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Oracle To Buy Siebel 233

Posted by Zonk from the busy-week dept.
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.""
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Oracle To Buy Siebel More

Oracle To Buy Siebel

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  • yay dotcom bubble (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 12, 2005 @12:47PM (#13538799)
    Everybody's buying everybody again! Woo!

    When do I get my office scooter?


    • Should I start hoarding supplies for the next crash?



      Hmmm... welcome to Slashzonk; all Zonk all the time. (What, 13 articles in a row? and no screwups? they musta upped his caffeine dosage) 8^p

    • How is this a bubble? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by PCM2 ( 4486 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @02:53PM (#13539855) Homepage
      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.
    • In a single step, Oracle becomes the number one CRM [customer relationship management] applications company in the world,

      I guess we now know what step ??? profit is.

  • Oracle (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DavidLeeRoth ( 865433 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @12:48PM (#13538803)
    I might be mistaken but, isn't Oracle a US company? The story makes it seem like Oracle isn't.

  • In other news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by COBOL/MVS ( 196516 ) <.argherna. .at. .hotmail.com.> on Monday September 12, 2005 @12:50PM (#13538823) Homepage Journal
    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".
    • Best Quote Ever from the Article:
      The takeover by Oracle had long been predicted by analysts.

    • To compliment his German accent,

      Now where are the language lawyers of slashdot?
    • Does this mean Larry only purchased Siebel for......

      One Meellion Dollars!!!> (dramatic music)

      What a steal!

    • Re:In other news... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Agrippa ( 111029 )
      Actually, Larry Ellison has already created himself an altered reality - he fancies himself an ancient Shinto warrior. Among other things, he decorates his houses like he is a shogun and he shaves off his eyebrows.

      Don't believe me? Do a google image search for Larry and look at his eyebrows.

      .agrippa.
    • "To compliment his German accent, Larry Ellison has also donned a monical and top hat..."

      Q: What's the difference between God and Larry Ellison?
      A: God doesn't think he's Larry Ellison.

      While we're on the subject:

      "Let's face it, Bill Gates is just a white Persian cat and a monocle away from being the next James Bond villian. 'No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to upgrade.'" -- Denis Miller

  • Monopoly A Game Of Life w/ Shoots and Ladders (Score:5, Funny)

    by Cylix ( 55374 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @12:53PM (#13538857) Homepage Journal
    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...

  • How does this benefit customers? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by juanescalante ( 848065 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @12:55PM (#13538879) Journal
    Oracle said the deal had the approval of the Siebel board and that the takeover was expected to be completed in 2006, subject to regulatory approval.
    It also said that the customers of both firms had long called for them to come together.
    Why would this benefit their customers?

    • Re:How does this benefit customers? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by sloanster ( 213766 ) <ringfan@ m a i n p h r ame.com> on Monday September 12, 2005 @01:02PM (#13538939) Journal
      Oh, I dunno... maybe finally, some semblance of linux support for siebel apps?
    • It's the same as Microsoft's "we have to package IE with Windows" argument.

      This [bloomberg.com] article has more details. Basically, customers only want to deal with one "suite," but Oracle and Siebel do slightly different stuff.

      • Re:How does this benefit customers? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ideonode ( 163753 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @01:28PM (#13539136)
        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.

        • 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.

          Oh, don't worry about the SIs. It's not like huge enterprises (Global 2000 et al) *only* have Oracle, or *only* have SAP, or *only* have xxxxx -- they have Oracle, and SAP, and xxxxx, and every other vendor's crap that you can think of, plus a lot of in-house stuff as well. And everything needs to talk to everythi

    • Why would this benefit their customers?

      It will basically get rid of the last reason for not switching to SAP. Indecision can be very exhausting. ;)

  • Siebel problems (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Zen ( 8377 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @12:57PM (#13538895)
    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.

    • Re:Siebel problems (Score:5, Interesting)

      by CptMatt ( 644683 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @12:59PM (#13538910)
      Oracle's support for mundane problems is as bad or worse than everyone else. However, on critical problems they are far better than most.

      • I recently had a critical problem on an Oracle 7 database. We are a big customer, but this release is no longer supported.

        The help desk didn't bat an eye; I opened a Java applet that let them see my desktop, and we ended up running CATALOG and CATPROC (fairly sledgehammer approach, but it worked).

      • Re:Siebel problems (Score:2, Informative)

        by alekd ( 580693 )

        I find that Oracle support varies a lot from product to product. The smaller products seem to have better support than the bigger ones.

        The quality also varies with what time you log the support request. For the best responses try to enter the request when India is asleep. I do not why the Indian techs are so bad, but I suspect it has something to do with the churn they have in India, people quit before they become halfway competent. Another big problem might be the incentives Oracle are offering. It seems

    • I am not familiar with Oracle's technical support, but it can't be worse than Siebel's, ...

      Oh you naive fool!

      ... so I'm looking forward to this.

      Wait a couple weeks - you won't be anymore.

      Has the parent post been modded funny yet?

    • I hear you. My experience with Siebel thus far has been that it was quite obviously built by about 10 developers an a long weekend, and nobody has touched the code since.

      Nonintuitive user interface, scrollbars that don't resize according to the number of list items in the window, and that don't allow you to drag down to the last item.

      Oracle can have them. I wouldn't pay for their whole company what some companies have had to pay for a site license.

    • Re:Siebel problems (Score:3, Informative)

      by 42.5 ( 530984 )
      I've dealt with both Siebel and Oracle as a system implementor and someone using their tech support. Oracle's support is better.

      Siebel is notorious for asking your for more and more data until you reach the point of diminishing returns and just give up. We had to find so many work arounds to Siebel bugs I knew more than some Siebel product managers.

      This will help Siebel customers because the code will improve, cost less, and support more platforms. Plus the Siebel applications will be able to compe
    • 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 feel for you. I was in the same spot about 3 years ago. Does Siebel still reset all their TCP sessions? I have never seen (RST,FIN) so many times in my life. You are most likely (99.9995%) right that it's the application.

    • Oracle has Tars, the most evil, tedious thing ever. It makes it take at least a half an hour to ask any question or to report a Mission Critical error. They also have meta-link which has the worst search engine known to man. Other than that, there support is great.

  • Decision Made Simple (Score:5, Funny)

    by CSHARP123 ( 904951 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @12:59PM (#13538909)
    We made decision making process easier for you. You either buy oracle or you buy oracle.
    • Don't worry. MS is entering the CRM business. That's what this is all about. MS will introduce a product, integrate it with outlook, and make sure outlook does not work with anything else on the market.

      Oracle is hoping that by buying peoplesoft and seiebel they can prevent MS from locking people out of outlook. Peoplesoft+siebel+oracle represents a large chunk of businesses that MS can't afford to alienate.

      MS tried to buy SAP a while ago and it didn't go, my guess is that MS will kill SAP outright but oracl

  • Oracle buys Siebel - visualizing the buzz (Score:5, Informative)

    by otisg ( 92803 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @12:59PM (#13538911) Homepage Journal
    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 [blogpulse.com]
    - Oracle AND Siebel [blogpulse.com].
    - the above graphs combined [blogpulse.com].

  • Not Dead Yet. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Short Circuit ( 52384 ) * <mikemol@gmail.com> on Monday September 12, 2005 @01:03PM (#13538949) Homepage Journal
    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.

    • Re:Not Dead Yet. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by lucabrasi999 ( 585141 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @01:36PM (#13539220) Journal

      When Oracle first announced the hostile attempt at PeopleSoft, Larry put his foot in his mouth by announcing that he would stop all future PeopleSoft development and he would make all PeopleSoft customers switch to Oracle. When you consider how much money customers have spent on the ERP systems, you can understand why most PeopleSoft customers were initially frightened of the Oracle buy-out. No customer in their right mind would want to be forced into an unplanned for migration to Oracle apps./p>

      When Oracle finally completed the deal, they announced that not only would they continue to support PeopleSoft, but they would release a new version (in about three years) that would allow for a direct upgrade from PeopleSoft to a combined Oracle/PeopleSoft product. In other words, Larry learned that the customer is always right.

      I seriously doubt that Larry will suddenly 'pull the support plug' on Siebel customers. Chances are rather high he will do the same thing with Siebel that he plans to do with PeopleSoft. Continue to provide support for a few years while developing an upgrade path that will allow Siebel users the chance to move to a future Oracle CRM product.

      • There's an incorrect assumption being made here in how the world revolves, which is that the really large software companies are the shit. Bill Gates may wipe his ass with greenbacks because of the high opportunity cost of reaching for tp given the value of his time, but he does not get to tell everyone what to do. Yeah, he's arguably pushing around the mom&pops out there, the mainstream private computer users, with whatever MS thinks is best, but there are plenty of large, powerful corporations out the
        • na, it all comes down to money.. remember when Larry stood up and said there would be a single price book for all Oracle products, the biggest customer would pay the same per licence that the smallest would....

          I can't remember how long it took before that decision was cancelled, probably about the same time it took one of the biggest customers to say "we're upgrading to a competitor unless you give us back our discount".

  • Oh dear (Score:4, Funny)

    by gunpowda ( 825571 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @01:08PM (#13538999)
    Is anyone else struck by the suggestiveness of the extended metaphor on this [vnunet.com] other news site reporting on the story?

    "Siebel has needed to be picked up for some time. There are other suitors that would probably have made better sense, but it seems that Oracle is going for the number one slot no matter what the cost and aiming to become the only boy on the CRM block..."

  • Ellison (Score:5, Funny)

    by SuperBanana ( 662181 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @01:10PM (#13539018)
    In a single step, Oracle becomes the number one CRM [customer relationship management] applications company in the world,' said Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison."

    ..."then Oracle Chief Executive Ellison brandished his katana and with a scream, cut the CEO of Siebel in half"

  • Oracle is in the database business (Score:4, Informative)

    by crovira ( 10242 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @01:11PM (#13539031) Homepage
    These acquisitions insure that their database business doesn't suffer by suddenly NOT being offered (unlikely but always a possibility [and if I was selling DB/2, I'd worry,]) or that some NEW database engine gets a foot hold in the marketplace (more likely.)

    We're seeing the death of competition in the database market.
    • Acquisitions like this generally mean that competition is already dead and also usually, that the market has reached capacity. The bigger company sees it as more cost effective to just buy the customers of the other instead of trying to innovate and steal them. Especially in the case where there are no more customers to make, a company HAS to begin buying out competitors.
      • You mean if the market can't grow any more, there can't be competition? That's nonsense. The economy's full of markets that aren't growing, but have lots of people competing for a fixed amount of business. But when you have deep pockets, the easiest way to grow is to destroy or buy out your competitors -- and that is what kills competition. If we still had an real anti-trust enforcement, it just wouldn't be allowed.
        • I take your point, but the reality is that most markets come to be dominated by 1 player which is so large that it stifles all competition. That's just the way unbridled capitalism works. There are exceptions of course, especially in high tech where the barriers to entry are lesser and your success can rely on innovation more. I'm with you though, there should be safeguards to encourage if not outright require at least 2 main players in every market to keep competition alive and give choice to the consume
          • I take your point, but the reality is that most markets come to be dominated by 1 player which is so large that it stifles all competition. That's just the way unbridled capitalism works.
            So competition is a passing fad?
    • We're seeing the death of competition in the database market.

      The commercial relational database market has been pretty dead for years now. It's essentially gone down to three players -- Oracle, Microsoft, and IBM. And IBM is almost an also-ran -- unless you're on big iron (like, oh say, an IBM mainframe or AS400) then you're probably not all that interested in DB2.

      So you're basically down to Oracle and Microsoft.

      If you don't want to be tied down to an Intel platform then you're down to one choice.

      And before
      • And before people start yapping, yes, there is MySQL and PostgreSQL. They're both good for small to medium sized projects. But if you're talking terabytes or petabytes of data -- you're going to want one of the big guys, which offer things that those don't yet.

        The upper limit for a single MySQL Database is 64 Terabyte. (Or was it a single MySQL table?)
        That plus the fact that most DBs of this size usually do nothing more but more or less serial reads and writes makes MySQL actually one of the most feasable

  • So? (Score:3, Funny)

    by canfirman ( 697952 ) <[ac.oohay] [ta] [52ivadp]> on Monday September 12, 2005 @01:14PM (#13539054)
    I'll be impressed when Oracle comes out with an announcement that it's buying MicroSoft.

    Then I'll be impressed.

    • " I'll be impressed when Oracle comes out with an announcement that it's buying MicroSoft."

      The only reason Oracle would buy Microsoft is to dismantle it.

      • Re:So? (Score:2)

        by rlp ( 11898 )
        >> " I'll be impressed when Oracle comes out with an announcement that it's buying MicroSoft."

        >The only reason Oracle would buy Microsoft is to dismantle it.

        I'd be impressed by that!
      • The only reason Oracle would buy Microsoft is to dismantle it

        What did you think he was trying to do? Microsoft has been using Siebel for years. Sapper technique.

    • Re:So? (Score:3, Funny)

      by WillAffleckUW ( 858324 )
      I'll be impressed when Oracle comes out with an announcement that it's buying MicroSoft.

      Won't happen. Larry's too interested in winning the World's Cup in yatching for that to happen.

      Besides, it rains too much up here.

  • I'm curious ... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by scint ( 555735 )
    as to what this means for IBM and their service based model. Does the concentration of big ticket erp system portend an end for db2?
    • Does the concentration of big ticket erp system portend an end for db2?

      No. Databases are used for more than just ERP systems.

      And, in the ERP world, SAP still supports DB2. For that matter, if you are a long-time PeopleSoft customer that was using DB2 as your database, Oracle/PeopleSoft still provides you with support. So far, Larry is not making his customers migrate to Oracle databases.

  • Both make consultingware (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MarkEst1973 ( 769601 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @01:24PM (#13539112)
    Both companies make products that are HUGE! So big that they require fulltime administrators and/or consultants.

    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.

    • several reasons. when it breaks it's not because they cheapened out and there is someone to yell at and demand an overnight fix at their whim.
    • No, I don't think you're griping. I used to work for two different companies, each of which trumpeted its ability to build "connectors" for Siebel. But Siebel's server-side and desktop components were so big, the APIs so convoluted, and the performance so bad, that both companies (rather than being "Siebel Consultants") always brought in Siebel wonks to develop the interfaces. We knew it was so bad, that we -- for once -- made a smart decision and kept away from the integration aspect.

      I also got tired of Si
    • The Siebel sales representative doesn't want to speak to you. He wants to speak to the IT director who's either been tasked with or taken it upon himself to figure out some way of using technology to get "closer" to the customers.

      Say the magic word "Customer Relationship Management" and this suddenly sounds like a dream come true. Why spend months developing something in house when you can do the enterprise equivalent of trotting down to PC World, picking a box from the shelf and installing it? Much easie

    • Re:Both make consultingware (Score:4, Insightful)

      by tetrode ( 32267 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @03:48PM (#13540322) Homepage
      Mark

      We all agree with you here. This is slashdot. But the outside world does not. They want to be sure that they can slash someone's balls in two when it does not work.

      That's the way the world works, Mark. I know - I was sorta in the same position as you. It isn't a nice view from there. But hey, this is what they want. I used to tell them, you know, you can get this for cheap. Just let me install this that & the other. No problem, no questions asked.

      But no - they don't want no hippy-communist free software that works, just let me have some of your ultime-megalomanic pieces of sh*tware that will take for ages to load. And then crashes or just does not work.

      While with open source, I have it all in my own hands - and I can fix problems within hours. But oh-no we don't want to fix problems fast. We want problems fixed reliably. If you tell me that you don't know when this problem will be fixed, but you're working on it, you are a bad, bad boy. On the other hand, when you tell me that the problem will take some two weeks investigating, then three weeks bug fixing and one other week in quality assurance (what a laugh) - so in total 6 fricking weeks to fix a silly little bug, they are very happy because it is all done via their fucked up ITIL standard.

      I'm going to put my straight-jacket on again - the docters are coming soon.

      Mark
    • I'm not an expert in this domain at all, but from what I understand, Documentum can interoperate with the US Food and Drug Administration's requirements for electronic submissions of pharmacutical paperwork, and did so earlier than some competitors.

      I wouldn't be surprised if there was a backstory like this for other government agencies too.

  • Tom Siebel (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kevin_conaway ( 585204 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @01:24PM (#13539114) Homepage
    Interesting enough, Tom Siebel [wikipedia.org], the founder of Siebel, was once an ex-Oracle exec. I believe he left under less than pleasant terms.

    • Re:Tom Siebel (Score:3, Informative)

      by bigmaddog ( 184845 )
      An amusing anecdote:

      I worked at Siebel a long time ago, briefly. I am not aware of the details of what went down between Tom Siebel and Oracle, but he didn't like them very much and this was common knowledge. So, we had a some sort of company-wide meeting, where the execs orated at length about various things I no longer remember. This was webcast to all the remote offices, so we got to watch. At one point, while discussing the goals of Siebel for the next little while, Tom muttered, half under his breat

  • Number one CRM company? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jayloden ( 806185 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @01:28PM (#13539139)
    Oracle is now the number one CRM company? What about SAP? They're so big and so dominant in their market that their product gave CRM systems the name "CRM" in the first place

    Just a thought...
    • I haven't checked the stats, but I seem to recall SAP was #1, followed by PeopleSoft, and Siebel is not far behind. Combining PeopleSoft and Siebel probably makes it #1.
    • From TFA:

      "Siebel's 4,000 applications customers and 3.4 million CRM users strengthen our number one position in applications in North America and move us closer to the number one position in applications globally."

      No. 1 spot in Americas. Number close-to-one worldwide.
  • Does anyone know what the anti-trust or monopoly issues surrounding this might be. How many serious competitors does Oracle have in the US? How many in the world?

    Isn't their behaviour of late equivalent to apple buying out Sun, Unix, Linux (metahphorically) and everyone else an an attempt to be bigger than microsoft?
    • As for the US, they're now (by far?) the biggest. But even if they were twice as big, US anti-trust laws are no longer enforced, anything goes. The EU has sharper teeth, but given that SAP is still globally larger than Oracle, and in Europe dominating, I doubt they'll get a stink from that end of the world. So all in all, no roadblocks as far as I can see.
  • welcome our new CRAPMO (customer relationship application provider management overlord)!

  • What next (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sapbasisnerd ( 729448 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @01:54PM (#13539363)
    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.

  • Who's next for Oracle? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by $RANDOMLUSER ( 804576 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @01:56PM (#13539389)
    They seem to be buying customers now.
    My guess is their next takeover target is Computer Associates. CA seems pretty ripe for the pickin'.

  • Check Siebel website! -OOPS! (Score:4, Informative)

    by quark007 ( 765762 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @02:02PM (#13539440) Journal
    On the Siebel home page [siebel.com] they describe the advantages of the merger i.e. better customer satisfaction..blah..blah blah..
    But check out this [siebel.com] 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?

  • Avalon Business Systems (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Johnso ( 520335 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @02:18PM (#13539558)
    My growing consulting business considered Oracle, Siebel, and other CRM suites but decided to go with Avalon Management Suite from Avalon Business Systems [avalonbusiness.com]. It handles all of our contacts, invoicing, inventory, and more.

    It way exceeded our expectations. It's a nicer web-based solution without all the bloat. Oh, and it cost us a fraction of what the other products would have.

  • Reads the news... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Linker3000 ( 626634 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @02:38PM (#13539730) Journal
    ...completes update to SugarCRM installation...shrugs shoulders...

  • How big an asshole Ellison has to be... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by otis wildflower ( 4889 ) on Monday September 12, 2005 @03:19PM (#13540080) Homepage
    .. 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?)
  • I assume now that the market is only a couple players, that the Open Source (TM) CRM solution is 97% good enough to completely destroy that market?

    And if not, what's so special about CRM? Not good enough to make free?
  • Wonder what is next..

    Now all they need is a server OS and a server based office suite to push.. 'Hello Sun Micro, we need to talk'.

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