




Oracle To Buy Siebel 233
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.""
yay dotcom bubble (Score:5, Funny)
When do I get my office scooter?
Another dotcom bubble? (Score:2, Funny)
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)
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.
Re:How is this a bubble? (Score:3, Insightful)
Will spending all that money hurt eBay and Yahoo in the long run? Maybe, if they can't figure out a way to profit. But eBay and Yahoo are both well-established companies. If it's really a second dot-com bubble, do you really think eBay and Yahoo will be the first ones to go when it pops?
eBay bought Skype for $2.6 billion. AOL bought Netscape for $4.2 billion and what happened there?
Re:yay dotcom bubble (Score:2)
I guess we now know what step ??? profit is.
Oracle (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Oracle (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Oracle (Score:3, Informative)
Siebel (Score:2)
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In other news... (Score:2)
The takeover by Oracle had long been predicted by analysts.
Re:In other news... (Score:2)
To compliment his German accent,
Now where are the language lawyers of slashdot?
Re:In other news... (Score:4, Funny)
Now where are the language lawyers of slashdot?
I dunno - this might work. I can imagine Larry Ellison walking around saying, "Why, Accent, you sure are a thick Germanic thing!" and then "Danke! Ich ben einer burly!"
He's weird enough.
How much did he pay (Score:2)
One Meellion Dollars!!!> (dramatic music)
What a steal!
Re:In other news... (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't believe me? Do a google image search for Larry and look at his eyebrows.
Re:In other news... (Score:2)
Oldies but goodies (Score:2)
Q: What's the difference between God and Larry Ellison?
A: God doesn't think he's Larry Ellison.
While we're on the subject:
"Let's face it, Bill Gates is just a white Persian cat and a monocle away from being the next James Bond villian. 'No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to upgrade.'" -- Denis Miller
Monopoly A Game Of Life w/ Shoots and Ladders (Score:5, Funny)
Why is this a trend I continue to see in Oracle?
I'll probably get flamed by the Oracle is holier then thou crowd, but that's life.
Where did I leave my ladders at...
Re:Monopoly A Game Of Life w/ Shoots and Ladders (Score:2)
There may be laws to prevent this kind of behavior: for example non-"consumed" rivals might approach the DoJ with an anti-trust plea. But as Netscape vs. M$ has proved, the 800 pound gorilla wins in the long run. Winning matters, noone cares how you won. This is the side-effect of capitalism. I think U.S. really needs to revise its policies. Do you think a $5 million company needs to pay the same amount of sales tax as a $5 billion company for the same amount of sales? I don't know much about U.S. economy o
Re:Monopoly A Game Of Life w/ Shoots and Ladders (Score:2, Insightful)
How does this benefit customers? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How does this benefit customers? (Score:4, Interesting)
If this benefits customers, is it just open source (Score:4, Interesting)
Possibly, since Oracle just released the Win version of ORACLE 10g only two months AFTER releasing the Linux and Unix versions.
Remember, with Larry, it's personal. If he has to encourage Linux to beat Bill, he'll do it. And IBM must be ROFLMAO at this new turn of events, even if they compete, they still get Linux to eat Win shorts.
Re:How does this benefit customers? (Score:3, Interesting)
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)
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.
Re:How does this benefit customers? (Score:2)
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
Re:How does this benefit customers? (Score:2)
It will basically get rid of the last reason for not switching to SAP. Indecision can be very exhausting. ;)
Siebel problems (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Siebel problems (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll second that. (Score:2)
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)
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
Re:Siebel problems (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh you naive fool!
Wait a couple weeks - you won't be anymore.
Has the parent post been modded funny yet?
Re:Siebel problems (Score:2)
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)
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
Re:Siebel problems (Score:2)
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.
Re:Siebel problems (Score:2)
My second problem sounds mor
Re:Siebel problems (Score:2, Funny)
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)
Re:Decision Made Simple (Score:2)
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)
- eBay AND Skype [blogpulse.com]
- Oracle AND Siebel [blogpulse.com].
- the above graphs combined [blogpulse.com].
Re:Oracle buys Siebel - visualizing the buzz (Score:2)
What do these graphs tell us? (Score:2)
Not Dead Yet. (Score:4, Interesting)
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)
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.
Re:Not Dead Yet. (Score:2)
Re:Not Dead Yet. (Score:2)
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)
"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)
..."then Oracle Chief Executive Ellison brandished his katana and with a scream, cut the CEO of Siebel in half"
Re:Ellison (Score:2, Funny)
Oracle is in the database business (Score:4, Informative)
We're seeing the death of competition in the database market.
It shows the health of the market (Score:2)
Re:It shows the health of the market (Score:2)
Re:It shows the health of the market (Score:2)
Re:It shows the health of the market (Score:2)
Re:Oracle is in the database business (Score:2)
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
Re:Oracle is in the database business (Score:2)
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)
Then I'll be impressed.
Re:So? (Score:2)
The only reason Oracle would buy Microsoft is to dismantle it.
Re:So? (Score:2)
>The only reason Oracle would buy Microsoft is to dismantle it.
I'd be impressed by that!
Re:So? (Score:2)
What did you think he was trying to do? Microsoft has been using Siebel for years. Sapper technique.
Re:So? (Score:3, Funny)
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)
Re:I'm curious ... (Score:2)
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.
Re:IBM and Microsoft Impacts (Score:2)
Actually SAP runs on top of a database. Here at work (I use SAP all the time, hence my nick) we run on top of Oracle even though we have IBM running it all for the client.
So, it makes no difference to SAP which database sits underneath their product. They have connectors which join SAP to the database in a transparent fashion.
Both make consultingware (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Both make consultingware (Score:2)
Re:Both make consultingware (Score:2)
I also got tired of Si
Re:Both make consultingware (Score:2)
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)
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
Documentum and .gov (Score:2)
I wouldn't be surprised if there was a backstory like this for other government agencies too.
Tom Siebel (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Tom Siebel (Score:3, Informative)
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)
Just a thought...
Re:Number one CRM company? (Score:2)
Re:Number one CRM company? (Score:2)
"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.
Antitrust? (Score:2)
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?
Re:Antitrust? (Score:2)
I, for one... (Score:2)
What next (Score:5, Interesting)
Who's next for Oracle? (Score:3, Interesting)
My guess is their next takeover target is Computer Associates. CA seems pretty ripe for the pickin'.
Check Siebel website! -OOPS! (Score:4, Informative)
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)
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)
How big an asshole Ellison has to be... (Score:4, Insightful)
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?)
A sign of things to come... (Score:2)
And if not, what's so special about CRM? Not good enough to make free?
First PeopleSoft, now this? (Score:2)
Now all they need is a server OS and a server based office suite to push.. 'Hello Sun Micro, we need to talk'.
Re:CRM [ ] (Score:2)
Re:CRM [ ] (Score:5, Insightful)
When they were still in business, AT&T Wireless used to use Siebel CRM in their phone stores. They did everything in their power to lose all the customers they could. A one hour wait and two hours with a cashier to sell me three phones, all spent waiting for the cashier to click, drag, type, badger and bully my information into that worthless CRM system. Servers that took minutes to deliver the pages needed. And it wasn't the fault of the poor schmucks who worked at the store. Just imagine trying to do your job on a site that was being permanently slashdotted -- that's what I saw of Siebel CRM, every time I went in there.
And now Larry is sticking them in his cap like a feather. Well, good for them. I'm sure the Gartner Group is pleased as punch.
Re:CRM [ ] (Score:2)
Just wait until you have contact with Cingular.
You'll wish it took you ONLY three hours to buy a phone.
Re:CRM [ ] (Score:2)
poison, buy a phone for twenty-nine hours a day down mall and pay mallowner for permission to buy it, and when we got home,
our dad would kill us and dance about on our graves, singing Hallelujah!
Re:CRM [ ] (Score:2)
Seriously, I want to know if anyone has seen siebel actually work well. It blows my mind that software that's so poor can make money. I thought that what I use
Re:Siebel cost AT&T Wireless US$100M (Score:2)
Re:The Largest... What next? (Score:2)
Re:Invest in Your Customers (Score:2)
Re:Acquisitions (Score:3, Funny)
Re:i don't understand (Score:5, Funny)
Or somethng like that.
Re:i don't understand (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Oops (Score:2, Informative)
Siebel is a US company based in San Mateo, CA.
SAP is the German player in the ERP/CRM market.
Re:As an ex-Siebel employee(developer and Pro Svcs (Score:2)
Sigh.
I still have 35 shares left, I wonder if I'll get a decent amount of Oracle stock in return and if it will be worth more than the couple of hundred it is currently worth.
The best thing that ever happened to me was getting laid off from that place.
Re:Scopus (Score:3, Interesting)
they were polar opposities in every way
scopus was founded by a programmer
siebel was founded by a salesman
scopus was lax on dress code
siebel had a strict dress code
scopus was a very laid-back organization. one indian programmer i had to work with insisted on working 4 hours a day - midnight to 4am.
siebel had an unwritten rule that 10 hours was barely acceptable, and most people worked 12+ hours
scopus had no rules about your