A couple of months ago, Oracle added Siebel to the fold and in the process began their squeeze of rivals like Saleforce.com. At this point, Oracle said they have no plans to buy Salesforce. Instead Oracle plans to rub out the CRM.
Back in September, Saleforce chief Marc Benioff put out an internal memo to all his saying Oracle put Siebel’s investors out of their misery. He pointed out Siebel will die as ZDNet put it because Larry Ellison could never let a company of his to exist who’s product was so reliant on IBM.
Here’s the letter from Benioff originally reprinted on ZDNet:
Oracle put Siebel investors out of their misery today. We have been doing that for Siebel customers for years. Our announcement today at Dreamforce will accelerate that. It’s the end of software. Client/Server software is being consolidated by Oracle just as Computer Associates consolidated mainframe software. Oracle’s strategy is simple, instead of innovating, buy as much installed software as possible, call it all Oracle Fusion, and make sure it all uses Oracle’s database.
Now, the same thing that happened to Peoplesoft will happen to Siebel, it will die. Customers will look for new solutions and new providers. Employees will look for new employers. Siebel on Demand, a joint venture between Siebel and IBM, will be the first to be buried. Siebel on Demand is written exclusively on DB2 and Websphere and runs in IBM data centers. Oracle will kill it. Oracle does not sell DB2.
Now, the opportunity to be the global leader in the CRM market has opened for Salesforce.com. Our dream is becoming a reality, as the world will move to new on demand solutions. Already the fastest growing public CRM company in the world, with over 50% market share in On Demand CRM, salesforce.com is well poised to become the world’s new global CRM leader.
It is auspicious that this is the very day that we are announcing our new strategy at Dreamforce with AppExchange and our Winter ’06 release.
Aloha, Marc
Salesforce.com develops CRM software for companies. The software allows them track various metrics including customer service, marketing and sales. What happens next remains to be seen although Oracle does tower above the other companies? Benioff used to work for Oracle so he knows how the company operates. Does he have the foresight though to guide Salesforce through a battle with his old company?
John Stith is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
