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

To: Melissa McAuliffe who wrote (1483)	5/4/1998 7:14:00 PM
From: Kevin Rose	Respond to of 6974

Hi Melissa: re: upgrade from SCOP to SEBL Sure, the upgrade will require work and testing on a parallel system before the 'button' is pressed. Unfortunately, most of these sites are 7x24x365, so new data is constantly being entered and modified. What I meant was that the actual point where someone says "we're ready to switch" and then says "we're done and running" needs to be nearly instantaneous. In Service/Support, that time is literally measured in minutes. In the SFA area, it's longer. Let's say the SCOP-SEBL upgrade required a complete change in data model. Let's say that the customer has a large database, with multiple tables with millions of records. Even if the mapping from one data model to another is straightforward, do you realize how long it would take to do a straight copy and reindex of that much data? Probably longer than the amount of time the organization would tolerate being down. Generally, when customers switch products, they will do your aforementioned parallel implementation and testing. We have had a fair number of customers who have run their previous systems in parallel with ours when they first go live, after investing in a scheme of making sure that changes to the new system are replicated in the old system. That way, if the new system falls flat on its face, they can switch over and not lose data or time. Do you think that SCOP customers will do the above, or tolerate more than the normal upgrade time? Not likely. Instead, they will just want SEBL/SCOP to "take care of it" themselves. But if CLFY, VNTV, or another vendor is chosen to replace the previous system, then the extra time and parallel scheme is much easier to sell (because it is assumed). re: "First of all most customers do not want to change vendors" I agree. But sometimes they convince themselves otherwise. Customers in the CIS space are very critical. The other vendor always looks better than the installed one; all vendors in this space have observed this. Generally, it the expense of the software and implementation that keep customers from switching to ALL vendors in the search for the Holy Grail of Enterprise Software. Not to be too harsh on this point, but we are talking enterprise software here (ok, I'll get my jab in here; we are also talking about the SCOP installed base). The wrong choice means careers are stymied and heads come off. Some of the SCOP customers are probably not entirely happy with their choice, and would love to rectify the situation. On your point that Seibel is strong on selling; true, but they will have a tougher go with a hostile band of former SCOP IT people than smoozing the VP of Sales. I have already heard tales of Tom's selling tactics backfiring in the Support/IT world. While we're on this point: in a lot of Support sales situations, you need to sell BOTH the users and the IT organization. They have a tendency to form 'commitees' with representatives from both organizations to evaluate and grade the vendors. You need to realize that there are two stories that these groups want to hear, and what those stories are. On upgrade costs, I wouldn't be surprised if SEBL charges something for this. If not, where do they make their money on the large one-time upgrade effort? Also, who pays for the conversion of TCL to VB? Data model changes? Triggers/stored procedures? External interfaces? Reports? The customer, of course. This cost can be much larger than the actual product purchase. Do you really think that Seibel has all this figured out? I believe that there is a lot of head scratching going on, with technical people muttering "Tom wants us to do WHAT?!". I'm sure they are smart people, but they may be backed into a corner. Good luck with your SEBL investment. PS "Is this something new...an instantaneous upgrade??" Melissa, since you are a SEBL investor now, you surely realize that this is exactly what SEBL sells. They call it the single button upgrade or something like that.