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Oracle Will Buy Siebel Oracle Corp. will buy financially ailing rival Siebel Systems for $10.66 per share, in Oracle's attempt to satisfy its hunger for acquisitions and strengthen its arsenal against SAP. The deal, announced in September, is valued at about $5.85 billion, but Oracle's net cost equates to a net price of $3.61 billion, due to Siebel's $2.24 billion of cash on hand. It is expected to close in early 2006. Analysts note that although the Siebel-Oracle combination may be able to compete more effectively against SAP than Siebel alone, Oracle's acquisition of PeopleSoft, which itself purchased several companies, including J.D. Edwards and Vantive, is clouding the picture. They also say the move bodes well for on-demand players, particularly Salesforce.com.

Microsoft Acquires a VoIP Startup In a play to boost its IP-telephony capacity, Microsoft acquired Teleo, a privately held provider of VoIP software and services. The Redmond-based company expects to integrate Teleo technologies into the infrastructure that supports MSN, and eventually to deliver new VoIP consumer apps in future releases of MSN services. Microsoft currently uses VoIP technology in some of its products and services, including MSN Messenger. Now the software giant is acquiring Teleo's click-to-call dialing functionality, which allows users to click on a phone number that appears on a Web site or from a Web search, and place a call.

Siebel Continues to Lead Enterprise Deployment Siebel Systems still represents four of every 10 enterprise-level CRM implementation projects completed by large consultancies like Accenture, Capgemini, Deloitte, and IBM BCS, according to a recent Gartner report. The CRM software company continues to dominate the number of projects implemented at 38 percent, about four times more than either SAP or Oracle, which both ranked second at 10 percent.

CRM Software: A Customer Loyalty Problem The CRM software industry has the lowest percentage of loyal U.S. customers compared to other software segments, including desktop, enterprise, and infrastructure, according to Walker Information's "The Walker Loyalty Report for Software and Hardware." U.S. CRM customer concerns--including TCO, product quality, reliability, and ease of use--contribute to the poorer showing in comparison to the other software categories.

The 2004 CRM Apps Market: Double Digits The CRM applications market experienced double-digit growth in 2004 for the first time since 1999, rising to $10.9 billion, a 10 percent increase over 2003's figure. The numbers were aided by a substantial 105 percent upswing in hosted CRM app sales, according to a report by AMR Research, "The Customer Management Applications Report, 2004-2009." The hosted CRM market's growth is an impressive uptake, says Rob Bois, senior research analyst at AMR Research. He also notes that it is due in part to the market's relative infancy--with a smaller base, a market can have a higher growth rate in comparison with a market with a larger one.

Siebel Takes CRM Analytics Apps Market Share IDC named Siebel Systems the 2004 market-share leader in CRM analytics applications in its report "Worldwide CRM Analytic Applications 2004 Vendor Shares: Strength and Churn," and attributed part of the company's success to enhanced analytics functionality through its 2001 acquisition of nQuire Software. Siebel also had the top market share in 2002 and 2003. The second-largest market-share winner, SAS Institute, is the largest predictive analytics vendor in CRM. (For the full stories and more news, visit destinationCRM.com)

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