OracleAppsBlog

A day in the life of an Oracle Applications Consultant

Siebel

Monday, September 12, 2005

More Enterprise Software Consolidation - Oracle buys Siebel

Big news. Oracle has bought Siebel for $5.85 billion. There’s been speculation about this deal for quite some time now and personally I was certain it was going to happen. It just makes sense for Oracle to do this if they want to compete effectively with SAP.

According to the press release:

REDWOOD SHORES, Calif.,  12-SEP-2005 Oracle Corporation (Nasdaq: ORCL) announced today that it agreed to buy Siebel Systems, Inc (Nasdaq: SEBL) for $10.66 per share. The offer is valued at approximately $5.85 billion, or $3.61 billion net of Siebel’s cash on hand of $2.24 billion.

“In a single step, Oracle becomes the number one CRM applications company in the world,” said CEO Larry Ellison. “Siebel’s 4,000 applications customers and 3,400,000 CRM users strengthen our number one position in applications in North America and move us closer to the number one position in applications globally.”

“Today is a great day for Siebel Systems’ customers, partners, shareholders, and employees,” said Thomas M. Siebel, Chairman of Siebel Systems. “The combination of Siebel applications with the development capacity of Oracle to enhance our CRM product set assures our customers continuing success. This is a very beneficial business combination that will allow us to be even more effective in delivering high quality, leading edge solutions into the hands of satisfied customers.”

“This is a customer driven event. Our joint customers have consistently recommended this transaction to both companies for over a year,” said Oracle President Charles Phillips. “We will embrace Siebel’s best-in-class CRM products and make the features of those products the centerpiece of our Project Fusion CRM.”

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

ERP Software Comparison - Oracle, SAP, Peoplesoft, Microsoft and Siebel

An article entitled ERP Packages Feature Comparison by Elisabeth Rainier of the ITtoolbox blog New Trends & Techniques in Managing CRM & SAP Projects, provides a useful comparison of the following ERP systems: -

• Microsoft Great Plains version 7.5 and previews of Microsoft Great Plains version 8.0
• Oracle E-Business Suite 11.5.9
• PeopleSoft Enterprise 8.8 and 8.9 and EnterpriseOne 8.11
• SAP mySAP Business Suite R/3 4.6 and SAP R/3 Enterprise 4.7
• Siebel 7.5 and Siebel 7.7

For the players and software versions mentioned above, you’ll find a study which provides a comparative, multi-vendor assessment across the three major phases of the application lifecycle: implementation, application usage, and ongoing support and maintenance.

I haven’t come across many ERP software comparisons on the web so if anyone else knows of other comparisons available online please add your comments and links to this post.

Thursday, July 07, 2005

ProfitLogic - another acquisition by Oracle

Fresh off the back of some rather superb financial results, Oracle has announced yet another acquisition. The company being taken over is ProfitLogic a leading provider of Retail Profit Optimization solutions.

According to the Oracle Press Statement:

ProfitLogic’s software analyzes customer demand patterns to help retailers make inventory, pricing and merchandising decisions. ProfitLogic’s current customers include retailers such as American Eagle Outfitters, Ann Taylor, Bloomingdale’s, The Children’s Place Retail Stores, Famous Footwear, JC Penney, Marshall Field’s, Nordstrom, Reitmans, ShopKo Stores, and Toys R Us, among others.

“ProfitLogic’s software provides analysis that helps retailers put the right product, in the right store, for the right customer, at the right time,” said Duncan Angove, general manager, Oracle’s Retek Global Business Unit. “Our acquisition of ProfitLogic will create the most comprehensive software solution for the retail industry. With ProfitLogic’s Retail Profit Optimization software, Retek’s end-to-end retail products, and Oracle’s infrastructure software and ERP applications, we will be able to offer an integrated solution for retailers of any size and in any industry.”

For further information check out the Oracle ProfitLogic page.

I’m sure this is not the only acquisition we will see in the coming months. In an article entitled Oracle Pushes aside the doubters, Street Patrol’s Robert Walberg mentions that other potential takeover targets may be Hyperion, Siebel, BEA systems or Business Objects. I’ll be posting more discussion on these potential takeover targets in the near future. In the mean time I’d be interested to here your thoughts on Oracle’s acquisition strategy.

Tuesday, May 03, 2005

Oracle to gain control of CRM software market by Siebel purchase?

Having recently purchased Peoplesoft, Oblix and Retek it seems that Oracle has now set it’s sites on a new software company, namely Siebel.

A recent article by InternetNews.com suggests that Siebel may be the target of a potential take over by Oracle for an estimated amount of US$5 Billion. If this is true, Oracle would stand to take control of the CRM software market and strengthen it’s overall position in the ERP market against it’s fiercest competitor, SAP. By taking over Peoplesoft, Oracle has effectively increased it’s market share in the CRM software sector from 5 to 10%. If they manage to successfully purchase Siebel their market share in the CRM software sector would theoretically grow to 35% compared to SAP’s 15%.

I think taking over Siebel would be an excellent move by Oracle and I’m going to keep a watchful eye on development’s in this area. If the buy out does go ahead, hopefully it won’t be a long and protracted process, although I’m sure merging the various software components into the Oracle E-Business Suite will!!

Tags
Oracle, Applications, Blog, Oblix, Retek, Peoplesoft, CRM, Customer Relationship Management, Software, ERP, SAP, InternetNews, Siebel