Janna Financial Users Have Migration Options

Interface Software earlier this week announced a new migration service that gives customers of Siebel Systems' Janna Enterprise Suite an easy path to move to its CRM solution for investment banks, asset management firms, private equity firms, and financial service organizations. Siebel this week announced it will no longer support Janna Enterprise Suite. Interface is offering Janna users a migration path to its InterAction 5 product. However, Siebel is also transitioning Janna Enterprise Suite users to Siebel products. Siebel bought Janna Systems in the fall of 2001 for more than $1.1 billion to help shore up its presence in the burgeoning financial service sector of the CRM space. Siebel said its acquisition of Janna was a move to integrate Janna's technology into the Siebel eBusiness Applications, enhancing its multichannel e-business solutions for financial services institutions in the retail banking and brokerage, institutional finance, and insurance industries. In the fall of 2001 the two companies integrated the complementary product families into a single product suite, based on a common Web architecture. The result was Siebel Finance. At the time of the deal Siebel agreed to continue to support users of Janna Enterprise Suite 2001, which included Allstate Insurance, Bank One, Dain Rauscher, First Union Securities, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and TD Bank Financial Group. But, according to a Siebel spokeswoman, "Technical support for Janna software will end for the approximately 30 customers who have not yet upgraded to Siebel Finance 7 in either July or December 2003, depending on their contracts." She went on to note that Siebel Systems notified all affected customers in writing this past November--more than 7 months in advance of the commencement of the phase out--and provided details about on how to participate in the upgrade program for the Janna software to the applicable Siebel version 7 programs. Industry watchers say it is common practice at many companies to eventually drop support for acquired products. In August 2001 Siebel Systems launched a free upgrade path to all Janna customers that are current on maintenance and this upgrade path remains in full effect, the spokeswoman said. However, Siebel officials say that "the end-of-life program is not unilateral. We do take specific customer needs and circumstances into consideration." She also says that to date, "none of the Janna customers we've notified have come back to us yet indicating the desupport time line represents particular difficulty to them." Still, Interface has stepped in and offered Janna users a migration path to its InterAction 5 solution, which allows financial services firms to leverage the complex connections between people, companies, relationships, experience, and expertise. The InterAction 5 migration service includes professional services for importing Janna data into InterAction 5's Relationship Intelligence knowledge base. Once completed, customers will be able to take full advantage of InterAction's functionality and support services.