Oracle Upgrades Its CRM Software-As-A-Service Offering

SaaS momentum can't be denied, but the vendor will try to limit uptake among its core customers. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, in a conference call with financial analysts last fall, summed up the company's predicament vis-à-vis the software-as-a-service model. SaaS is "very interesting," Ellison noted, "but so far, no one has figured out how to make any money at it."

Well, at least the conventional software titans haven't. But that's not stopping Oracle from giving it the old college try. Momentum for SaaS, particularly for CRM, continues to build, prompting renewed efforts from Oracle in a market dominated by Salesforce.com. Oracle will release a new version of its Siebel CRM On Demand next month, only eight months after a full upgrade of the offering.

There's good reason: The on-demand CRM sector will grow at a 26% compound annual clip, Gartner predicts, reaching $2.5 billion by 2011.

Siebel CRM On Demand languished under Oracle after the company's $5.8 billion purchase of Siebel Systems in January 2006, with no major upgrades for 18 months. Gartner analyst Robert Desisto, in a report last year, blamed that neglect for a 75% reduction in inquiries for competitive evaluations of the product.

Siebel CRM On Demand Release 15, to be announced March 11, includes Web 2.0 features that support what Oracle calls "social CRM." The release includes integration of RSS feeds directly into applications and the ability to tap into social networking sites. That means, for example, that a salesperson could get news feeds for content relating to customers and receive alerts when a customer makes a change to his or her profile at business and social networking sites, says Anthony Lye, Oracle's senior VP of CRM products. The upgrade also includes improvements to how users make and share notes on customer records, to help avoid slips in communication on hot leads, accounts, and service requests.

The improvements in last summer's Release 14 included a nifty in-line editing feature and better integration with other Oracle apps. Oracle offers an integration pack for linking Siebel CRM On Demand with a customer's on-premises Oracle E-Business Suite, and in the coming year will release integration packs for its Siebel and JD Edwards on-premises apps as well, says Oracle VP Jose Lazares.

Oracle will market Siebel CRM On Demand to large companies, Lye says, while rival SAP pursues only small and midsize companies with its new Business ByDesign SaaS applications. "SaaS has expanded the market by opening up CRM to a whole new set of industries that want something lighter-weight and easier to use," he says, citing wealth management, construction, consulting, and other areas where the "professional relationship is far more social" than transaction-based industries such as telecom and retail banking. Oracle counts among its SaaS customers Accenture, General Electric, Ingersoll Rand, Kodak, and 3M, but it won't divulge numbers of users at customer sites.

Salesforce's largest customer is Japan Post, which has licensed about 40,000 seats of the CRM vendor's subscription service; Merrill Lynch has about 25,000 seats. Last week, Salesforce reported fourth-quarter revenue of $217 million, up 50% from the same quarter a year ago. By contrast, for its entire line of On Demand services, which includes hardware and software hosting services, Oracle reported revenue of $167 million for its fiscal second quarter ended Nov. 31, up from $140 million in the year-ago quarter. Oracle says Siebel CRM On Demand accounted for 10% of that growth.

Author: Mary Hayes Weier @ www.informationweek.com

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Teknosa implements Oracle

Teknosa, a Turkish consumer electronics retail chain, has implemented Oracle Retail applications to support its expansion strategy and enhance service levels across its multiple sales channels, states FOXBusiness.

The implementation of the Oracle Retail merchandising system, Oracle Retail allocation and Oracle Retail category management is enabling Teknosa to optimise inventory management, allocation and replenishment across its e-commerce and telephone channels as well as its 230 stores as the retailer expands its operations across Turkey and neighbouring countries.

"The implementation of Oracle Retail applications is part of Teknosa's three-year transformation programme designed to implement efficiencies and best practices that will optimise our agility as we diversify our merchandise offerings, extend our domestic operations and expand into new territories," explained Mehmet Nane, GM of Teknosa.

Source: www.itweb.co.za

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Oracle-BEA deal gets the green light

The Oracle-BEA Systems Inc. merger was effectively approved by the federal government yesterday when the U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission opted to terminate their antitrust review of the proposed deal early.

It's now up to the BEA stockholders, who on Friday morning will vote on Oracle's $17 per share offer for the middleware giant -- an offer that was initially rejected but ultimately accepted by BEA's board of directors under pressure from Carl Icahn, a major technology investor and BEA's biggest stockholder.

SearchOracle.com recently spoke with Dennis Callaghan, an analyst with the New York City-based 451 Group, to find out what a finalized merger would mean for BEA and Oracle customers, and how the merger would affect Oracle's product portfolio. Here's what Callaghan had to say:

What will Oracle Fusion Middleware look like if BEA is brought into the Oracle fold?

Dennis Callaghan: Oracle would be wise to put [BEA WebLogic] at the center of Fusion Middleware, rather than their own application server. In terms of how the market has voted, there's really no comparison [between the two]. I would expect BEA's [Business Process Management] stuff to supersede anything Oracle's got. The portal product that emerges will most likely closely resemble that which BEA acquired when it bought Plumtree. I don't consider either Oracle or BEA to be that strong in the [enterprise service bus (ESB)] realm, but probably would give the edge to the BEA AquaLogic ESB here. It's a slightly more established product that seems to be getting traction in the market. And if [Oracle leads] with WebLogic as their app server, it stands to reason that AquaLogic ESB would win out. All this being said, it should be fairly easy for Oracle to fill in and enhance these technologies with things it has elsewhere in its portfolio, such as the [Business Process Execution Language] engine it got when it bought Collaxa in 2004, which has always been a pretty strong product.

Should BEA users be worried?

Callaghan: Oracle, despite its 'evil empire' image, has by most accounts done a pretty good job of developing and supporting PeopleSoft, J.D. Edwards and Siebel applications and [the company is] not forcing customers into a new and different application suite. I would expect they would do the same thing with BEA, given how prevalent WebLogic is vs. Oracle's own application server. The company also has tremendous [research and development] resources to put into these products. Oracle generated about $5.5 billion in cash last year, compared to about $100 million for BEA. The fact that this ended up being a friendly takeover should bode well for the BEA product set as well.

What does increased consolidation in IT marketplace mean for potential middleware buyers?

Callaghan: Consolidation always creates opportunities to look at new vendors. [IBM's WebSphere] passed WebLogic long ago as number one in application servers, it has a comprehensive middleware/SOA infrastructure around it and no one is going to acquire IBM. Red Hat-JBoss is becoming a much more mature and capable middleware offering/SOA backbone [and] by the very nature of open source is very responsive to customer needs, [although] I'm still concerned about the speed of their product development cycles. So, it never hurts to consider alternatives when there is any uncertainty about future product development plans.

Author: Mark Brunelli and Jon Franke @ SearchOracle.com

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