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Siebel CRM Mashed Up Through WebEx
By David Utter
Expert Author
Article Date: 2007-11-01
WebEx, its new owner Cisco, and Siebel's masters at Oracle have made Siebel CRM available on an on-demand basis through WebEx Connect.
Follow the money. That's how easy it is to see the motivation to make Siebel CRM On Demand available on a software as a service (SaaS) basis.
Money, and the chance for Oracle to stick a knife into competitor Salesforce.com. The dollars add up to the billions, as estimated by analysts at Gartner. The global CRM market could hit $11.4 billion in total by 2011.
Projections for on-demand CRM merit laying the groundwork today. It's estimated that on-demand CRM market demand will outpace the overall CRM market, at twice the growth rate.
That brought forth the chain of reactions that led to WebEx and Oracle unveiling the positioning of Siebel's CRM solution for the SaaS world. Web applications allow tremendous freedom to companies with far-flung sales and marketing employees, who regularly work from laptops in hotel rooms and client offices rather than sitting in a cube all day.
Oracle touted Siebel's capabilities in sales management, information consolidation, reporting, and process management as advantages they offer. These features will include the ability to track WebEx meetings as part of the process of assessing sales productivity.
The real debut of what WebEx and Oracle are calling mashup capabilities will be seen in early 2008, when the on-demand CRM arrives as part of the WebEx ecosystem. People can use Siebel On Demand today, accessing it from Oracle's website.
When the WebEx Connect service gets underway, business types will have the option of putting the CRM product together with other services like email/calendaring, and a social networking site where sales prospects congregate.
WebEx and Oracle will be playing catchup in a way. Salesforce.com, through its AppExchange, has been offering a smorgasbord of on-demand applications in several fields to complement its CRM flagship product.
About the Author:
David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. Email him here.
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