Slashdot Mirror
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.""
Everybody's buying everybody again! Woo!
When do I get my office scooter?
I might be mistaken but, isn't Oracle a US company? The story makes it seem like Oracle isn't.
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".
GOBACK.
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...
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
Only one? I doubt they will ever buy Microsoft. Will it come down to a two player game? I could see that.
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 :)
...laugh at people that aren't in the click...
So you're not in the clique either?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.
We made decision making process easier for you. You either buy oracle or you buy oracle.
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.
Simpy
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.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
There can be only one!
"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..."
..."then Oracle Chief Executive Ellison brandished his katana and with a scream, cut the CEO of Siebel in half"
Please help metamoderate.
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.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Then I'll be impressed.
It is not our abilities that show what we truly are... it is our choices.
That's exactly what they are doing, but it seems corporate database customers cost more than 100k apiece.
My little site.
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
A couple fans told me that my last journal entry was mint; give it a shot. Hope you like.
Same thing we do every night Pinky, plan to take over the world!
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
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?
End Game.
----- You know you have ego issues when you register a domain in your name.
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.
John
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.
Interesting enough, Tom Siebel, the founder of Siebel, was once an ex-Oracle exec. I believe he left under less than pleasant terms.
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...
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.
Or somethng like that.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
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?
Namaste
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.
Does this mean Larry only purchased Siebel for......
One Meellion Dollars!!!> (dramatic music)
What a steal!
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
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?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
...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.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
Are you my VP? I swear, he couldn't come up with a better BS one liner than that.
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.
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.
eHas eAnyone eEver eRead eSiebel eSales eLiterature?
They seem to be buying customers now.
My guess is their next takeover target is Computer Associates. CA seems pretty ripe for the pickin'.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
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?
- Sh!t
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.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
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.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
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.
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
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.
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.
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
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.
...completes update to SugarCRM installation...shrugs shoulders...
AT&ROFLMAO
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...
There's nothing wrong with shooting, just as long as the right people get shot...
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!
Why doesn't Slashdot ever get slashdotted?
BEA
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.
Breakfast served all day!
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.
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.
Breakfast served all day!
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).
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?
Was the Emeryville office (that tower along I-80) a satellite facility only?
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
.. 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?)
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.
"Do you suppose that's why God lives in the Heavens? Because he lives in fear of His creations?" - Steve Buscemi
"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
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
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 ?
I wouldn't be surprised if there was a backstory like this for other government agencies too.
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...
- illuminaut, arbiter elegantiarum.
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.
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?
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
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.
Hey c'mon...I submitted this story and it got rejected...how come you got it published?????
Any chance you worked in the Durham, NC office? I myself am sitting on about 100 shares. $19.80 breakeven point.
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'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
LMFAO. Outstanding. Truer words have never been typed.
A gin in the hand is worth two in the bottle.
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.
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.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Alright, who modded this "insightful"? :)
--- Meetro: Location-Based Chat www.meetro.com
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.
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.
"And now Larry is sticking them in his cap like a feather.
More like Larry is waving their spinal column around like the Predator.
Most of SEBL's revenue is not from the sales product. Big product is help desk.
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".
-Stu
Nah, was in Burlington, MA. 35 shares left, break even at $33. You must have got on board in early 1999 or last 1998?
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.