Oracle plans for Siebel CRM

Oracle has announced a few details regarding its future plans, particularly those involving the recently purchased customer relationship management solutions provider Siebel and its products. In the near future are plans to develop Siebel CRM 8.0 and 8.1. The former should be released some time early next year, and the follow-up later in 2007. Press material from Oracle stated that “The 8.0 platform is particularly important in that it merges the user interfaces for both on-premise and OnDemand deployments, allowing for easy transitions from one model to the other.”

Oracle’s well-know “Fusion” strategy is naturally in the works for the Siebel CRM group with a product suite to be based on Siebel work to hit the market in 2008: “Oracle has a huge R&D effort ahead in merging the functionality from multiple CRM products into Fusion Applications. This will require significant resource commitments and a very delicate balancing act between keeping existing customers happy, and delivering on the promise of the future product suite.”

Oracle has publicly restated its commitment to Siebel CRM as the product of choice to market to every business in the portfolio save complex manufacturing firms to whom Oracle E-Business CRM will be recommended. Siebel CRM will act as the lead product here, and in on-demand, Siebel CRM continues. The Siebel line sales team at Oracle is now a mix of both companies’ sales forces, as the acquisition figures to result in some two thousand layoffs.