Oracle Announces Release of Siebel CRM 8

Today at its global Applications Unlimited event held on 6 continents over 24 hours -- Oraclestock! -- Oracle (News - Alert) announced the general availability of Oracle's Siebel CRM Release 8, delivered as part of Oracle's Applications Unlimited program.

Siebel 8 also provides Linux support for the first time as a platform alternative. Siebel users can now have Oracle's Unbreakable Linux support program by choosing Oracle as the Linux operating system support provider in addition to the Siebel technology.

Part of the company's strategy appears to be to convince Siebel customers that their investments aren't going to be ditched. Company officials provide a statement from Toine Straathof, Program CIO CRM at Rabobank, who said "under Oracle's Applications Unlimited program, we are confident that Oracle will protect our current investments in Siebel applications."

With certification with Oracle Fusion Middleware, Siebel 8 provides support for Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs) and out-of-the-box Web services-based integration. This is intended to simplify integration between Siebel and other applications and services and accelerate Web-based application development. 

Additionally, Siebel 8 will provide ongoing, heterogeneous support for non-Oracle technology, including IBM (News - Alert) WebSphere, BEA WebLogic, SQL Server 2005 and IBM DB2, to "prevent vendor lock-in," company officials say.

In October Oracle announced the general availability of Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise On Demand and Oracle On Demand for Siebel CRM (Customer Relationship Management).

Billed as giving customers "choice and flexibility," the services are said by Oracle officials to " expand the Oracle On Demand portfolio of Software as a Service and Managed Applications offerings."

And in November Oracle unveiled in Singapore what company officials are calling its "go-to-market strategy and a full menu of flexible customer relationship management (CRM) deployment options" targeted to the small and medium sized businesses (SMB) market.

Some features of the new release:

Siebel Task-Based User Interface. Extends business process automation across the "last mile" directly to the point of user interaction. Tasks are designed to increase the productivity of novice or intermittent users by guiding them through the execution of unfamiliar tasks, while veteran users can switch between multiple tasks.

Change Business Processes in Real Time. Enables line-of-business personnel to create and change business rules and processes using a declarative, drag-and-drop environment that requires no coding, all in real time.

New and Enhanced Search Capabilities. The product is said by Oracle officials to have improved usability, information discovery and enhances end-user productivity through the ability to retrieve information both in and outside of the CRM application.  Oracle Secure Enterprise Search 10g, Oracle's comprehensive, standalone search engine, is provided out-of-box with Siebel 8. 

David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles please visit David Sims' columnist page.

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