California: California-based enterprise and SaaS solution provider Workday is gearing up for an IPO in 2012 and is expected to raise $500 million. The company is planning to file its S-1in the first half of the year and go public in the second half of the year. It is already in talks with banks to help it with the process and is likely to consider Allen & Co., Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase.

Workday has raised a total of $175 million in venture capital funding from various firms. It had raised $85 million in its series F round in October 2011, led by T. Rowe Price, Morgan Stanley Investment Management, Janus Capital Group, and Bezos Expeditions. The company had also secured $75 million in its series E round in April 2009, led by New Enterprise Associates, and existing investors Greylock Partners and Dave Duffield.

Workday combines lower cost of ownership with business applications and delivers unified human capital management, payroll, and financial management solutions. It has more than 230 customers, and offers business management services: Human Capital Management, Payroll Solutions, Initiatives, Spend Management, Financial Management, and Integration Cloud. Its featured customers include AVIVA, Brown University, Flextronics, and Kimberly-Clark, apart from the customers in various other industries.

The company was co-founded in 2005 by Dave Duffield and Aneel Bhusri to provide a cloud alternative for mid and large-sized enterprise, with on-premise deployment of legacy softwares. Prior to founding Workday, Bhusri held a number of roles and his last designation was as the Vice Chairman at PeopleSoft. He did his MBA from Stanford University and holds a Bachelor of Arts and Science, electrical engineering and economics from Brown University.