All data–the employees, the positions, the organizational structure, and even the layout of a screen–is stored in the same table. – From: Workday: Forget ERP, start over

I wonder how this compares to Xero’s architecture. Knowing Craig Walker – I’d be surprised to here there wasn’t at least some meta-modelling in Xero.
It seems like the traditional relational/OLTP approach of having strictly defined, highly normalised schemas which you hydrate/dehydrate into runtime objects is losing currency. Pat Helland – Jim Gray’s protege – is back at Microsoft and preaching heresy about traditional views around OLTP. Here’s some of his recent stuff that’s got me thinking:

• Life Beyond Distributed Transactions: an Apostate’s Opinion
• Accountants Don’t Use Erasers
• Normalization Is for Sissies

It seems like the more I think about this – the more this seems like the future. Here’s some other stuff I’ve read recently along similar lines:

• One Size Fits All: An Idea whose Time has Come and Gone
• Joe Gregorio’s Mega data post
• Scaling from 0 to 40 hits per second in 3 days

More Info at:

• The end of ERP?
• Workday unveils Financials and Work Tags

I fully believe that services companies simply don’t scale in a manner that provides the right level of return on your investment. Margins are thinner, managing people is very hard and you get that all as baggage in exchange for being able to make easier money at the start. Those dollars can look attractive but if you’re not careful you’ll find yourself a few years down the track owning a services company with no products. Be vigilant and ensure you’re only providing services that you require to deliver on your product vision.

This is an interesting comment – it’s a thought that I’ve had and the type of thing I’ve said on many occasions – but I “currently” think it’s wrong. I’ve said this most strongly and held this opinion most vehemently just after I’ve finished working for services based businesses.

In reality – all business is service based – try selling a product without any service or support. While I was working for Fujistu[1] they acquired Amdahl for a song. Why? Amdhal was a failing product based business – the problem was that they’d struggled to compete with IBM’s innovation in the mainframe space. What did Fujitsu want with a failing product business – it’s top tier service team. These guys had 20+ years supporting mainframes which were doing 5 9′s availablity (99.999%) etc – they were really valuable – whether you were doing services or products.

Running and growing businesses is hard – there aren’t any short cuts.

[1] I used to work for Fujistu (yep the guys who make air conditioners).