At DevCon, Workday courts developers with optionality

Workday at its DevCon conference this week had a simple message: There are multiple options to build AI agents on Workday's platform.

In a blog post, Workday CTO Gabe Monroy outlined three paths to build agents. Developers can host their own agent on Workday, run agents on Workday and delivered via your choice of AI, and use a native option via Sana from Workday.

Monroy's pitch is designed to present Workday's context and data as a good option for enterprise AI options. "The future of agents in the enterprise is going to be open. Different teams will pick different models, toolchains, and front doors. Different problems will need different reasoning patterns. Giving you three paths means you can pick the one that gets you into production fastest for each use case, without compromising on guardrails," said Monroy.

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The other big theme is that Workday isn't trying to lock developers into its stack and will provide choices on logic and location. Monroy's message will have to be repeated, but it's a solid step in courting developers to Workday's ecosystem.

Here's a look at what Workday announced at DevCon:

Workday Data Cloud and AWS. The company said its Workday Data Cloud will integrate with Amazon Web Services (AWS). With the integration, developers will have zero-copy bi-directional zero-copy access to Workday's HR and finance data from AWS tools such as Amazon Bedrock without custom pipelines or duplicate data.

According to Workday, Workday Data Lake, Workday Data Connect, and Workday Live Data Query will be available for AWS customers in early access. Developers can use Workday's Agent Gateway to connect Workday's governed data to AI agents built on AWS. Workday already has integrations with Databricks, Google Cloud, Salesforce, and Snowflake.

Early access availability for Workday Data Cloud. Workday said that Workday Data Cloud, which was announced at Workday Rising, is available to early adopter customers and AWS customers in early access soon. Workday Data Lake, Workday Data Connect and Workday Live Data Query are all available in early access.

Workday launches Agent Passport. The company announced Agent Passport, which tests and verifies every AI agent either built on Workday or via a third party before production. Every attestation is tied to an industry standard so security teams can audit each agent. Cisco is a launch partner for Workday Agent Passport and bring Cisco AI Defense to independently test agents. Agent Passport will be available in early access in the second half of 2026 with general availability before the end of the year.

Workday launches Developer Agent in Workday Build. The company launched Developer Agent so developers can build AI apps and agents on Workday using natural language. Developers can use tools they regularly use including Claude Code, Cline, Codex, Cursor and Google Antigravity. Workday Build also gets Agent Ready Tools, which features guardrails for agents to access data, and Agent Passport.