Oracle To Buy Siebel

jondaw writes "The BBC is reporting that "Software giant Oracle is buying US rival Siebel Systems in a deal worth $5.85bn (£3.2bn) in cash and stock...'In a single step, Oracle becomes the number one CRM [customer relationship management] applications company in the world,' said Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison.""

Comments

yay dotcom bubble

[Anonymous Coward]

Everybody's buying everybody again! Woo!

When do I get my office scooter?

Re:yay dotcom bubble

[shawn(at)fsu]

In a single step, Oracle becomes the number one CRM [customer relationship management] applications company in the world,

I guess we now know what step ??? profit is.

Re:yay dotcom bubble

[superpulpsicle]

Actually it's always a 3 step process.

1. companies merge
2. management profit!
3. layoffs

Whatever respect I had for Larry Ellison and his newly funded pet company Pillar Data system, just went down the drain.

Oracle

[DavidLeeRoth]

I might be mistaken but, isn't Oracle a US company? The story makes it seem like Oracle isn't.

Re:Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought it was greek.

Re:Oracle

[VolciMaster]

it was reported in the BBC...

Re:Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see anything in the article that would give someone that impressions, with the exception of converting the value of the deal into pounds. Remember that this is a UK news source reporting on the deal, so converting into a currency their readers are used to dealing with is fair (and expected).

Re:Oracle

[fm6]

Why? Because they referred to Siebel as a U.S. company, but didn't specify that Oracle was? That's natural for a British news source -- their local readers may not have heard of Siebel, but have certainly heard of Oracle, which does a lot of business in Europe.

Re:Oracle

[angle_slam]

Yep, both companies are headquartered in San Mateo County, California. They are two exits away from each other on the 101.

Re:Oracle

[VolciMaster]

I was merely pointing out that story was reported by a non-US agency, and therefore referring to the company as a US company makes sense. It wasn't offtopic.

The Largest... What next?

[Anonymous Coward]

How long more before they become the _only_ one?

Re:The Largest... What next?

[VikingDBA]

Only one? I doubt they will ever buy Microsoft. Will it come down to a two player game? I could see that.

Re:The Largest... What next?

[rleibman]

There can be only one!

Re:The Largest... What next?

[EmperorKagato]

End Game.

Re:The Largest... What next?

[U1timateZer0]

Having used Siebel and another CRM called Helix when working for Gateway Computers (Outsourced to Alorica, Inc.), I can only say: it's about damn time. Siebel was the most worthless piece of shit ever created. If Helix were more widely adopted, the world would be a better place for humanity.

Re:The Largest... What next?

[heck]

Will it come down to a two player game?

Three.

IBM has DB2. I don't see IBM deciding not to sell DB2.

Unless you mean MicroSoft is going to leave the market.

And please don't say "DB2! No one uses DB2!" Those of us who deal with large businesses will just shake our heads.

Because I was curious, I did a search for CRM with DB2 as the back end. There are business cases out there for using DB2 with PeopleSoft. I suspect the current owners of PeopleSoft don't encourage that.

Re:The Largest... What next?

[Anonymous Coward]

The tic-tac-toe game will determine that neither side can win. After that, they will shutdown.

Re:The Largest... What next?

[Anonymous Coward]

umm... you guys are sort of missing the whole friggin' point. this is in the enterprise apps space not the db space.

SAP is the gorilla here, not MSoft or IBM. and no... Oracle and SAP won't merge. too many HUGE egos involved there.

In other news...

[COBOL/MVS]

To compliment his German accent, Larry Ellison has also donned a monical and top hat and is now carrying a cane with a silver cobra head on it and was last seen wearing a black flowing cape. He was quoted as saying: "I'm just trying to look the part of evil genius now".

Re:In other news...

[Directrix1]

Best Quote Ever from the Article:
The takeover by Oracle had long been predicted by analysts.

Re:In other news...

[CDMA_Demo]

To compliment his German accent,

Now where are the language lawyers of slashdot?

Re:In other news...

[Agrippa]

Actually, Larry Ellison has already created himself an altered reality - he fancies himself an ancient Shinto warrior. Among other things, he decorates his houses like he is a shogun and he shaves off his eyebrows.

Don't believe me? Do a google image search for Larry and look at his eyebrows.

.agrippa.

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

monocle

Re:In other news...

[grammar fascist]

"To compliment his German accent,"

Now where are the language lawyers of slashdot?

I dunno - this might work. I can imagine Larry Ellison walking around saying, "Why, Accent, you sure are a thick Germanic thing!" and then "Danke! Ich ben einer burly!"

He's weird enough.

Re:In other news...

[FreakyGeeky]

Wow. I did do a Google image search and you're right! No eyebrows to be found! That's hilarious. And strange.

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

That sounds more like Snidely Whiplash -- making Bill Gates (gasp) Dudley Do-Right? Ack!

Actually, when I see Ellison's picture I can't help but think of Leonard Cohen...Everybody knows you've been so sly / But there were so many surro-Gates you just had to buy / Without your clothes / And everybody knows

Re:In other news...

[sinserve]

Hollyshit, that's creepy

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh. You're right. Didn't know that. "Larry Ellison is an aficionado of Japanese culture", sez one website. Well, he's not the only one!

CRM [ ]

[stecoop]

My only question is that stuff in the brackets after CRM (c u s t o m e r...? What's going on here, the first time I know one of those buzz words and the editors have to blow all my fun. I was going to laugh at people that aren't in the click that they don't know that single piece terminology and look far superior in one mighty stroke.

Re:CRM [ ]

[op12]

I was going to laugh at people that aren't in the click that they don't know that single piece terminology and look far superior in one mighty stroke.

...or looked equally inferior :)

Re:CRM [ ]

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you meant "clique".

Sorry to be all superior.

Re:CRM [ ]

[jimcooncat]

...laugh at people that aren't in the click...

So you're not in the clique either?

Re:CRM [ ]

[plover]

Don't get your hopes up at knowing what the acronym really means. Siebel is to "Customer Relationship Management" exactly as much as Microsoft is to "Secure Systems Initiative." Neither title has anything to do with reality, but rather how they're perceived by the Gartner Group.

When they were still in business, AT&T Wireless used to use Siebel CRM in their phone stores. They did everything in their power to lose all the customers they could. A one hour wait and two hours with a cashier to sell me three phones, all spent waiting for the cashier to click, drag, type, badger and bully my information into that worthless CRM system. Servers that took minutes to deliver the pages needed. And it wasn't the fault of the poor schmucks who worked at the store. Just imagine trying to do your job on a site that was being permanently slashdotted -- that's what I saw of Siebel CRM, every time I went in there.

And now Larry is sticking them in his cap like a feather. Well, good for them. I'm sure the Gartner Group is pleased as punch.

Re:CRM [ ]

[mattkime]

you're complaining about AT&T?

Just wait until you have contact with Cingular.

You'll wish it took you ONLY three hours to buy a phone.

Re:CRM [ ]

[btc9183]

Glad to hear that nothing has changed. The job I just left involved using Siebel. Slow is an understatement, not to mention all the things that they said it would do prior to the department plunking down 7 figures to implement it, then discovering that if we actually wanted it to do that, as opposed to wanting to know if it would do it, that would cost extra, or worse yet, would not do it...

Re:CRM [ ]

[Jeff Hornby]

Right! I had to get up in the morning, at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of cold
poison, buy a phone for twenty-nine hours a day down mall and pay mallowner for permission to buy it, and when we got home,
our dad would kill us and dance about on our graves, singing Hallelujah!

Re:CRM [ ]

[JahToasted]

Damn, has anyone had good experiences with siebel? I had to use siebel once and had the same problems you saw (slow, poor interface) plus a few more that you didn't mention, like it crashed often, and ocassionally lost data. It was at the point where I'd enter in all of the information in notepad and save as a text file, just in case siebel lost it.

Seriously, I want to know if anyone has seen siebel actually work well. It blows my mind that software that's so poor can make money. I thought that what I used was maybe just set up poorly (the guy admining it seemed like an idiot). Has anyone seen siebel work even somewhat acceptably?

Re:CRM [ ]

[Zoshnell]

As a former representative for ATT Wireless, I can tell you that at the end of their life before merging with Cingular they really were pushing to squeeze every penny out of each customer to make themselves look attractive, causing quite a bit of churn and headaches from the GSM representatives that I knew. I lucked out and was the old TDMA stuff, which was slow and inefficient at least it generally only took me 3 minutes to get an account up, not the suggested 10-15 the GSM reps told me about.

Re:CRM [ ]

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the reason that the servers for Siebel got so slow with AT&T Wireless is because once their servers hit a certain number of connections (about 8500) in the early afternoon, the system would become slow...and then once it reached somewhere around 13,000 connections the server just said "heck with it." It still affects every department from customer care through receivables management when they are servicing those accounts. However, the good news is...it's being fixed.

Re:CRM [ ]

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know of any. Siebel became successful because they had a highly motivated salesforce who would operate at a sufficiently high level in the customer organization (i.e. the level at which sales pitch bullshit supported by glowing reports from clueless hype-surfing analysts is actually believed), and which had the authority to push through the 7-digit plus cost of their software.

Yet all their software has ever really amounted to is a series of more or less elaborately presented CRUD transactions on a rather rigid and inflexible data model. The nightmare stories you hear about runaway Siebel implementations are a consequence of Siebel's unwillingness or inability to vary that model or modify their application code (but ultimately they will agree to anything that the customer will pay through the nose for).

Re:CRM [ ]

[mick_S3]

Don't get your hopes up at knowing what the acronym really means. Siebel is to "Customer Relationship Management" exactly as much as Microsoft is to "Secure Systems Initiative." Neither title has anything to do with reality, but rather how they're perceived by the Gartner Group.

LMFAO. Outstanding. Truer words have never been typed.

Re:CRM [ ]

[aputerguy]

I'm surprised that nobody mentioned the historical connection between Siebel and Oracle.

The epynomous Tom Siebel headed up sales at Oracle from 1984 to 1990 until he clashed with Ellison over the wisdom of starting a SFA (sales force automation) product line.

Tom Siebel was known to be a hard-charging sales person, just like his former mentor Larry Ellison.

So the fact that both Oracle and Siebel became winning companies more for their aggressive sales and marketing than for their technology is perhaps not a coincidence.

All we really have now is a reunion of two technology-sales leaders after a 15 year separation.

Re:CRM [ ]

[TheOriginalRevdoc]

"And now Larry is sticking them in his cap like a feather.

More like Larry is waving their spinal column around like the Predator.

Re:CRM [ ]

[CarpetPsycho]

I'm a Siebel developer at a major financial institution, and we actually have a fantastically successful Siebel implementation that's been up for 4 years now.

Siebel is certainly not perfect, but if it's implemented correctly, it's much better than all the failed projects or bad experiences would have you believe.

There are 3 main problems with most Siebel implementations:

1) Many times, Siebel (or frankly, any CRM solution) is not implemented to support a well-planned, solid business process. Siebel does not provide a business process. It only supports what you already have in place. In many cases, Siebel is hacked up and forced into supporting a loose framework of existing "ways things are done". What you end up with is a mess that doesn't do anything but expose system flaws that nobody realized were there before.

2) Many Siebel implementations suffer from poor optimization and infrastructure scalability problems. Lots of companies throw lots of $$$ at Siebel to get flashy "important" functionality implemented, but don't stop to think about the hardware and networks gthe system runs on.

Now if you combine #1 and #2, you have a huge problem. Say that your "process" dictates that you should have 150 data elements crammed into one place (when 10 would do, if you stopped to think about it) and your infrastructure can only serve up about 20 at a time before your network starts to seize up or your web servers run out of threads or your database indexes start freaking out. You're screwed.

The 3rd thing that kills most Siebel implementations, in my opinion, is over-customization. Siebel is a COTS package that provides a boatload of vanilla functionality. Siebel provides a proprietary IDE that allows developers to go in and custmoize everything about the application. If you don't have good developers and good project planning, you can really hose up the application but good. Siebel has all kinds of things that happen in the background, and the minute you start screwing around under the hood, you run the risk of monkeywrenching the whole thing.

So...anyway...like I said, Siebel's not perfect, but it does get a bad rap a lot of times.

Acquisitions

[mysqlrocks]

First PeopleSoft, now Siebel. What's next for Oracle?

Re:Acquisitions

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Same thing we do every night Pinky, plan to take over the world!

Re:Acquisitions

[MoonRug]

BEA

Monopoly A Game Of Life w/ Shoots and Ladders

[Cylix]

Sure, our product hasn't been that good, but don't worry in no time at all you won't have any choice. We've been fattening our wallets to make sure you don't have any complicated decisions ahead of you.

Why is this a trend I continue to see in Oracle?

I'll probably get flamed by the Oracle is holier then thou crowd, but that's life.

Where did I leave my ladders at...

Re:Monopoly A Game Of Life w/ Shoots and Ladders

[CDMA_Demo]

There may be laws to prevent this kind of behavior: for example non-"consumed" rivals might approach the DoJ with an anti-trust plea. But as Netscape vs. M$ has proved, the 800 pound gorilla wins in the long run. Winning matters, noone cares how you won. This is the side-effect of capitalism. I think U.S. really needs to revise its policies. Do you think a $5 million company needs to pay the same amount of sales tax as a $5 billion company for the same amount of sales? I don't know much about U.S. economy or business laws, but the government seriously needs to find ways to help smaller companies flourish in the face of competition from big predators.

Re:Monopoly A Game Of Life w/ Shoots and Ladders

[sdirrim]

Agreed. My dad has worked for about 8 different companies, each gatting swallowed by another.
Mobius
got eaten by ?
which got eaten by ?
which got eaten by a Sybase spin-off
which got eaten by Scotch Bonnet
which got eaten by Vantive
which got eaten by Peoplesoft
which got eaten by Oracle, the "Evil Empire".
I forsee the makings of a mini-Microsoft.

Re:Monopoly A Game Of Life w/ Shoots and Ladders

[deathy_epl ccs]

mini NOTHIN'!

Re:Monopoly A Game Of Life w/ Shoots and Ladders

[Anonymous Coward]

This acquisition is simply another sign that CRM is a mature, low-growth market. The quality of the products is not an issue.

And it's chutes, as in something you slide down (compare with ladders, something you climb up -- though I suppose you can slide down them, too, if you have a high pain tolerance).

How does this benefit customers?

[juanescalante]

Oracle said the deal had the approval of the Siebel board and that the takeover was expected to be completed in 2006, subject to regulatory approval.
It also said that the customers of both firms had long called for them to come together.

Why would this benefit their customers?

Re:How does this benefit customers?

[sloanster]

Oh, I dunno... maybe finally, some semblance of linux support for siebel apps?

Re:How does this benefit customers?

[mroch]

It's the same as Microsoft's "we have to package IE with Windows" argument.

This article has more details. Basically, customers only want to deal with one "suite," but Oracle and Siebel do slightly different stuff.

Re:How does this benefit customers?

[GreyPoopon]

Why would this benefit their customers?

It will basically get rid of the last reason for not switching to SAP. Indecision can be very exhausting. ;)

Re:How does this benefit customers?

[Anonymous Coward]

It removes all that bother about competition and stuff. When you only have one choice, it becomes a very easy one to make!

Re:How does this benefit customers?

[ideonode]

I agree. I think Oracle can really position themselves as a market leader in the enterprise space, leaving only SAP as the main rival.

Oracle are in a position to provide a full-blown OSS/BSS stack (once they finally ship their billing system product). If they can bring the integration between the various apps in their business stack in-house, they get that close coupling (which may be a few years off, admittedly), then they can truly offer a Telco-in-a-Box solution, covering CRM, Billing, Payments and industry-standard hooks to third-parties. This All-in-One shop can be repeated for the other industry verticals that Siebel are traditionally strong in (Energy and Utilities, Financial Services etc).

To be honest, the people who should be worried are third-party systems integrators. Once Oracle provide a single-shop BSS/OSS solution, then a large chunk of integration income will disappear.

Re:How does this benefit customers?

[yogkarma]

So now you can't blame backend and frontend.

All you can get now is CAN-FOOD.

injoy.
"Yogi"

Re:How does this benefit customers?

[Short Circuit]

If Oracle's smart, they'll provide a plug-in API and charge support for developers who want to use it.

The further software integration moves along, the greater the oppertunity for plugins as a cash cow.

Re:How does this benefit customers?

[PeeAitchPee]

To be honest, the people who should be worried are third-party systems integrators. Once Oracle provide a single-shop BSS/OSS solution, then a large chunk of integration income will disappear.

Oh, don't worry about the SIs. It's not like huge enterprises (Global 2000 et al) *only* have Oracle, or *only* have SAP, or *only* have xxxxx -- they have Oracle, and SAP, and xxxxx, and every other vendor's crap that you can think of, plus a lot of in-house stuff as well. And everything needs to talk to everything else in one way or another. They'll *never* be able to get everything on one platform, no matter how much they'd like to, so they'll always be a need for bodies to plug everything together. Sure modern SOA architectures make that task a bit easier, but someone's still got to map the fields, configure / code / whatever the business rules, and oversee the project to make sure everything gets done within five years of when it was supposed to get done -- which, at the end of the day, is what SIs do.

Actually, I suspect Oracle is heavily leveraging the SIs at their customers' sites as we speak to stitch together the JD Edwards / PeopleSoft / Oracle / Siebel Frankenstein's monster that they've become in the last year and a half.

Siebel problems

[Zen]

Well, I don't know about the rest of you, but I've been on a two week long troubleshoot call for Siebel problems, and today starts the third week. 8-12 hours a day, 100's of different _sets_ of sniffer traces, and no solution. The problem is in the application, not on the network. I am not familiar with Oracle's technical support, but it can't be worse than Siebel's, so I'm looking forward to this.

Re:Siebel problems

[CptMatt]

Oracle's support for mundane problems is as bad or worse than everyone else. However, on critical problems they are far better than most.

Re:Siebel problems

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because Siebel is a piece of shit. Find whatever moron is responsible for purchasing it and throw a boiling pot in his face.

Re:Siebel problems

[CSHARP123]

I am not familiar with Oracle's technical support, but it can't be worse than Siebel's, so I'm looking forward to this.
Why do you think the siebel support people will be let go? People who are supporting today will be supporting tomorrow too. May be some get axed but not all.

Re:Siebel problems

[evilgrin]

What industry do you work for? I've also been on a several week troubleshoot that is driving me insane.

Re:Siebel problems

[Zen]

Yeah, I'd love to. We rolled it out 3 years ago or so, and had major problems with it. We spent millions of bucks (this is not a small company I'm talking about here) and completely revamped the design a year ago. One of the reasons was that we were using AIX servers, and Siebel told us that almost all of their customers used Windows, so most of their patch testing was on the windows version. Now we have yet another problem. The darn thing was rolled out as an edict from one of the executive VP's - we have no choice but to fight through all of it's problems.

Re:Siebel problems

[frank_adrian314159]

I am not familiar with Oracle's technical support, but it can't be worse than Siebel's, ...

Oh you naive fool!

... so I'm looking forward to this.

Wait a couple weeks - you won't be anymore.

Has the parent post been modded funny yet?

Re:Siebel problems

[siggy_lxvi]

Just from working with Seibel's front end every day, this doesn't surprise me. The thing will just randomly pop up nonsensical error messages, and the only option is to log out and log back in.

Re:Siebel problems

[Zen]

The people themselves seem pretty smart. My problem is management accountability. It took us forever just to get them to commit and have people on the conference calls with us, and now they're telling us that they'll give us 24 hour turnaround on our sniffer traces and server logs. The problem is that their management lets them get away with that, while we (the customer) suffer through another day of 60% uptime waiting on Siebel to give us some patch or parameter change.

Re:Siebel problems

[Zen]

Yeah, that's cuz we're in the same department. Small world :p

Anyway, for the rest of you, it's healthcare insurance if you're interested.

Re:Siebel problems

[aquatone282]

I've never worked with Siebel, but if their customer support is worse than Oracle's then you have my utmost sympathy.

Re:Siebel problems

[tompaulco]

I hear you. My experience with Siebel thus far has been that it was quite obviously built by about 10 developers an a long weekend, and nobody has touched the code since.

Nonintuitive user interface, scrollbars that don't resize according to the number of list items in the window, and that don't allow you to drag down to the last item.

Oracle can have them. I wouldn't pay for their whole company what some companies have had to pay for a site license.

Re:Siebel problems

[42.5]

I've dealt with both Siebel and Oracle as a system implementor and someone using their tech support. Oracle's support is better.

Siebel is notorious for asking your for more and more data until you reach the point of diminishing returns and just give up. We had to find so many work arounds to Siebel bugs I knew more than some Siebel product managers.

This will help Siebel customers because the code will improve, cost less, and support more platforms. Plus the Siebel applications will be able to compete with Salesforce.com now.

Re:Siebel problems

[arnie_apesacrappin]

Well, I don't know about the rest of you, but I've been on a two week long troubleshoot call for Siebel problems, and today starts the third week. 8-12 hours a day, 100's of different _sets_ of sniffer traces, and no solution. The problem is in the application, not on the network

I feel for you. I was in the same spot about 3 years ago. Does Siebel still reset all their TCP sessions? I have never seen (RST,FIN) so many times in my life. You are most likely (99.9995%) right that it's the application. When I went through my issue, after sending them multiple Gigs of traffic a day, some magic setting was found that fixed the issue. Also, no one ever apologized for personally attacking me for the network. So, when you are right in the end, don't expect a pat on the back. Your problem isn't with load balancing is it?

Re:Siebel problems

[42.5]

Resonate....

What a poor excuse for a load-balancer! Every time we even thought about changing Siebel we had to get a patch for Resonate.

Want to upgrade to Win2K? No problem, here is a patch for resonate. Want to add another node? No problem, here is a patch for resonate.

Mind you, we had to endure 2-7 weeks of tech support before they finally admitted to a patch.

Re:Siebel problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Find whatever moron is responsible for purchasing it [...]

RTFA, it is Larry Ellison.

Re:Siebel problems

[Zen]

Interesting. Yeah, we've got some RST's. We have yet to prove if they are a symptom of the (suspected) application problem or the cause though. We're on 7.5 which is not the latest, and the clients go merrily on their way, then all of a sudden they start hanging and open up a dozen or so new connections with the server because they didn't get a response, which makes our session count on the firewall go from a couple thousand to thirty thousand in a matter of ten seconds. We also use load balancers behind the firewall, and that stupid resonate stuff as well. I can prove via sniffer traces that the traffic gets through the firewall, through the load balancer, onto the web server, and the web server never responds. The web server guys can prove that they received the request and handed it off to the swe.dll. The swe.dll logs don't even register that it received the request. But do they admit a problem? Noooooooo.... They just ask for more logs.

I'd give anything to know what that magic setting is that you used. We have had one Siebel tech on the call that stated that she had heard of a similar problem with a customer and was trying to find someone who knew the specifics, and we have not heard from her since.

And no, I never expect a pat on the back. I've been a network administrator for too long to expect that.

Sorry for venting with actual technical specifics :P

Re:Siebel problems

[arnie_apesacrappin]

My installation was a bit older than yours (7.0.4). The first magic bullet was sticky sessions on the non-Resonate load balancers. When I orginally set up the virtual servers, Siebel told me not to turn on sticky sessions. Over and over again they repeated that the application didn't require sticky sessions and to not use them. Performance was horrible sending me into my first huge Siebel troubleshooting session. Finally, I just turned on sticky sessions and it got better.

My second problem sounds more like yours. I think it ended up being some patch (but may have been a DLL or mysterious Siebel setting). I don't really know as I divorced myself from Siebel at that point.

Just like you, I know better than to expect a pat on the back, but I figured that someone from Siebel would have maybe apologized or taken blame at some point. For all of the Siebel ProServ people we had on site we were probably paying $2000/hr for them to be there. After weeks of comments both to my face and behind my back attacking me, my network, my troubleshooting skills and whether or not my parents were married when I was born, I would have expected someone to be a decent enough human to make ammends. They just pretended it didn't happen. That's why I quit working on Siebel the first time and I won't work on it again.

Re:Siebel problems

[alekd]

I find that Oracle support varies a lot from product to product. The smaller products seem to have better support than the bigger ones.

The quality also varies with what time you log the support request. For the best responses try to enter the request when India is asleep. I do not why the Indian techs are so bad, but I suspect it has something to do with the churn they have in India, people quit before they become halfway competent. Another big problem might be the incentives Oracle are offering. It seems that some of them in a mad dash to get the support request away from themselves only give the request a cursory glance and enters an almost random question.

Re:Siebel problems

[ducttapekz]

Oracle has Tars, the most evil, tedious thing ever. It makes it take at least a half an hour to ask any question or to report a Mission Critical error. They also have meta-link which has the worst search engine known to man. Other than that, there support is great.

Re:Siebel problems

[Nefarious Wheel]

I am not familiar with Oracle's technical support, but it can't be worse than Siebel's, so I'm looking forward to this.

It may be a bit naiive to presume anything will change other than the rebranding of the original Siebel technical support team. I've known people in Siebel technical support, and although they're good people, they get nothing from the product engineers. It's a black box to them, too.

I hope I'm not being unfair -- my knowledge of this goes back a few years and may be out of date by now.

Re:Siebel problems

[Zen]

You're better off - they haven't changed much. They are not making direct accusations about anything, but they did outright say that a couple of our symptoms have nothing to do with the Siebel app and said it was either IIS or the network, which as early on in the troubleshoot as we were, that was impossible to know for a fact. I still think it is the swe.dll - it's the main one that is called for every get/post, and to us it is just a black box. They haven't been very forthright in explaining how it works and what exactly it does.

We do not have the luxury of stating that we will not support something. The app is used by our main inhouse customer (a very large division of departments that makes up almost 100% of the revenue generating portion of the company).

Although I do not believe we are paying anything - our VP called someone pretty high up in their organization and told them how it was going to go after their lowlevel post sales engineer interrupted one of our Directors a couple times while he was explaining the issue. He was stating that from a customer's perspective that Siebel was broken and not working, and the sales engineer kept interrupting him to say that the application was running fine. You just don't do that. It either works or it doesn't - don't pass blame, all that matters is that you make the paying customer happy and get them back up and running again in any way possible.

Thanks for the info - I appreciate it.

Re:Siebel problems

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't get 7/24 or 99.5% uptime for huge sites with Siebel, and if a disaster strikes, you have a lengthy journal recovery(single threaded?). Siebel was not designed for non-stop uptime, plus clients want to port stuff off DB2 onto Siebel, compounding uptime woes.

If you are a DB2 shop, journal sucking and syncing is a distinct business risk. Oracle has the talent to fix these problems up, so this is good. However Siebel is expensive, so it might be a way to keep Oracle DB marketshare, vs DB2/MySQL/MSSQL cheapskates, plus some extra incentive for those who know and use Terradata for doing real CRM.

No competion

[Anonymous Coward]

This is bad, it was already bad when Oracle bought Peoplesoft. The competion stops...

Oracle & Siebel: Match Made in Hell

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle and Siebel are a perfect match for each other. Both companies use a bell-curve performance review: 10% of employees are guaranteed to be fired each year.

Next, Oracle should buy Yahoo!. It too has a ruthless approach to life. Just yesterday, Jerry Yang (the co-founder of Yahoo!) applauded his company's effort in assisting Chinese authorities to jail and torture a reporter for revealing "state secrets". The reporter was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Re:Oracle & Siebel: Match Made in Hell

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not true. Siebel used to turn over the bottom 5% yearly but stopped that after all the cuts they have made over the years since the .com crash.

Oracle has NEVER made it policy to force the bottom x % out on a yearly basis. But, having worked for both, Oracle is the least tolerant of non-producing workers than any other company out there. You don't pull your weight, you get released and I have seen it happen in as few as 5 weeks of employment.

Decision Made Simple

[CSHARP123]

We made decision making process easier for you. You either buy oracle or you buy oracle.

Re:Decision Made Simple

[afidel]

Or Salesforce.com or SAP....

Re:Decision Made Simple

[otisg]

I'm a very happy PostgreSQL user - see the sig.

Re:Decision Made Simple

[thuh Freak]

"Any color you like, as long as its Oracle."

Re:Decision Made Simple

[killjoe]

Don't worry. MS is entering the CRM business. That's what this is all about. MS will introduce a product, integrate it with outlook, and make sure outlook does not work with anything else on the market.

Oracle is hoping that by buying peoplesoft and seiebel they can prevent MS from locking people out of outlook. Peoplesoft+siebel+oracle represents a large chunk of businesses that MS can't afford to alienate.

MS tried to buy SAP a while ago and it didn't go, my guess is that MS will kill SAP outright but oracle will be able to survive MS shoving their CRM down the throats of windows users.

Re:Decision Made Simple

[assert(0)]

Right! You either buy *oracle* or you *buy* oracle.

Oracle buys Siebel - visualizing the buzz

[otisg]

Today is a big shopping day, and when that happens I love watching the buzz spread. Here are some graphs that show the spreading:
- eBay AND Skype
- Oracle AND Siebel.
- the above graphs combined.

Re:Oracle buys Siebel - visualizing the buzz

[Anonymous Coward]

Try "bored AND at work." That's quite popular among blogs.

Re:Oracle buys Siebel - visualizing the buzz

[fbg111]

Looks like the blogs only really care about Ebay and Skype. Not to surprising...

Not Dead Yet.

[Short Circuit]

Oracle bought PeopleSoft a while back, and I haven't yet heard of any resultant headaches at the college I attend and work at. (PeopleSoft+Oracle setup.)

But that may be because of those coupons PeopleSoft issued while trying to avoid the buyout; they gauranteed the same level of support for some period of time I don't recall. It sounds like Siebel is going willingly, so I doubt their customers will get the same protection.

Re:Not Dead Yet.

[lucabrasi999]

When Oracle first announced the hostile attempt at PeopleSoft, Larry put his foot in his mouth by announcing that he would stop all future PeopleSoft development and he would make all PeopleSoft customers switch to Oracle. When you consider how much money customers have spent on the ERP systems, you can understand why most PeopleSoft customers were initially frightened of the Oracle buy-out. No customer in their right mind would want to be forced into an unplanned for migration to Oracle apps./p>

When Oracle finally completed the deal, they announced that not only would they continue to support PeopleSoft, but they would release a new version (in about three years) that would allow for a direct upgrade from PeopleSoft to a combined Oracle/PeopleSoft product. In other words, Larry learned that the customer is always right.

I seriously doubt that Larry will suddenly 'pull the support plug' on Siebel customers. Chances are rather high he will do the same thing with Siebel that he plans to do with PeopleSoft. Continue to provide support for a few years while developing an upgrade path that will allow Siebel users the chance to move to a future Oracle CRM product.

Re:Not Dead Yet.

[bigmaddog]

There's an incorrect assumption being made here in how the world revolves, which is that the really large software companies are the shit. Bill Gates may wipe his ass with greenbacks because of the high opportunity cost of reaching for tp given the value of his time, but he does not get to tell everyone what to do. Yeah, he's arguably pushing around the mom&pops out there, the mainstream private computer users, with whatever MS thinks is best, but there are plenty of large, powerful corporations out there with a finite threshhold for taking bullshit from others who are, regardless of size, still their vendors. They may not be able to tell Oracle or MS of whoever what to do, but they certainly can't be ignored or have their needs pissed away. Or something like that.

Re:Not Dead Yet.

[gbjbaanb]

na, it all comes down to money.. remember when Larry stood up and said there would be a single price book for all Oracle products, the biggest customer would pay the same per licence that the smallest would....

I can't remember how long it took before that decision was cancelled, probably about the same time it took one of the biggest customers to say "we're upgrading to a competitor unless you give us back our discount".

Re:Not Dead Yet.

[sapbasisnerd]

they announced that not only would they continue to support PeopleSoft, but they would release a new version (in about three years) that would allow for a direct upgrade from PeopleSoft to a combined Oracle/PeopleSoft product.

Hands up anyone in the room who thinks Oracle will actually deliver on that? Oh they'll continue to support the PeopleSoft install based because the love the maintenance revenue stream but Fusion will either be massively late or the "direct upgrade" will prove to be a grade A pain in the nether parts, probably both of those things.

More Job Cuts?

[EggMan2000]

Job Cuts?

The company may fire as many workers as it did after the PeopleSoft purchase, when Oracle cut 5,000 jobs, said Andrew Brosseau, an analyst at SG Cowen Securities Corp. in Boston.

SHIT!

``Oracle is buying a more complete product portfolio from a company that's been failing to execute,'' Brosseau said. The firm doesn't have ratings on either company. ``They are getting a good asset in terms of the product line and customers.''

Invest in Your Customers

[Doc Ruby]

Why doesn't Larry just buy all the database app customers in the world? At $100K a head, $20B would buy 200K customers. That would leave the customer corporations from which he cherry-picked them dependent on Oracle to do all their DB app business.

Re:Invest in Your Customers

[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

That's exactly what they are doing, but it seems corporate database customers cost more than 100k apiece.

To further compliment the look...

[Anonymous Coward]

Larry has commissioned a team of military historians to paint his jets in a Third Reich wartime pattern. His call to acquire a working Stuka is ongoing.

i don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

what siebel sells, anyone can explain in simple words which is their product, or a simple example of use.

Re:i don't understand

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Siebel sells best-of-breed soutions to snyergysticly leverage your existing best-practices methedologies into world-class feature-rich infrastructure enhancements with significantly accelerated ROI.

Or somethng like that.

Re:i don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

They sell software that runs on computers.

Re:i don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

For suitably small subsets of "runs".

Re:i don't understand

[Zen]

Are you my VP? I swear, he couldn't come up with a better BS one liner than that.

Re:i don't understand

[tekboy25]

eHas eAnyone eEver eRead eSiebel eSales eLiterature?

Re:i don't understand

[Low2000]

Sieble sells database software, most of which (all?) is geard towards sales. For instance, we use it in sort of a bastardised way where I work for tracking customer information in reguards to support calls. We will enter in what customers call with what issues attached to what ticket numbers on what products, etc... and Sieble will keep track of all of that.

Re:i don't understand

[siggy_lxvi]

They sell a database interface program geared for people in call centers. Esentially it's a big web page that call center employees go log into to make most of their orders and to check on customer information.

Re:i don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never see a Siebel installation that wasn't bastardized.

Re:i don't understand

[sunnyflorida]

Most of SEBL's revenue is not from the sales product. Big product is help desk.

Oh dear

[gunpowda]

Is anyone else struck by the suggestiveness of the extended metaphor on this other news site reporting on the story?

"Siebel has needed to be picked up for some time. There are other suitors that would probably have made better sense, but it seems that Oracle is going for the number one slot no matter what the cost and aiming to become the only boy on the CRM block..."

Re:Oh dear

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, at least they weren't aiming for the number two slot!

They probably reserve that for their customers.

Ellison

[SuperBanana]

In a single step, Oracle becomes the number one CRM [customer relationship management] applications company in the world,' said Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison."

..."then Oracle Chief Executive Ellison brandished his katana and with a scream, cut the CEO of Siebel in half"

Re:Ellison

[KingEomer]

Now the question is: Would Steve Ballmer, with his Executive Chair, beat the katana-wielding Larry Ellison?

Re:Ellison

[Anonymous Coward]

Now there's a torrent I'd like to download!

Oracle is in the database business

[crovira]

These acquisitions insure that their database business doesn't suffer by suddenly NOT being offered (unlikely but always a possibility [and if I was selling DB/2, I'd worry,]) or that some NEW database engine gets a foot hold in the marketplace (more likely.)

We're seeing the death of competition in the database market.

Re:Oracle is in the database business

[Zathrus]

We're seeing the death of competition in the database market.

The commercial relational database market has been pretty dead for years now. It's essentially gone down to three players -- Oracle, Microsoft, and IBM. And IBM is almost an also-ran -- unless you're on big iron (like, oh say, an IBM mainframe or AS400) then you're probably not all that interested in DB2.

So you're basically down to Oracle and Microsoft.

If you don't want to be tied down to an Intel platform then you're down to one choice.

And before people start yapping, yes, there is MySQL and PostgreSQL. They're both good for small to medium sized projects. But if you're talking terabytes or petabytes of data -- you're going to want one of the big guys, which offer things that those don't yet.

I just wish the included Oracle tools weren't so utterly shitty. If Oracle really wanted to help its users they'd buy out Quest and include Toad and/or TORa with every freaking install.

Re:Oracle is in the database business

[Qbertino]

And before people start yapping, yes, there is MySQL and PostgreSQL. They're both good for small to medium sized projects. But if you're talking terabytes or petabytes of data -- you're going to want one of the big guys, which offer things that those don't yet.

The upper limit for a single MySQL Database is 64 Terabyte. (Or was it a single MySQL table?)
That plus the fact that most DBs of this size usually do nothing more but more or less serial reads and writes makes MySQL actually one of the most feasable DB engines for large databases. Because it is one of the fastest DBs out there. And I doubt that Oracle is any more scalable than Firebird or MaxDB/SAP DB.

Re:Oracle is in the database business

[Anonymous Coward]

"Most 64TB databases this size"?

heh. I wonder how many 64TB databases you've worked on. You say "most". Does that mean that you've worked on more than 80% of the 64TB databases worldwide?

I'll bet that less than 0.01% of them use MySQL or anything that is not Oracle, DB2, or MSSQL 2000.

Go smoke some more crack.

Re:Oracle is in the database business

[bjsyd70]

Expensive systems are on Oracle. The largest collections of data might even be on the filesystem with no database. The largest collection of data I saw in a single system was on Postgres. If that system went Oracle it would have cost them half a million in licence fees, that would have been more than the comany running the database had. Instead they just had a boat load of cheap intel gear running Linux. An Oracle 7.1 on VMS database I once worked on simply could not handle the load of data we gave it. This data was a small fraction of what was handled by a time series data store system on the same hardware. As Postgres and MySQL gain the trust of users it will kill the market for low, then middle, then high end databases. That is why Oracle needs to move into applications because their core DB is going to loose to open source and microsoft.

So?

[canfirman]

I'll be impressed when Oracle comes out with an announcement that it's buying MicroSoft.

Then I'll be impressed.

Re:So?

[krgallagher]

" I'll be impressed when Oracle comes out with an announcement that it's buying MicroSoft."

The only reason Oracle would buy Microsoft is to dismantle it.

Re:So?

[rlp]

>> " I'll be impressed when Oracle comes out with an announcement that it's buying MicroSoft."

>The only reason Oracle would buy Microsoft is to dismantle it.

I'd be impressed by that!

Re:So?

[WillAffleckUW]

I'll be impressed when Oracle comes out with an announcement that it's buying MicroSoft.

Won't happen. Larry's too interested in winning the World's Cup in yatching for that to happen.

Besides, it rains too much up here.

Re:So?

[dakirw]

Won't happen. Larry's too interested in winning the World's Cup in yatching for that to happen.

Besides, it rains too much up here.

You forget that Larry's basically dismantling PeopleSoft's operations in Pleasanton and laying off employees by the thousands. He'd probably do the same for Redmond if this unlikely takeover ever came about.

Re:So?

[Nefarious Wheel]

The only reason Oracle would buy Microsoft is to dismantle it

What did you think he was trying to do? Microsoft has been using Siebel for years. Sapper technique.

Another dotcom bubble?

[RealisticCanadian]

Should I start hoarding supplies for the next crash?



Hmmm... welcome to Slashzonk; all Zonk all the time. (What, 13 articles in a row? and no screwups? they musta upped his caffeine dosage) 8^p

I'm curious ...

[scint]

as to what this means for IBM and their service based model. Does the concentration of big ticket erp system portend an end for db2?

Re:I'm curious ...

[lucabrasi999]

Does the concentration of big ticket erp system portend an end for db2?

No. Databases are used for more than just ERP systems.

And, in the ERP world, SAP still supports DB2. For that matter, if you are a long-time PeopleSoft customer that was using DB2 as your database, Oracle/PeopleSoft still provides you with support. So far, Larry is not making his customers migrate to Oracle databases.

Both make consultingware

[MarkEst1973]

Both companies make products that are HUGE! So big that they require fulltime administrators and/or consultants.

My question is: Who actually needs all this bloat? There are much simpler ways of implementing a solution that would work while saving on the license fees and consultants.

I work for a government contracting shop in Northern VA. We're living high on the government hog, and one of our clients wanted to implement Documentum. This product is so big, they've created entirely separate applications (each measuring many megs in size) just to install and configure the application. As a programmer, I am frustrated trying to maintain this. Why can't it Just Work(tm) when you drop a WAR file into the /webapps directory (Documentum is java-based, and their webtop application's WAR is 128mb).

Consultingware is a phenomenon that I just don't understand. Our client has no need for 90% of Documentum's functionality. They just wanted to share files on the web. They've spent millions on servers, licenses, and consultants (including my company) to install and maintain it. I could have written something much smaller that fit their needs, and saved them most of their money.

I don't know, maybe this is just a gripe. But when something feature-rich like PostgreSQL is available and you're hiring talented coders to maintain a HUGE application instead of writing a very small and lean one... well, I just don't get it.

Every line is code comes with a price tag. The less code the better. The smaller and simpler solution the better. Less is more. This is important when you're trying to keep costs low and compete in a competitive marketplace, which I suppose is not happening with a gov't client or a big honking corporation.

But I don't expect everyone (anyone?) to agree with me.

Re:Both make consultingware

[js3]

several reasons. when it breaks it's not because they cheapened out and there is someone to yell at and demand an overnight fix at their whim.

Re:Both make consultingware

[Anonymous Coward]

My question is: Who actually needs all this bloat? There are much simpler ways of implementing a solution that would work while saving on the license fees and consultants.

I work for a government contracting shop in Northern VA. We're living high on the government hog, and one of our clients wanted to implement Documentum. This product is so big, they've created entirely separate applications (each measuring many megs in size) just to install and configure the application. As a programmer, I am frustrated trying to maintain this. Why can't it Just Work(tm) when you drop a WAR file into the /webapps directory (Documentum is java-based, and their webtop application's WAR is 128mb).

Its the PHBs, they cant resist buying large expensive frameworks, they think that because it costs money it will save employee time/numbers. That is why employees use MS WORD when Wordpad or open office would do. It scales up aswell to things like Oracle. Some products aren't just expensive they actually *slow down* development AND produce poor buggy solutions aswell as costing money (e.g Broadvision).
It costs money - it must be good!

Re:Both make consultingware

[miketo]

No, I don't think you're griping. I used to work for two different companies, each of which trumpeted its ability to build "connectors" for Siebel. But Siebel's server-side and desktop components were so big, the APIs so convoluted, and the performance so bad, that both companies (rather than being "Siebel Consultants") always brought in Siebel wonks to develop the interfaces. We knew it was so bad, that we -- for once -- made a smart decision and kept away from the integration aspect.

I also got tired of Siebel's attitude (courtesy of HRH Tom) that nobody else either "got it" or "understood customers" according to the Siebel Way(tm) of doing things. I had yet to find a customer whose requirements weren't thoroughly bollixed up after an encounter with Siebel.

Oracle is going to have its hands full phasing out Siebel in favor of its own dog food.

Re:Both make consultingware

[jimicus]

The Siebel sales representative doesn't want to speak to you. He wants to speak to the IT director who's either been tasked with or taken it upon himself to figure out some way of using technology to get "closer" to the customers.

Say the magic word "Customer Relationship Management" and this suddenly sounds like a dream come true. Why spend months developing something in house when you can do the enterprise equivalent of trotting down to PC World, picking a box from the shelf and installing it? Much easier.

And the golf course around the corner from their head office is particularly interesting...

Re:Both make consultingware

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is where Microsoft comes in with Sharepoint...
Its SIMPLE compaired to its competition, especially since eRoom got bought by Documentum (so they will soon be screwing it up).

Re:Both make consultingware

[mrbooze]

Big sales like Seibel aren't sold to IT Directors any more. Most companies bypass IT entirely and go directly to the CEO or CFO. At best, they're pitching to the CIO, who is usually so far removed from any actual working IT personnel that we all look like ants to them.

Re:Both make consultingware

[tetrode]

Mark

We all agree with you here. This is slashdot. But the outside world does not. They want to be sure that they can slash someone's balls in two when it does not work.

That's the way the world works, Mark. I know - I was sorta in the same position as you. It isn't a nice view from there. But hey, this is what they want. I used to tell them, you know, you can get this for cheap. Just let me install this that & the other. No problem, no questions asked.

But no - they don't want no hippy-communist free software that works, just let me have some of your ultime-megalomanic pieces of sh*tware that will take for ages to load. And then crashes or just does not work.

While with open source, I have it all in my own hands - and I can fix problems within hours. But oh-no we don't want to fix problems fast. We want problems fixed reliably. If you tell me that you don't know when this problem will be fixed, but you're working on it, you are a bad, bad boy. On the other hand, when you tell me that the problem will take some two weeks investigating, then three weeks bug fixing and one other week in quality assurance (what a laugh) - so in total 6 fricking weeks to fix a silly little bug, they are very happy because it is all done via their fucked up ITIL standard.

I'm going to put my straight-jacket on again - the docters are coming soon.

Mark

Re:Both make consultingware

[Anonymous Coward]

They just wanted to share files on the web

Then have a look at webdav, comes as a module with Apache

Re:Both make consultingware

[dramenbejs]

My question is: Who actually needs all this bloat?

1) Merchants need it! Average high-level manager which is deciding what system to buy has little clue about important issues to help him in a decision.
He asks:
Can it do THIS and THAT? (better=more features)
Where it runs allready? (need for install-count strengthens the need for generality!)
What if something goes wrong? (big company can give him feeling of safety)

He does not ask until too late:
How much more servers we will need?
How fast will be the system?

2) In a lot of german companies are the SAP and OpenText the only allowed systems. Why is it I don't know, coleague speculated it could be money tunnel into germany and some tax wizardry.

Re:Both make consultingware

[jyx]

They want to be sure that they can slash someone's balls in two when it does not work

But the funny thing is, when things don't work and budget targets whoosh by, NOTHING HAPPENS! The big billing boys either just shrug their shoulders or bury you in blame avoidance procedure, all the while sucking money out of your business. I have yet to see a major software/service provider get seriously chewed out.

Re:Both make consultingware

[askegg]

I agree with you 100%, but I suspect government there is the same as here in Australia. Terms such as effeciency, IIR, ROI, etc are not in the vocabulary of government. The measure of success for any public offical is how many people they manage and how big their budget is. This is totally at odds with private enterprise.

Re:Both make consultingware

[ShelfWare]

Try DocuShare from Xerox. More lightweight and still a big vendor product. If you can convince the government "manglement" to change to a different product.

Re:Both make consultingware

[Anonymous Coward]

Basically fortune 500 companies have have hundreds of thousands of employees and millions of customers.

do you think your little web app could service 50,000 concurrent end users?

Tom Siebel

[kevin_conaway]

Interesting enough, Tom Siebel, the founder of Siebel, was once an ex-Oracle exec. I believe he left under less than pleasant terms.

Re:Tom Siebel

[bigmaddog]

An amusing anecdote:

I worked at Siebel a long time ago, briefly. I am not aware of the details of what went down between Tom Siebel and Oracle, but he didn't like them very much and this was common knowledge. So, we had a some sort of company-wide meeting, where the execs orated at length about various things I no longer remember. This was webcast to all the remote offices, so we got to watch. At one point, while discussing the goals of Siebel for the next little while, Tom muttered, half under his breath, that they hope to complete the transition from an Oracle to DB2 as soon as possible. This wasn't meant to be funny but the entire auditorium (a few hundred people at least) howled. Truly, a high point in any meeting. He looked rather unhappy.

Number one CRM company?

[jayloden]

Oracle is now the number one CRM company? What about SAP? They're so big and so dominant in their market that their product gave CRM systems the name "CRM" in the first place

Just a thought...

Re:Number one CRM company?

[DeepDarkSky]

I haven't checked the stats, but I seem to recall SAP was #1, followed by PeopleSoft, and Siebel is not far behind. Combining PeopleSoft and Siebel probably makes it #1.

Re:Number one CRM company?

[MouseR]

From TFA:

"Siebel's 4,000 applications customers and 3.4 million CRM users strengthen our number one position in applications in North America and move us closer to the number one position in applications globally."

No. 1 spot in Americas. Number close-to-one worldwide.

Re:Number one CRM company?

[MartinB]

Depends on what you mean by the C in CRM.

If you mean customers in a B2B, relatively low volume, high value, complex DMU (Decision Making Unit) type customers using saleforce/partner selling sense, then sure, SAP are very big players. If you're looking to tie sales and forecasts (don't get me started on trade funds...) into your enterprise financials, then SAP will always be on and near top of your RFP list. This is the space Oracle play in too. Siebel are also very strong here - excluding the links to the financial backend which are a matter for integration.

However, if you're looking at Consumers - very high volume, relatively low spend (nb: automotive purchase for yourself counts as low spend here), simple DMU type characteristics - then SAP are nowhere. Siebel are king here, in most all verticals they support, both on outbound campaigns and customer service/contact centre sides. If you want a single player to do all that, then you generally won't seriously look much further. Oracle do have OK-ish offerings here, but you'd typically only choose them if you want one vendor for your entire infrastructure.

(Note that for CPG companies the difference is absolutely crucial as they address both audiences)

What Oracle have done is very strongly consolidate their foothold in the Customer space and become the 800lb gorilla in the Consumer space, leaping ahead of SAP in the One Vendor To Rule Them All stakes.

So while they've now got a very strong claim to be the Number One CRM company (which Siebel pretty much were anyway), their more important claim is to be the Number One Enterprise Applications company.

Re:Number one CRM company?

[sapbasisnerd]

their product gave CRM systems the name "CRM" in the first place

Huh? CRM as a term was widely in use back when SAP was a one product company. IBM used it to refer to their internal tools and for about 15 minutes in the 90s they had this company called Corepoint that was theoretically gonna sell the stuff.

Who is actually number one is widely debated, SAP in private will now admit that some of their early claims about the number of CRM customers they had were included mostly customers with the SD component of R/3 licensed as they had basically no installs of the actual standalone CRM module. These days they actually have real CRM customers.

Antitrust?

[delta_avi_delta]

Does anyone know what the anti-trust or monopoly issues surrounding this might be. How many serious competitors does Oracle have in the US? How many in the world?

Isn't their behaviour of late equivalent to apple buying out Sun, Unix, Linux (metahphorically) and everyone else an an attempt to be bigger than microsoft?

Re:Antitrust?

[NoOneInParticular]

As for the US, they're now (by far?) the biggest. But even if they were twice as big, US anti-trust laws are no longer enforced, anything goes. The EU has sharper teeth, but given that SAP is still globally larger than Oracle, and in Europe dominating, I doubt they'll get a stink from that end of the world. So all in all, no roadblocks as far as I can see.

I, for one...

[planckscale]

welcome our new CRAPMO (customer relationship application provider management overlord)!

It shows the health of the market

[tentimestwenty]

Acquisitions like this generally mean that competition is already dead and also usually, that the market has reached capacity. The bigger company sees it as more cost effective to just buy the customers of the other instead of trying to innovate and steal them. Especially in the case where there are no more customers to make, a company HAS to begin buying out competitors.

Re:It shows the health of the market

[fm6]

You mean if the market can't grow any more, there can't be competition? That's nonsense. The economy's full of markets that aren't growing, but have lots of people competing for a fixed amount of business. But when you have deep pockets, the easiest way to grow is to destroy or buy out your competitors -- and that is what kills competition. If we still had an real anti-trust enforcement, it just wouldn't be allowed.

Re:It shows the health of the market

[tentimestwenty]

I take your point, but the reality is that most markets come to be dominated by 1 player which is so large that it stifles all competition. That's just the way unbridled capitalism works. There are exceptions of course, especially in high tech where the barriers to entry are lesser and your success can rely on innovation more. I'm with you though, there should be safeguards to encourage if not outright require at least 2 main players in every market to keep competition alive and give choice to the consumer.

Re:It shows the health of the market

[fm6]

I take your point, but the reality is that most markets come to be dominated by 1 player which is so large that it stifles all competition. That's just the way unbridled capitalism works.

So competition is a passing fad?

Oops

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, who ever put this story up, you got that backwards. Oracle is a U.S. company based in Cupertino, I believe Siebel is a German company. Just a correction.

Re:Oops

[rfreynol]

Oracle is a US company based in Redwood Shores, CA.

Siebel is a US company based in San Mateo, CA.

SAP is the German player in the ERP/CRM market.

How much did he pay

[hellfire]

Does this mean Larry only purchased Siebel for......

One Meellion Dollars!!!> (dramatic music)

What a steal!

Re:How much did he pay

[Anonymous Coward]

He paid it in Deustch Marks converted to US Dollars from a Swiss Bank account.

Whereas I for one

[WillAffleckUW]

welcome our new CRAM (customer relationship application manager) overlords ...

especially since I'm an ORACLE developer since back in my military days ...

[wonder if I have to wear a happy smile now when I haven't had my morning latt~e?

My secret wish is...

[suitepotato]

...that Microsoft bankrolls the research and development of a time machine to go back and stop Oracle from becoming so big but the machine has a GPF and instead falls out of the timestream onto the headquarters Remedy thus eliminating the threat of ARS forever instead.

What does this mean for smaller players like

[Anonymous Coward]

Sybase who are already on weak footing? Anybody know much about how Siebel's CRM on-demand compares to Salesforce.com (which is pretty kick-ass btw)?

Google

[Anonymous Coward]

You heard it here first.

IBM and Microsoft Impacts

[BBCWatcher]

Re: DB2, no, in a word. Most CRM software (by far) is in-house developed, and much of that is DB2-based. And there's a not-so-small CRM company by the name of SAP which will sell a lot more if Siebel did anything to mess with DB2 support. (SAP is already salivating, I'd bet.) And there's that DB2 z/OS product where huge amounts of enterprise data are kept. Oracle z/OS blows chunks (though their zSeries Linux product is good). If you don't support DB2 z/OS you're screwed in just about any enterprise environment. And IBM will happily sell you hardware and services regardless.

Actually, IBM does fine, but the big loser is probably Microsoft. Oracle believes in both Linux and J2EE, two concepts that are not Microsoft's. Siebel had previously announced they'd support both .NET and J2EE in their next big version. The .NET version is bound to disappear completely now. Siebel also announced that they'd support WebSphere Application Server as their J2EE runtime of choice. I think that'll continue -- it's hard to be enterprise J2EE without supporting the #1 runtime -- but I suspect Oracle will also allow using Oracle's own J2EE runtime as an alternative. Siebel also promised they'd move away from their Internet Explorer-only user interface. They've already started to do that, but you can bet Oracle will continue that trend and make sure that Siebel works great with Firefox, et. al.

Re:IBM and Microsoft Impacts

[sapped]

And there's a not-so-small CRM company by the name of SAP which will sell a lot more if Siebel did anything to mess with DB2 support.

Actually SAP runs on top of a database. Here at work (I use SAP all the time, hence my nick) we run on top of Oracle even though we have IBM running it all for the client.

So, it makes no difference to SAP which database sits underneath their product. They have connectors which join SAP to the database in a transparent fashion.

Re:IBM and Microsoft Impacts

[sapbasisnerd]

So, it makes no difference to SAP which database sits underneath their product.

True technically SAP runs on top of several databases including Oracle, in other ways the relationship is much less smooth, these days if you sell for SAP you have two standing orders 1) getting new customer licenses is nice, coverted PeopleSoft customers are better and 2) whatever you do if at all possible screw Oracle while you do it, if you can screw Microsoft too even better but the main thing is screw Oracle.

They have connectors which join SAP to the database in a transparent fashion.

Not actually but that's a close enough approximation for most purposes. If you could actually see the C language kernel code you'd be suprised how much code specific to each database there is, as it is there is also a fair bit of this in ABAP code too.

What next

[sapbasisnerd]

I imagine the phone lines between Armonk and Walldorf and Redmond and Walldorf are pretty busy now. Now that this penny has dropped IBM has got to be running the calculus on how much they can afford to tick off Oracle by buying SAP. As things are today IBM does much more business with SAP than they do with Oracle so I'm guessing there's about a 50% chance they will enter the game now.

In other news...Instruction Manual.

[Anonymous Coward]

"He was quoted as saying: "I'm just trying to look the part of evil genius now"."

Just follow the manual

Who's next for Oracle?

[$RANDOMLUSER]

They seem to be buying customers now.
My guess is their next takeover target is Computer Associates. CA seems pretty ripe for the pickin'.

Re:Who's next for Oracle?

[alekd]

Well, there has been rumours about BEA for a while. Oracle might want to reduce the number of people supplying application servers to themselves, Microsoft and IBM. (Okay SAP offers some Middleware as well, but are anyone actually using it for anything other than running SAP?)

Re:Who's next for Oracle?

[Surt]

With a market value of $16B, that's a much bigger purchase than Siebel. Oracle's market value is only $66B. That's definitely a stretch to try to purchase CA right now. Better to let CA's value slip over the next few years before buying them.

Check Siebel website! -OOPS!

[quark007]

On the Siebel home page they describe the advantages of the merger i.e. better customer satisfaction..blah..blah blah..
But check out this on Siebel website. It has several comments on how the PeopleSoft/Oracle merger is bad for customers.
Just as an example: Peoplesoft/ORACLE merger is a loss for the CRM market.
Someone better feed these web-developers to clean up the pages!
How about some anti-trust/ monopoly action?

Both make consultingware-OSS Unemploymentware.

[Anonymous Coward]

"My question is: Who actually needs all this bloat? There are much simpler ways of implementing a solution that would work while saving on the license fees and consultants."

So were are the *complete* OSS solutions then?

If this benefits customers, is it just open source

[WillAffleckUW]

Oh, I dunno... maybe finally, some semblance of linux support for siebel apps?

Possibly, since Oracle just released the Win version of ORACLE 10g only two months AFTER releasing the Linux and Unix versions.

Remember, with Larry, it's personal. If he has to encourage Linux to beat Bill, he'll do it. And IBM must be ROFLMAO at this new turn of events, even if they compete, they still get Linux to eat Win shorts.

Peoplesoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Although I do not know the backstory and the history of Peoplesoft's quality, I can say definitively as an instructor at a University that uses Peoplesoft that we have experienced extreme woes (or so the the admins have been saying). Just this last week Peoplesoft, which manages our classroom assignments and registration, failed to properly assign rooms for the fall classes, resulting in mass confusion in for the students. If you think it's hard enough to get students to show up for class, Imagine having 240 students not know where their 8AM Friday class is until 11PM the night before...

Siebel website

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess Siebel will have to take this http://www.siebel.com/crm-company/peoplesoft/index .shtm off their website now.

It's not the largest, just really BIIIIG

[WillAffleckUW]

Only one? I doubt they will ever buy Microsoft. Will it come down to a two player game? I could see that.

At which point, an open source competitor will evolve, most likely.

Nature obhors a vacuum.

Re:It's not the largest, just really BIIIIG

[Anonymous Coward]

and I abhor poor spelling.

Avalon Business Systems

[Johnso]

My growing consulting business considered Oracle, Siebel, and other CRM suites but decided to go with Avalon Management Suite from Avalon Business Systems. It handles all of our contacts, invoicing, inventory, and more.

It way exceeded our expectations. It's a nicer web-based solution without all the bloat. Oh, and it cost us a fraction of what the other products would have.

Siebel @ Gateway

[Anonymous Coward]

It's amazing when tech companies aren't using good/current technology to streamline things.

I worked for two years at Gateway Country in the Service Dept. The Siebel system setup they had was an improvement over the paper pushing system they had, but it was slow and wasn't integrated into the billing system.

In addition to that we were told "after every single field you change hit Ctrl+S to save" which must have been good for the servers. I asked about this, the management was looking at the number of saves per day to see how much work was being done. Nevermind they didn't seem to care about metrics like turn around time.

Comments posted anonymously to avoid losing my layoff check. Right before Christmas too, bastards.

As an ex-Siebel employee(developer and Pro Svcs)

[mreitzel]

It servers Siebel right. That had to be the hardest to configure, most espensive software on the planet. I was lucky enough to cash in my stock options in Fall 2000 when they were still above 100.

SAP

[Anonymous Coward]

SAP is just waiting until Oracle buys everyone else out, then they'll buy Oracle.

Reads the news...

[Linker3000]

...completes update to SugarCRM installation...shrugs shoulders...

Re:Reads the news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your job will be outsourced to Salesforce.com, Oracle On Demand, or MySAP by the end of next year.

Siebel cost AT&T Wireless US$100M

[Anonymous Coward]

CIO magazine did a good piece on what happened.

http://www.cio.com/archive/041504/wireless.html

Hard to imagine...

Re:Siebel cost AT&T Wireless US$100M

[fupeg]

Excellent article. Doesn't really seem like it was Siebel's software that was the real problem though. Sounds like several amazingly bad decisions by AT&T Wireless. The description of how their CRM v6 worked, with heavy coupling between systems shows a long history of bad decisions. Then their decision to start offshoring the maintenance of a system that was still in development is just classic. It's kind of nice to see that poor technology and poor decisions get punished just as they should be.

Does CRM Have Anything To Do With IT?

[Anonymous Coward]

These CRM packages are huge, complex systems that consultants install and configure. Usually nobody in the client company understands the package. So what does this topic have to do with IT?

No programmers are involved, other than to backup databases. No development is done, other than jawboning with consultants (who do the actual changes). With CRM, any inhouse developer becomes at best a systems analyst and will never see code again.

So again I ask, what does CRM have to do with Information Technology?

How is this a bubble?

[PCM2]

The market is actually contracting. Oracle buying up competitors means fewer vendors. How is that indicative of a bubble?

If there were three dozen new CRM start-ups appearing every few months -- backed by venture funding, going IPO, and then evaporating when everyone realized they didn't even have a product, let alone a chance of competing with the Oracles and SAPs of the world -- then that would be a bubble. This, on the other hand, is what we call consolidation. If anything, it's a sign that the enterprise applications companies are being realistic.

Re:How is this a bubble?

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't ebay buy skype (a start-up) for some absurdly bloated figure? Didn't yahoo buy flickr (a start-up with no discernable means of profit) for some absurdly bloated figure?

Re:How is this a bubble?

[PCM2]

Again, getting bought is the smart choice. Thinking you'll get rich by taking your start-up to an IPO is the bubble mentality.

Will spending all that money hurt eBay and Yahoo in the long run? Maybe, if they can't figure out a way to profit. But eBay and Yahoo are both well-established companies. If it's really a second dot-com bubble, do you really think eBay and Yahoo will be the first ones to go when it pops?

eBay bought Skype for $2.6 billion. AOL bought Netscape for $4.2 billion and what happened there? AOL went out of business? Not yet, and if it does that wouldn't be why. The Netscape browser technology disappeared? Not yet, in fact last I heard everybody was jumping off IE to use Firefox.

Could eBay have built its own P2P VoIP and IM system for less than $2.6 billion? Maybe, but who's done it so far? Skype probably has 1.) patents eBay would need to license; 2.) talent the likes of which eBay would need to build its software; 3.) engineering already done, while eBay would need to spend money on that; 4.) brand presence, which eBay would need to fight for once its solution was finished, years from now; 5.) existing customers, which makes its solution worth using vs. an untried competing product from eBay; 6.) and so on, and so forth.

You say it was an inflated amount. But then, you haven't looked at the books of either company.

Re:How is this a bubble?

[mars_rover]

There is no bubble. There is only Zuul!!!

What do these graphs tell us?

[PCM2]

These graphs are totally meaningless. OK, so there were some people blogging about both Oracle and Siebel around August 1. How does this tell us anything about how "the buzz spreads" from an announcement made on September 12? The chart seems to end yesterday. You blog guys crack me up.

I'll second that.

[emil]

I recently had a critical problem on an Oracle 7 database. We are a big customer, but this release is no longer supported.

The help desk didn't bat an eye; I opened a Java applet that let them see my desktop, and we ended up running CATALOG and CATPROC (fairly sledgehammer approach, but it worked).

Siebel

[Mark of THE CITY]

Was the Emeryville office (that tower along I-80) a satellite facility only?

Re:Siebel

[Anonymous Coward]

yes. The HQ has been moved a couple of times, but it's always been near the intersection of Hwy 92 and 101 in San Mateo.

Re:Siebel

[fm6]

I have no idea what's there, but my guess is a sales and/or field service office that doesn't occuppy more than a floor or two. All the sign means is they paid the landlord extra for the right to put their name on the side of the building.

Re:Siebel

[Mark of THE CITY]

I understand how commercial buildings are named, and am amused by the insecurity factor: "Gee, if our name isn't plastered out there on the edge of the roof, who would know who we are?" It makes an Oracle or Siebel seem as insecure as South Succotash* Bank and Trust.

If you live out around Hercules or Walnut Creek then an Emeryville office would save you driving to San Mateo, although now that the San Mateo to Hayward bridge is wider and has real breakdown shoulders on all of the flat part, the commute may not be so bad.

BTW the reason I saw it was I was reverse-commuting from San Bruno to Berkeley for a year, then from Oakland to Berkeley for a half year.

* In 1982, asked about the effect of recession on small-town Americans, Ronald Reagan said, "Is it news that some fellow out in South Succotash someplace has just been laid off, that he should be interviewed nationwide?"

How big an asshole Ellison has to be...

[otis wildflower]

.. Did anyone else notice that all these CRM companies seem to be founded and/or run by ex-Oracle people?

What kind of $$$ would Oracle have saved if their culture had enabled CRM apps to be developed inhouse instead of having Oracle people quit and go out on their own?

(Or was the push out of Oracle necessary to do CRM in the first place?)

Re:How big an asshole Ellison has to be...

[illuminaut]

CRM apps are being developed by Oracle in-house, it's just that it has been a rather recent development. This is why the Oracle CRM apps aren't quite as good as Siebel (or even Salesforce) apps and why it makes perfect sense to buy them out. Unlike the PeopleSoft acquisition, this one is not meant to eradicate a competitor's product but rather to make it their own and build on it.

Anyway, it has little to do with the Oracle culture or Larry's interpersonal skills, and everything with priorities and timing why CRM wasn't a big focus for Oracle 10 years ago but is now.

Re:How big an asshole Ellison has to be...

[otis wildflower]

Anyway, it has little to do with the Oracle culture or Larry's interpersonal skills, and everything with priorities and timing why CRM wasn't a big focus for Oracle 10 years ago but is now.

Fair nuff, but Peoplesoft cost $10b and Siebel $5.8b. The question is, it just cost Oracle nearly $16b to buy their CRM position. If they had been a bit more, say, Googly in their culture, could they have built it internally for somewhat less?

Or was it worth it for Oracle to be hardcharging and cutthroat to be able to pay $16b for that position after the dust cleared, and to have thrown off ambitious and/or disgruntled people with the gumption and 'vision' to build this stuff: would it have been created if Oracle _hadn't_ been the way it was/is?

Either way, something to think about IMHO.

Re:How big an asshole Ellison has to be...

[illuminaut]

Dont' throw the PeopleSoft and Siebel mergers into the same pot. The PeopleSoft takeover had just one purpose: to eliminate a direct competitor (and PS did duplicate the entire Applications suite, not just CRM). Yes, they're cherrypicking the best PS features for Fusion, but it isn't much that will survive. Siebel however has stuff that's actually better than Oracle's own software, and to some extent compliments their product line, so yeah you can say they bought their CRM position for 3.4 billion (after subtracting Siebel's cash in hand, this is the approximate cost to Oracle).

Would it have been cheaper to develop these tools on-site had they started 10 years ago? Maybe, but don't forget that all the risks you normally take are eliminated. They're buying a sure thing: an actual suite of products with actual customers and a guaranteed revenue.

Re:How big an asshole Ellison has to be...

[Saanvik]

Actually Ellison encourages his top people to come up with ideas and create their own companies around them. He understands that doing something new with a small company can be much easier than doing something with a large company.

Now, though, he's using the power of his big company to bring the results of those excursions back into the fold.

Good thing or bad thing? I don't know. It doesn't seem to me that PeopleSoft or Seibel were very strong companies or have/had good products, but I say that as a Salesforce.com addict.

Re:How big an asshole Ellison has to be...

[vickie_kenosha]

...Did anyone else notice that all these CRM companies seem to be founded and/or run by ex-Oracle people?...

Yes, that's true. A lot of other companies are/were run by Oracle people, including Craig Conway's PeopleSoft. I'm not sure they all left because Larry's an "asshole."

(BTW, I left Oracle to start my own company. Larry was great, taught me a lot, but I wanted to be a CEO, too. Hey, a girl can dream, right?)

At Oracle, I saw a lot of people leave to start their own company, Tom Siebel included. It always seemed to be the same old story. Tom was head of sales at Oracle, and had his head IT guy build a really great sales information system. It was so successful that they decided to sell it as its own product, to support the prime directive of selling more Oracle databases. Problem was, the system was hamstrung by having to use an Oracle database as an engine, back in the days when a portable Oracle database was an oxymoron (keep your comments to yourselves). So Tom and his lieutenants left to create their own company, dedicated to selling their own sales information system.

Look at it from Larry's perspective. Here's another trusted co-worker, whom Larry gave lots of opportunities, who leaves, brandishing the finger. With Larry, you're either with him or against him, and Tom badmouthed Larry when he left, and on every opportunity since them. Larry bides his time and has the last laugh. Siebel is now being bought by Larry, and Tom is forced to bow at the alter of Ellison.

Oracle is, obviously, one of the most successful tech companies on the planet, and Larry is the reason. He is the founder and has been at the helm for over twenty years. He made that place successful and some people rose in the company, liked what they did and left because they wanted to do it their way. Is Larry an asshole because they left? Or is it because they just wanted to be like Larry?

Re:How big an asshole Ellison has to be...

[Surt]

Maybe it was cheaper to dump a lot of people out into the world, and buy back only the successful products.

who the hell is "sap" ?

[Anonymous Coward]

might be a microsoft subsidiary...that's the only chance someone could ever afford to buy Oracle ;)

Oldies but goodies

[DragonHawk]

"To compliment his German accent, Larry Ellison has also donned a monical and top hat..."

Q: What's the difference between God and Larry Ellison?
A: God doesn't think he's Larry Ellison.

While we're on the subject:

"Let's face it, Bill Gates is just a white Persian cat and a monocle away from being the next James Bond villian. 'No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to upgrade.'" -- Denis Miller

What does Sibel do anyway ?

[sundru]

I am a *Nix scripting guy and just wondering what Siebel does in thier CRM ? is it a product , or group of products or just standards for a proccess? Everyone keeps talking about till death and the impression is it can do everything, wtf does it do anyway , anyone ?

Re:What does Sibel do anyway ?

[Anonymous Coward]

In theory it helps call centers and marketing manage customers (who is in the house hold, when, who and what purpose have they been contacted, ...). at least at my company it is everything. Take a big DB, toss a database to configure the app, rewrite over half of the out of the box functionality, connect that to hordes of legacy systems, add a web interface for non-home office users... hire over 70% consultants to work on an upgrade and you have Siebel in a nut shell.

Documentum and .gov

[__aadkms7016]

I'm not an expert in this domain at all, but from what I understand, Documentum can interoperate with the US Food and Drug Administration's requirements for electronic submissions of pharmacutical paperwork, and did so earlier than some competitors.

I wouldn't be surprised if there was a backstory like this for other government agencies too.

A sign that the software industry is maturing

[Anonymous Coward]

This is another sign that the software industry is quickly becoming a sibling of the automotive and aerospace industries -- mature! People are slow to realize that software is no longer a "garage-type" of industry. All of the low-hanging fruit is gone, eaten by the 800lb gorillas.

I'm sad to see it go.

Re:A sign that the software industry is maturing

[Wendell III]

Alright, who modded this "insightful"? :)

Interesting timing

[illuminaut]

Predictable move, but the timing would worry me if I were an Oracle stock holder, considering this acquisition was announced a week prior to the quarterly earnings report. Seems like they're already looking to distract from the results and nothing's better than a merger to explain away underachieving stock...

Re:Interesting timing

[dogma1]

Works out great for Tom Siebel , he makes money at Oracle, Makes money at Siebel and will make money from Oracle once again.

A sign of things to come...

[Duncan3]

I assume now that the market is only a couple players, that the Open Source (TM) CRM solution is 97% good enough to completely destroy that market?

And if not, what's so special about CRM? Not good enough to make free?

Re:As an ex-Siebel employee(developer and Pro Svcs

[pmancini]

Oh you lucky person! I had a sell order at 130 and it collapse right around 127. I lost like 3 million before I finally sold.

Sigh.

I still have 35 shares left, I wonder if I'll get a decent amount of Oracle stock in return and if it will be worth more than the couple of hundred it is currently worth.

The best thing that ever happened to me was getting laid off from that place.

Nepotism

[sheepoo]

Hey c'mon...I submitted this story and it got rejected...how come you got it published?????

Re:As an ex-Siebel employee(developer and Pro Svcs

[mreitzel]

Any chance you worked in the Durham, NC office? I myself am sitting on about 100 shares. $19.80 breakeven point.

First PeopleSoft, now this?

[nurb432]

Wonder what is next..

Now all they need is a server OS and a server based office suite to push.. 'Hello Sun Micro, we need to talk'.

so true on the second point

[BitterAndDrunk]

I've been in so many TAR battles like that it's ridiculous. The worst is when a problem hits two modules, say, Order Management and Inventory. Then it becomes this awful hot potato that you need to call and escalate to a Duty Manager just to get some semblance of support.

I've taken to answering questions/file uploads in consecutive posts to ding them all the way to Immediate Response Required and fuck up their metrics. If they're pissing me off, that is; sometimes you get one of the excellent tech support guys and life is hunky dory.

Scopus

[prisoner]

Does anyone remember Scopus? A company I was working for several years ago was happily using Scopus for our CRM stuff and then they were bought by Siebel. What a disaster. I thought Scopus was kinda bloated but Siebel made it look like a miracle of engineering. I left about halfway through the migration. What a nightmare.

Re:Scopus

[joe094287523459087]

yeah i worked at scopus, which was acquired by siebel, so i became a siebel employee.

they were polar opposities in every way

scopus was founded by a programmer
siebel was founded by a salesman

scopus was lax on dress code
siebel had a strict dress code

scopus was a very laid-back organization. one indian programmer i had to work with insisted on working 4 hours a day - midnight to 4am.
siebel had an unwritten rule that 10 hours was barely acceptable, and most people worked 12+ hours

scopus had no rules about your work area
siebel had a bunch of rules, basically amounting to No Personal Items In Sight - no posters, no toys, not even a soft drink on your cubicle desk

scopus was a technically innovative product with cool stuff under the hood and a small(ish) footprint
siebel was bloated and clunky and gigantic

scopus was user-unfriendly because of lack of documentation and lack of consistency (naming standards, etc.)
siebel had every tiny little widget fully documented and uber standardization

scopus was run by a nice guy who was loyal to his employees and gave a lot of money to charities
siebel was (is) run by an arrogant asshole

what really got to me at siebel was the way the whole company has 2-3 marketing filters. it was suffocating because of all the sales-marketing bullshit encrusted onto everything.

for example, IN THE SOFTWARE PRODUCT, when you were making a new project, you had to create "Business Objects." WTF why were they called "Business Objects"? because it appealed to the C_O crowd and gave them little hard-ons to see words they recognized instead of confusing technical stuff. the whole product was like that - full of little marketing flair where there should have been efficient user tools/labels/whatever.

Re:If this benefits customers, is it just open sou

[epgandalf]

Database development is done on Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems. A few years ago Oracle made the switch from Solaris. Porting stuff to Windows is a bitch. I'm doing it right now in another division at Oracle.
So Linux support will be very good, since it is the development platform.

A sign that the OSS industry is maturing

[Anonymous Coward]

"People are slow to realize that software is no longer a "garage-type" of industry. All of the low-hanging fruit is gone, eaten by the 800lb gorillas.

I'm sad to see it go."

Bye, bye, OSS.

This is what you get for "software as a service"

[Stu Charlton]

Which is actually what lots of open source people are pushing.

It's going to be a long, hard road to drive down the cost of software. Right now, it really looks like shifting money from license fees into consulting.

"Why buy a product when you can build it fairly quickly using XYZ open source framework?" is a common refrain I hear from many hallways. Not that this isn't a good option at times, it's just being pushed as the only option by a set of stakeholders with a vested interest in "building".

Re:As an ex-Siebel employee(developer and Pro Svcs

[pmancini]

Nah, was in Burlington, MA. 35 shares left, break even at $33. You must have got on board in early 1999 or last 1998?