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

Oracle

[DavidLeeRoth]

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

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: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: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: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.

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:Monopoly A Game Of Life w/ Shoots and Ladders

[deathy_epl ccs]

mini NOTHIN'!

Reads the news...

[Linker3000]

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

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?

[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.

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: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

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.