Siebel Systems and IBM Launch Siebel CRM OnDemand(email this article)

ARMONK, N.Y. & SAN MATEO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 2, 2003-- Siebel Systems (Company Profile, Past Stories, Case Studies), Inc. (Nasdaq:SEBL - News) and IBM Corp. (NYSE:IBM - News) today announced they have designed a new on demand hosted customer relationship management (CRM) service. Together, the two companies will jointly develop, market, sell, deliver, and service Siebel CRM OnDemand, a new offering specifically designed to meet the growing market demand for fast, easy, and affordable CRM. Individuals and companies can sign up for Siebel CRM OnDemand for a monthly subscription price of $70 per user at www.crmondemand.com.

Designed for the on demand era, Siebel CRM OnDemand is as easy to use and configure as a Web site. It is a high-availability Internet utility that enables customers to start with a small CRM project, with practically zero start-up time, deploy rapidly, and grow the system as needs change over time. With Siebel CRM OnDemand, individuals and companies can manage contacts, sales opportunities, products, prices, competitors, events, marketing campaigns, and customer service requests.

Siebel CRM OnDemand is an enterprise-class CRM application available to everyone on the Web, allowing organizations to generate more sales leads, enhance lead qualification and management, improve sales forecasting, shorten sales cycles, and provide improved customer service. With built-in analytics, all sales, marketing, and service professionals can immediately act on relevant business, customer, and market events. The net result is that companies can close more business with more satisfied customers in less time. Siebel CRM OnDemand is the industry's first and only hosted CRM solution that offers both seamless integration and automated migration to an on- premise Siebel CRM application.

Industry Leaders Partner to Deliver Siebel CRM OnDemand

Siebel CRM OnDemand leverages the domain expertise and vast resources of CRM market leader Siebel Systems and IBM's expertise in delivering complete business processes over the Internet coupled with world-class service and support. With 2 million live users, Siebel Systems is the trusted partner and CRM advisor to more than 3,500 organizations worldwide. As the world's leading provider of Web hosting and largest technology company, IBM offers services that provide unparalleled scalability, reliability, and availability. Siebel Systems and IBM have entered a multiyear joint development, sales, marketing, and services agreement that is chaired by a board of directors comprised of Mike Lawrie, IBM Senior Vice President and Group Executive, IBM Global Sales and Distribution; Thomas M. Siebel, CEO of Siebel Systems; David Schmaier, Executive Vice President, Siebel Systems; and Doug Elix, Senior Vice President and Group Executive of IBM Global Services.

"IBM is widely recognized as a leader in providing secure and reliable services to its global customers and is therefore very well suited to manage mission-critical customer systems and data. IBM and Siebel have a long-standing partnership successfully delivering CRM solutions to more than 1,000 successful customers. Now, we are bringing proven CRM to a new class of users in a dramatically faster, easier, and more affordable way," said Mr. Siebel.

"Siebel's entry into the on demand era is truly an important development for our industry," said Mr. Lawrie. "This offering underscores our commitment to delivering joint on demand solutions for customers of all sizes through our network of business partners. Siebel's CRM leadership combined with IBM's strength in delivering business processes via the Internet makes for a powerful combination customers can rely on."

Siebel and IBM have created the industry's largest and most experienced sales force targeting the hosted CRM market. In addition to a telesales group, Siebel CRM OnDemand will be sold by IBM's sales force dedicated to the small and medium-sized market and by Siebel's global field sales organization. Using Siebel CRM OnDemand for lead and account management, the combined sales and customer relationship teams will deliver a seamless and superior customer experience. To market the new offering, Siebel and IBM are launching a multimillion-dollar integrated marketing campaign to achieve rapid market adoption. IBM and Siebel are also working to integrate their business partners into the joint sales process.

The IBM and Siebel Systems Alliance

Today's announcements extend a four-year global strategic alliance between Siebel Systems and IBM, which has resulted in more than 1,000 joint customers and the highest levels of customer satisfaction.

In 1999, IBM and Siebel Systems agreed to jointly market Siebel CRM applications and deliver out-of-the-box integration between IBM's DB2 UDB database and Siebel applications. The two companies agreed to a joint distribution strategy that includes promoting the combined applications and services globally, targeting customers in the finance, insurance, communications, and consumer goods industries. In addition, IBM Global Services formed a team within its CRM business trained on Siebel CRM applications to deliver software configuration, integration, training, and customer support for its Siebel applications.

Since that time the IBM and Siebel Systems alliance has achieved significant milestones:

IBM Business Consulting Services (BCS) has built the world's largest Siebel practice, with more than 1,500 Siebel-certified experts serving every major industry. IBM BCS has won the Gold Star Distinction for outstanding customer service across more than 500 Siebel implementation projects.
IBM and Siebel have optimized Siebel applications for IBM DB2 UDB, UDB/390, and IBM eServer. IBM and Siebel have announced a 30,000 concurrent user benchmark for Siebel 7 on IBM DB2 UDB and IBM eServer pSeries. There have been more than 500 Siebel deployments on IBM DB2 since 1999.
IBM has introduced a broad range of offerings to assist Siebel customers through all aspects of the application life cycle, from strategy consulting and implementation to ongoing transformation, management, hosting, outsourcing, and specialized systems management services.
In January 2003, Siebel Systems and IBM extended their global strategic alliance with a three-year, 200-person joint development agreement to include:

Joint collaboration to deliver Siebel applications for the IBM WebSphere platform. Fully J2EE compliant, Siebel CRM OnDemand is a new milestone in this development effort.
Business process integration by combining Universal Application Network (UAN) and IBM WebSphere Business Integration Server for simplified and cost-effective application integration.
Improved business productivity as a result of tighter integration between Siebel business applications and IBM Lotus messaging, calendaring, advanced collaboration, and eLearning technologies.
High availability, reliability, and scalability by optimizing Siebel business applications for Tivoli systems management and security software, IBM operating systems, and IBM servers.
Industry solutions for banking, insurance, communications, consumer goods, automotive, life sciences, public sector, travel and transportation, and retail.
Pricing and Availability

IBM and Siebel will offer a 30-day free trial of Siebel CRM OnDemand. The service will be available for $70 per user per month. Siebel CRM OnDemand will be available this calendar quarter. For more information, please visit www.crmondemand.com.

For more information, please join our one-hour conference call on Thursday, October 2, at 11 a.m. EDT. The dial-in number is 1-800-589-4298 for domestic participants, and 1-719-457-0349 for international participants. The confirmation code for this call is 106721, and the passcode is CRM. To follow a slide presentation, the Web link is https://www.mymeetings.com/siebel/. The confirmation code for the presentation is PG7524627, and the passcode is announcement.

About Siebel Systems

Siebel Systems, Inc. is a leading provider of business applications software, enabling corporations to sell to, market to, and serve customers across multiple channels and lines of business. With more than 3,500 customer deployments worldwide, Siebel Systems provides organizations with a proven set of industry-specific best practices, CRM applications, and business processes, empowering them to consistently deliver superior customer experiences and establish more profitable customer relationships. Siebel Systems' sales and service facilities are located in more than 30 countries.

About IBM

IBM is the world's largest information technology (IT) company and provider of IT services. IBM and its partners provide their clients with a complete range of products in advanced information technology: from hardware and software through services and complex application solutions through to outsourcing projects and training facilities. Additional information can be found at www.ibm.com.

Except for the historical information contained herein, this press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risk or uncertainties. Future operating results of Siebel Systems may differ from the results discussed or forecasted in the forward-looking statements due to factors that include, but are not limited to, risks associated with customer relations, such as the availability of Siebel Systems' products and services, customer implementation of products and services, relationships with customers, third-party vendors and systems integrators, concentration of revenues in a relatively small number of customers, existence of errors or defects in products, ability to successfully manage growth, significant current and expected additional competition and the need to continue to expand product distribution and services offerings. Further information on potential factors that could affect the financial results of Siebel Systems are included in Siebel Systems' Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and its other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are available at www.sec.gov. Siebel Systems assumes no obligation to update the information in this press release.Siebel is a trademark of Siebel Systems, Inc. and may be registered in certain jurisdictions. All other product and company names mentioned are the property of their respective owners and are mentioned for identification purposes only.