Siebel dominant, rules, sits at number one … for now

With words like “dominant” and “rules” was Oracle/Siebel’s standing in IDC research reported last week. Said research had the CRM market divided into eight verticals: financial services; government and health care; manufacturing; retail; utilities; automotive; communications and media; and the always-popular other.

Siebel was reported as the leading CRM provider in the first five listed categories; one IDC analyst was quoted in CRM Buyer as stating that “Siebel really dominates … holding more than 20 percent” in financial services, the largest vertical. Winners in the final three categories were Reynolds and Reynolds; Amdocs; and Salesforce.com, respectively.

Conspicuously absent from the list of top dogs was SAP. As Tamina Vahidy at Line56 put it, “despite the great deal of attention garnered by SAP’s claim to have overtaken Siebel in CRM revenue about two years ago, SAP was not a leader in any of the vertical categories despite having a massive ERP presence in those verticals.”

Oracle’s kudos were to end quite soon thereafter, however. Just today, Gartner Research reported that “Oracle bought Siebel to become the market leader in 2005, but by year-end 2006, SAP will be the larger.”

Worse yet for Oracle, Gartner reckons that “SAP appears to be ready for single-figure revenue growth of its CRM products in 2006, at best. Oracle is prepared for a slight decline.” On top of that, say the Gartner folks, “we expect one or two challengers to emerge to compete with SAP and Oracle by 2008.”

Following SAP and Oracle on Gartner’s top 10 CRM vendor list are Salesforce.com, Amdocs, SAS, Microsoft, RightNow, SSA Global, Sage, and Teradata. This group of ten represents half the total CRM market.

IDC is a provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. Founded in 1964, IDC now employs 850 analysts in 50 countries. IDC is a subsidiary of IDG.

Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner, Inc. is a combination of four branches devoted to the gathering and analyzing of “technology-related insight”: Gartner Research, Gartner Executive Programs, Gartner Consulting and Gartner Events. Founded in 1979, Gartner now has 3,900 associates (including 1,200 research analysts and consultants) in 75 countries worldwide and serves 10,000 organizations.