Workday canceled its internal sales conference, slated to have over 3,000 attendees, over coronavirus concerns

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Workday canceled its internal sales conference, slated to have over 3,000 attendees, over coronavirus concerns
Workday CEO Aneel Bhusri

Kevin Moloney/Fortune Brainstorm Tech

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Workday CEO Aneel Bhusri.

Workday has canceled its annual internal sales conference due to fears of the coronavirus outbreak, according to a report from CNBC. This comes as many other tech companies are cancelling events in order to be cautious of a potential pandemic caused by the coronavirus disease, COVID-19.

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The event, called Workday Sales Kickoff, or SKO, was scheduled for March 2 through March 4 in Orlando, Florida, and was expected to have more than 3,000 attendees, the report said. It's now being turned into a virtual event.

"The well-being of our employees and communities is our top priority, and out of an abundance of caution, we have decided to make our global sales kickoff a virtual experience to ensure we rally our team in the safest way possible," Workday spokesperson Jeff Shadid told CNBC.

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Workday makes cloud based software for human resources and other business software and hold an annual event each year for sales people to set goals for the year, which many other enterprise tech companies do as well.

Workday was not immediately available for comment.

Workday's event is just the latest in a slew of conferences that have been canceled because of fears over the coronavirus disease. The organizers of the Mobile World Congress, the world's largest trade show for the mobile phone industry that takes place in Barcelona, said earlier this month they would cancel the event. Facebook has canceled its Global Marketing Summit, saying it was "out of an abundance of caution."

Facebook and Sony also have decided to not participate in the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco in March. Verizon, IBM and AT&T decided not to participate in the RSA conference, one of the biggest cybersecurity events of the year, in San Francisco this week.

The virus has spread to every province and region in China as well at least 40 other countries, with more than 81,000 people infected worldwide. Over the weekend, South Korea, Italy and Iran reported a significant increase in cases.

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Based on that, earlier this week the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued new guidelines for businesses if the coronavirus spreads through the United States and said local communities and cities may need to "modify, postpone or cancel mass gatherings," and businesses should rely more heavily on remote work options.

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