Oracle CRM On Demand

Oracle OnDemand was inherited with the Siebel Systems acquisition (Siebel previously acquired the UpShot company and hosted product and later matured it to the then Siebel OnDemand product suite).

Things we like about Oracle OnDemand:

• Backed by Oracle (some may see this as a negative, however, we believe it is a positive)
• Simple to use; great for small business organizations
• Good reporting and analysis
• Excellent solution if you also use Oracle Financials or similar Oracle application solutions

Things we don't like about Oracle OnDemand:

• Lacks feature sets and functionality depth of some other on-demand CRM solutions
• While we like it for small business, we don't think its ready for midmarket or enterprise organizations
• Marketing and customer service modules are perceived as very weak

Oracle's SaaS Uncertainty
Oracle's long-term intentions for Siebel on Demand and the SaaS business model have long been in question by many industry insiders. Prior to the Siebel acquisition, CEO Larry Ellison had publicly chastised the SaaS model and discounted its value and potential. These concerns were again echoed during Oracle’s fiscal first quarter 2008 analyst reporting call (September 2007) when CEO Ellison clearly showed some distaste for the SaaS model. One day after SAP announced its Business ByDesign SaaS offering, Ellison suggested SAP is wasting its time pursuing the middle market with a SaaS solution.

Ellison proclaimed "We see the problem in that because we've looked at going downmarket." "We've looked very closely at it, and we think it's very hard to make money because there is no synergy. Ellison went on to say “It's very expensive to do ERP implementations in small businesses. The cost of sales is high. The cost of implementation is high. There are virtually no synergies in sales, marketing, and product development and support." Finally, Ellison commented "We just haven't figured out a way to make a substantial profit in that market. We think it's hard to make money." What does this mean for the long-term support, promotion and viability of Siebel OnDemand? We're not really sure. We suspect the only one who knows is Mr. Ellison.