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Technology Stocks : Siebel Systems (SEBL) - strong buy? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hardly B. Solipsist who wrote (3256)	1/28/2000 11:20:00 AM
From: Trader Dave	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 6974

I haven't had time to read some of these more lengthy posts. But I can absolutely assure you that it makes no sense whatsoever for SEBL to go after ownership of the supply chain portion of the business. Integrating the supply chain process with the demand chain process makes a lot of sense. Perhaps in a partnership with ITWO. But buying a second tier train wreck like manugistics would be a disaster. (They pulled off scopus, a miracle IMO, but that was an extension of SEBL's core strengths. It also happened in an environment where Vantive made some serious mistakes.) TD

To: Hardly B. Solipsist who wrote (3256)	1/28/2000 11:48:00 AM
From: mtnlady	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6974

I agree a great system goes well beyond pure 'man years' invested in it. Being a software designer app designer myself (semi retired now) I can testify that it's more the expertise and experience you put onto a project than it is number of bodies. In fact there is definitely a point of diminishing returns when you just throw $$$ and bodies at a complex system. For example I know for a fact that Oracle is investing serious $$$ and people power to their CRM effort in a 'crash' program to catch up with Siebel. If anything this massive, last minute, type of project gives an app a high probability of being... a) late b) over budget c) overly large, unnecessarily complex and difficult to understand and use in everyday practice. d) disjointed - read portions of the app don't 'flow' together and the app stands a very high probability of being riddled with bugs e) poor integration - unable to communicate well with other applications in the companies suite of products f) lack of true expertise - Because the thing went up in a overnight barn raising type of operation everybody knows their own little piece of the 'world' (i.e. the portion of the app they designed and wrote) but no one knows 'the whole thing'. Knowing 'the whole thing' is extremely important in all phases of the project (designing, testing, marketing, sales/demos, implementation, debugging, future releases etc..) e) difficult to implement (see c,d,e & f) I think Oracles CRM efforts are massive but I'm not too concerned about them right now. I believe (my opinion only) Oracle's CRM projects short term impact (1-2 years) will be from FUD and marketing/sales hype which may slow down the sales cycle in some Siebel accounts. Siebel will still win 95% of the sales against Oracle but it may extend the sales cycle in some accounts that already have Oracle as the 'preferred vendor' in house. My opinion only. I believe Siebel's only 'true' CRM competition is coming from Clarify (I own their stock) and Remedy (more of a help desk niche player now). Of course new companies always come on the seen and several are coming from a 'pure' internet perspective which adds a new wrinkle into the game. But right now companies are not 100% internet in their implementations so I see these new offerings as more niche players right now but companies to definitely keep an eye on. Anybody else have an opinion? What about the 'new' competition such as SILK and others? Where do they fit into the puzzle? ST? LT? What are their strengths and weaknesses versus Siebel? How is the IBM/Siebel partnership going to affect them? Are they focused on a different market segment than Siebel so it won't really have an affect?