How Doth Thou Love Oracle, Mr. Siebel?
September 14th, 2005 by Adam Cuothe
In the recent news Oracle buys Siebel (not news anymore) but take a look at this link from the Siebel homepage. Just go to the Siebel.com web site, scroll down a little under the “Learn More” heading until you see the second link, which says “Considering PeopleSoft/Oracle? We can help you decide. See what the experts are saying.” click it. You’ll arrive on this page. Well if they happen to remove it as I expect they will soon, here’s an excerpt of what it says:
“It’s been a confusing few years for PeopleSoft/JD Edwards customers. And now, with Oracle’s acquisition of PeopleSoft complete, the future is more uncertain than ever.”
And, let’s say that’s not enough, here’s a screenshot
Grin. There was a time, when people left Oracle and built their own fancy fiefdoms. Ellison must have loved giving Siebel and PeopleSoft their shortlived run for the kingdom and then jerking the rope that realed them back to the fold with an armful of “satisfied” revenue streams. But here we see Siebel putting a decent amount of effort into discrediting the future of PeopleSoft (err JD Edwards?) customers with Oracle. In fact on the page I referenced above they collected quite a nice assortment of quotes from industry analysts like Meta, to build their case for the uncertain future PeopleSoft customers were to destined face. As if they could be a siren in the corporate internaut’s ear–that this is the time to CHOOSE SIEBEL. But if you’d taken too long to choose, well, I guess it just wouldn’t matter because Siebel decided to sell its revenue streams’, err, customers’ futures to Oracle as well.
One need look only so far as the press release to get the most direct confusion on the situation from the founder’s mouth.
“Today is a great day for Siebel Systems’ customers, partners, shareholders, and employees,” said Thomas M. Siebel, Chairman of Siebel Systems. “The combination of Siebel applications with the development capacity of Oracle to enhance our CRM product set assures our customers continuing success. This is a very beneficial business combination that will allow us to be even more effective in delivering high quality, leading edge solutions into the hands of satisfied customers.”
Don’t let this be a one sided issue though, what did Mr. Ellison have to say in the same press release? “In a single step, Oracle becomes the number one CRM applications company in the world…” Is Larry trying to satisfy… the end user customer? How about the shareholder?
Leave a Reply