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AT ORACLE: Oracle News
Oracle and Siebel—A Great Start
By Aaron Lazenby
Early focus is on leveraging technology, supporting integration.
Earlier this year, business and technology publications trumpeted the official close of Oracle's acquisition of onetime rival Siebel Systems. Although a significant milestone, the announcement gave the impression that the two companies were only just starting to work together toward a joint strategy and future. The reality is quite different.
"We met with our colleagues on the Oracle side shortly after the initial statement was made about the acquisition to discuss how we would integrate the business after closing," says Anthony Lye, Oracle group vice president of customer relationship management (CRM) products, referring to the announcement in September 2005. "We've been working night and day ever since to develop our integration plans, evaluating the functionality of both product sets and working on projects that will bring some near-term value to our existing customers."
Through the integration planning process, executives and developers from both companies identified two areas where both Oracle and Siebel customers could see immediate benefits after the closing—direct integration between the applications and a closer alignment between Siebel's applications and Oracle's technology platform. As a result, much of the work created by the joint workforce will focus on these areas.
Application Integration
Traditionally, Siebel always provided resources to make sure applications from multiple vendors could work together in a single enterprise environment. But with access to source code of both application sets, Oracle developers can focus and expand on those efforts, closely linking software from both companies. For example, developers are creating integration toolkits to join Siebel's virtual contact center solution with the Oracle E-Business Suite to ensure a complete contact-to-connect business flow.
Additionally, integrations are being created to connect Siebel products with software solutions recently acquired by Oracle for which no previous integration tools existed. For example, since September 2005, efforts have been made to connect Siebel to Oracle Retail.
"The packaged integrations will allow customers to deploy the best-of-breed front-office solution with the best-of-breed back-office solution, get transparent integration between the two, and get support—all from one vendor," says Lye.
The integration toolkits are scheduled to be released within the next 12 months.
Platform Launch
Siebel built its reputation on CRM software. This emphasis on the application layer meant that development had to ensure Siebel products could run on all enterprise computing platforms—without necessarily optimizing for any.
"At Siebel, we were always unable to go as deeply into the platform technology as we would have liked," says Lye. "And with the shift toward service-oriented architectures, we had to rely on a number of third parties to provide us with that infrastructure."
Now a part of Oracle, the Siebel products and functionality can benefit from immediate access to engineers who are actually building the industry's foremost database and middleware platform. Already, Siebel's technology group has been integrated with Oracle's Server Technologies organization, forging close ties to ensure the applications take advantage of the latest technology features, applications are tested and optimized for optimum performance on the Oracle platform, and new development is based on next-generation principles—the Oracle Fusion strategy.
"At Siebel, while we were the best-in-class CRM vendor, we were limited in some key technology areas," says Lye. "We didn't have a middleware business or a back-office business. Now, all the developers work for one company, and that will result in significant application enhancements and continued reduction in cost of ownership for our customers."
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