Blog: David Loshin

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Oracle and Siebel - My Two Cents

For this announcement, instead of rushing to the keyboard to dump my views on the Oracle acquisition of Siebel, I decided to give myself a day to let the new sink in a bit. Certainly, the purchase will position Oracle as an even stronger competitor to behemoths such as IBM and SAP, so the wisdom on the purchase is not in doubt. And, as we have seen over the past year or so, Oracle seems to have gotten relatively good at the acquisition game, buying Peoplesoft and JD Edwards, and (perhaps with smoke and mirrors) integrating those organizations without too much fanfare.

Yet when reading some of the analyst reports, such as this one at Silicon.com, there always seems to be some mention of "deteriorating fundamentals at Siebel." Is this a criticism of the company itself, or of the CRM market as a whole?

As a data quality practitioner, I have always felt that the potential for the success of a good CRM project was hampered by data quality issues. However, while software companies like Siebel have drifted into less-than-stellar "business chops," more agile CRM vendors such as Salesforce.com seem to be getting a lot of good press.

OK, so Oracle buys Siebel - but is the intention to broaden the Oracle offering or to eliminate more competition? In essence, one might think that the acquisition might give software purchasers the willies, thereby driving more business to subscription-style services like Salesforce.com, or even to more engaging solutions such as Customer Data Integration (CDI) applications.

Or, on a more optimistic note, one might think that the purchase is both an endorsement and embracing of the value-added CRM accessories that can broaden Oracle's information management offerings. I look forward to seeing what is happening in the CRM 6 months from now...

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