Oracle: simply Magic

Another “Magic Quadrant” member has presented itself and surely to the surprise of few, it is Oracle. With over four million CRM deployed seats and over 150 million registered self-service users, Oracle was certain to have its Siebel CRM applications positioned in the “Leader Quadrant” of the Gartner “Magic Quadrant” in sales force automation.

The Gartner Magic Quadrant seeks to provide guidance for organizations seeking to purchase, replace or upgrade a sales force automation solution. Gartner positions a vendor in the “Leader” quadrant when its assessment of those companies reveals the company to be “performing well today, [to] have a clear vision of market direction and [to be] actively building competencies to sustain their leadership position in the market.”

Gartner, which uses client references as part of its evaluation of the service providers, undertakes this annual assessment to provide enterprises with data and analysis to help clients select their CRM service providers. The Magic Quadrant is a graphic representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. The analysis depicts how certain vendors measure up against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by the Gartner Group.

According to Gartner, “Quadrant Leaders” demonstrate market strength; broad installed bases using sales opportunity, solution and operations management among several industry segments; and the ability to affect market trends in all the categories of criteria on which they are evaluated. Gartner’s Magic Quadrant positions vendors in a particular market segment based on their vision and ability to execute that vision.

To be included in the 2006 SFA Magic Quadrant, a vendor had to demonstrate that it had customers that have deployed or are actively deploying opportunity management functionality within the past two years; is actively selling or marketing SFA applications to multiple industries and geographies; has proved deployable in sales organizations of over 100 users; has established or will gain market visibility and name recognition for SFA in the next year; and has professional-service resources dedicated to SFA.

The report “2006 Gartner CRM Sales Force Automation Magic Quadrant” can be found at mediaproducts.gartner.com.