Competition
The market for e-business sales and marketing solutions is intensely
competitive, fragmented and subject to rapid technological change. The principal
competitive factors in this market include:
- adherence to emerging Internet-based technology standards;
- comprehensiveness of applications;
- adaptability, flexibility and scalability;
- real-time, interactive capability with customers, partners, vendors and
suppliers;
- ability to support vertical industry requirements;
- ease of application use and deployment;
- speed of implementation;
- customer service and support; and
- initial price and total cost of ownership.
Because we offer both independent packaged applications, as well as an
enterprise platform for integrated e-business sales and marketing solutions, we
consider a number of companies in different market categories to be our
competitors. Companies focused on providing advanced selling applications for
e-commerce and traditional sales channels include Calico Commerce, Selectica and
Trilogy Software. Companies offering e-commerce software that focuses on a
specific aspect of the customer relationship or buying process, including
personalization, content management or self-service applications, include
BroadVision, Vignette, and Silknet. Finally, companies that offer enterprise
platforms for customer information management include Siebel Systems and Oracle
Corporation. There are a substantial number of other companies focused on
providing Internet-based software applications for customer relationship
management that may offer competitive products in the future.
We expect competition to increase as a result of software industry
consolidation. For example, a number of enterprise software companies have
acquired point solution providers to expand their product offerings. Our
competitors may also package their products in ways which may discourage users
from purchasing our products. Current and potential competitors may establish
alliances among themselves or with third parties or adopt aggressive pricing
policies to gain market share. In addition, new competitors could emerge and
rapidly capture market share.
Although we believe we have advantages over our competitors in terms of the
comprehensiveness of our solution, as well as our targeted vertical focus, there
can be no assurance that we can maintain our competitive position against
current and potential competitors, especially those with longer operating
histories, greater name recognition and substantially greater financial,
technical, marketing, management, service, support and other resources.
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