Workday Unveils Tool for Managing AI Agent Fleets

Workday has launched a tool to help companies manage their artificial intelligence (AI) agents.

Workday Agent System of Record, announced by the enterprise software firm Tuesday (Feb. 11), lets organizations oversee a fleet of AI agents from one place.

“As the number and complexity of AI agents grow, organizations of all sizes face a new set of challenges: managing their deployment, ensuring their security and compliance, optimizing their impact, and managing costs,” the company said in a news release. “Without a centralized approach, they risk fragmented operations, increased security risk, and difficulty measuring the true value of their AI investments.”

The Workday system, the release added, offers an easier way to onboard new AI agents, establish their roles and responsibilities, monitor their impact, budget and forecast their costs, and support compliance.

Aneel Bhusri, Workday’s co-founder and executive chair, said the product is designed for a future in which companies employ both human workers and AI agents, meaning businesses need to know how to manage this reality or fall behind.

“We believe no company in the world is better positioned than Workday to usher in this new era of workforce management in a trusted, ethical way,” Bhusri said. “Our deep understanding of human skills and roles naturally extends to managing digital labor. The future is here, and just like with the transition to the cloud, we’re ready to help our customers get there first.”

PYMNTS examined the rise of AI agents in a Tuesday report focusing on their use in software engineering. Experts, that report say, argue that while AI will continue to improve, there’s still more to the success of a software engineer than skill at coding.

“Simply coding is not the primary value of a software engineer,” Jim Olsen, CTO of ModelOp, told PYMNTS. “Actually figuring out what the desired solution and outcome is, and the nuances of design for providing a flexible solution that will stand the test of time” are skills AI cannot replicate.

Software engineers working in AI require a blend of expertise in software development, programming, data science and data engineering, Olsen said. And though AI can potentially replace low-level engineers, the problem then becomes who to train for mid- to senior-level engineering positions that will still be required, he added.

Ilya Smirnov, head of the AI/ML department at Usetech, held a similar opinion. “AI will not replace software developers anytime soon. Even with customization, specific use cases and wishful thinking, AI has too many limitations. Nevertheless, AI will change the way software engineers work.”

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