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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?
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
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.
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..."then Oracle Chief Executive Ellison brandished his katana and with a scream, cut the CEO of Siebel in half"
Please help metamoderate.
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.
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.
Or somethng like that.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
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.
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! --
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!
.. 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?)