Oracle CRM On Demand Exposed -
Background & History
Oracle’s acquisition of Siebel in 2006 began
the push to develop a hosted CRM product from Oracle. Oracle’s charismatic CEO, Larry Ellison, had long been touting SaaS as the wave of the future. Despite the fact that prior to acquiring Siebel, Oracle had no SaaS offering, nor any public plans to be offered as a service, Oracle’s technology stack, including its industry lauded database and infrastructure platforms were being used by a number of software development upstarts to create SaaS offerings. Netsuite is a prime example of a software developer that used Oracle’s technology platform to deliver a SaaS ERP/CRM solution. In fact, Mr. Ellison owns a large share of Netsuite today reflecting his belief in the SaaS model.
Free: Complete Report – Oracle CRM On Demand Exposed
In acquiring Siebel, Oracle landed an impressive customer base and its first real SaaS offering in Siebel’s On Demand CRM. At the time, Siebel On Demand was the much smaller kin to Siebel’s well known on premise CRM offering. Siebel’s On Demand product has dramatically reduced functionality and was delivered in a multi-tenant model to primarily small and mid-sized businesses that did not have the staff, facilities or resources for a massive Siebel on premise CRM deployment. It also allowed Siebel to earn a degree of forward-thinking by demonstrating that Siebel could play in the
SaaS market.
At the time of the acquisition, most of Oracle’s focus was on appeasing nervous Siebel on premise clients that their investment would still be “supported.” Oracle also reiterated its interest in maintaining the Siebel On Demand product, which was quickly be renamed Oracle CRM On Demand. While there was a great deal of focus on the on premise market, the On Demand product essentially disappeared after the acquisition. Industry analysts theorized that Oracle was busy migrating off IBM infrastructure to Oracle’s and that much of that work needed to be done before they could build-out the Siebel product.
Free: Complete Report – Oracle CRM On Demand Exposed
To that end, Oracle acquired UpShot CRM which offered a more robust user interface than the legacy Siebel On Demand product. Blending Siebel’s experience in CRM with UpShot’s more contemporary technology, the combined teams set about the massive undertaking of building a legitimate SaaS offering worthy of the Oracle brand.
Two years later, Oracle On Demand has finally proven a formidable competitor in the Saas CRM market. After near silence on the product while it was being developed and adapted to leverage Oracle’s technology platform, Oracle’s well-oiled public relations machine has begun churning out press releases on new customer acquisitions. Gartner, the leading IT industry analyst firm with pervasive access to Oracle executives, reports that Oracle On Demand has approximately 150,000 users. Interestingly, the company reports in marketing materials that its Austin, TX data center, “…hosts Oracle applications for more than 3.6 million Oracle On Demand end users.” Consistent with Oracle’s history with exaggerating their license sales, the 3.6 million is likely the total user base for all Oracle On Demand applications, which the company loosely construes to be any application they host from Austin.
Free: Complete Report – Oracle CRM On Demand Exposed
