In 2005, just a week after announcing its plans to acquire CRM giant Siebel Systems Inc., Oracle Corp. executives took to the stage at the annual OpenWorld conference and pledged to continue to support and develop Siebel’s successful Software as a Service (SaaS) offering Siebel OnDemand.
It was an easy decision. While Siebel was struggling in the competitive enterprise applications market, the OnDemand division was doing well. Competitors like Salesforce.com, RightNow and NetSuite had already proven the success of the SaaS model, and Oracle didn’t have a SaaS CRM application of its own. Yet, in the year-plus since the acquisition, there has been relatively little news surrounding Oracle’s Siebel OnDemand — when compared to the flurry of activity, press releases and marketing that Siebel put out after first launching the product.
In the year and half after Siebel first announced OnDemand, it issued eight releases of the product and went on to acquire UpShot, an on-demand sales force automation tool, and Ineto, a hosted telephony firm. Siebel also spent plenty of time trumpeting customer wins and sparring with Salesforce.com. In contrast, since OpenWorld 2005, Oracle has issued one announcement about Siebel OnDemand version 10, in April.
Part of that may just be corporate style.
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