Last fall, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison summed up the company's predicament vis-à-vis the software-as-a-service model. SaaS is "very interesting," Ellison noted, "but so far, no one has figured out how to make any money at it."
Well, at least the conventional software titans haven't. But that's not stopping Oracle from giving it the old college try. Momentum for SaaS, particularly for CRM, continues to build, prompting renewed efforts from Oracle in a market dominated by Salesforce.com. Oracle will soon release a new version of its Siebel CRM On Demand, only eight months after a full upgrade of the offering.
There's good reason: The on-demand CRM sector will grow at a 26 percent compound annual clip, Gartner predicts, reaching $2.5bn by 2011.
Siebel CRM On Demand languished under Oracle after the company's $5.8bn purchase of Siebel Systems in January 2006, with no major upgrades for 18 months. Gartner analyst Robert Desisto, in a report last year, blamed that neglect for a 75 percent reduction in inquiries for competitive evaluations of the product.
Source: Information Week, http://www.informationweek.com