Oracle to buy Siebel
Consolidation in the software industry gains steam with new announcements of consequence every week. Oracle after a long, nasty, and involved $10 billion takeover of its rival PeopleSoft in the business software area, has now struck again. This time, the target, Siebel Systems, seems to be a willing acquiree.
Siebel is yet another business software company, with some areas where it currently competes with Oracle. Above all, it is #2 to SAP in the area of customer relationship management (CRM), while Oracle is #4. Siebel has, however, been running in place for the past few years with very slow growth. The deal, which will end up costing about $5.8 billion, puts Oracle as an ever bigger opponent to the #1 business systems software company, Germany-based SAP AG.
Siebel's founder, Tom Siebel, was an ex-Oracle exec who broke away form the mother company in 1992, But Siebel, as quotes in a Wall Street Journal article ("Oracle to Buy Siebel for $5.85 Billion", 8/13/05) , admits that the future of a single focus company is short. "The customer and partner community is communicating quite clearly and voting with their dollars that what they are looking for here is an integrated family of applications." Only a major oligopoly can deliver.
9:56:50 PM 
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