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To: rupert1 who wrote (2801)	8/26/2000 8:38:04 PM
From: rupert1	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2908

Oracle guns for Siebel with free CRM software Friday, 25th August 2000 When Larry Ellison first bought into the idea of an ASP sales force automation (SFA) solution it was Marc Benioff, the founder of salesforce.com, that was the primary beneficiary. Ellison, the head of the mighty Oracle Corporation, took a fancy to Benioff's idea and gave the former Oracle man a wedge of cash and his presence on the board in support of the venture. And it all seemed to be working out very nicely indeed. Salesforce.com kept pulling in the customers, signing up some strong distribution deals, with the likes of IBM and Work.com. But then it all went somewhat awry. Having spotted an opportunity and seen the kind of success that Salesforce.com was having Ellison decided to pull the rug from under Benioff and, in that classic Silicon Valley cut-throat manner that Ellison is inclined to adopt, he took the idea for himself and headed off back to the Oracle labs. It was here it seems that Larry put his head together with a few of the development boys and quickly set about developing his own competitive offering called OracleSalesOnline.com. Although the company has kept fairly quiet about these developments even since they were revealed over a month ago, this week the firm has just revealed its trump card. Where Saleforce.com charges a minimum fee for its SFA ASP solution, Oracle has truly decided to throw the cat amongst the pigeons and is expected to give its software away for free. Naturally Benioff won't be too thrilled about this extra competition in the market although he was at the time the news first crept out keeping a stiff upper lip about the whole affair. He did however ask Ellison to step down from his role on the board, which was only natural, but with the news that Oracle is going to give the service away for free the chances are Benioff is getting a little nervous. It's a shame really that Benioff's pioneering move is going to be thrown into jeopardy by Oracle's efforts because in reality salesforce.com isn't the target of Oracle's offering. Ellison has far bigger fish to fry, namely this years figure of Oracle hate, Siebel. Siebel is firmly entrenched in the SFA marketplace and, it could be argued, that this is where Siebel makes its bread and butter. With Oracle slapping the company in the face with a free offering though the chances are that Siebel will feel some pain, although quite how much remains to be seen. Oracle is hoping that by giving away its SFA software to all and sundry it will steal mind-share and pick up more lucrative contracts for costly CRM applications as a result. But that may not be enough. Siebel is the market leader in this space, despite what Oracle would like us to believe, and it will take an awful lot more than a bit of free software to oust it from this position. Further to that, Siebel also has the heavyweight support of IBM on its side and if things start getting ugly then Oracle could have a real battle on its hands – and frankly it is one that it is unlikely to win.