IBM, Siebel Broaden Relationship
IBM Clint Boulton, a senior writer at CIO, covers IT leadership, digital transformation, and the CIO role. He was a content marketer for Dell APEX. Inspire IT leaders with tales about the advantages of multi-cloud infrastructures. Dunning-Kruger bias is something that keeps IT leaders sceptical, but curious nonetheless. and Siebel Systems
Tuesday expanded their relationship to ensure that Siebel's customer relationship management software works more closely with Big Blue's WebSphere platform.
An IBM spokesperson told internetnews.com the deal is good for three years, to the tune of $300 million, with more than 200 developers working to make it come to fruition.
Armonk, N.Y.'s IBM has been working
furiously in recent months to transition many of its core hardware and
software products to its on-demand strategy for offering software services,
while San Mateo, Calif.'s Siebel has enjoyed its reign as a leading vendor
of sales automation applications.
IBM and Siebel feel that they will help businesses
improve the quality of their customer transactions while reducing the cost of
ownership on their end.
Specifically, the firms have created IBM-Siebel Branch Teller, a co-developed
software product that makes it possible for retail banks to transform
brick-and-mortar branches into customer-focused financial centers. This should be launched later this year, the firms said.
Siebel eBusiness Applications will now support J2EE and
Web Services running on the IBM WebSphere Application Server and WebSphere
Portal Server. Siebel Tools will be integrated with IBM WebSphere
Studio.
Siebel eBusiness Applications will also be better configured to work with
Tivoli systems management and security software, IBM operating systems, and
IBM eServers, including zSeries, and AIX and IBM DB2 Universal Database
software. The firms pledge improved tighter integration between Siebel
eBusiness Applications and IBM Lotus.
According to Steve Mills, Senior Vice President & Group Executive, IBM
Software Group, the agreement demonstrates Siebel's embrace of open Web
standards, such as J2EE and Web Services, and to WebSphere as its software
platform of choice.
“As we move to e-business on demand, the further integration of Siebel
eBusiness Applications with IBM's industry expertise, hardware, software,
and services will provide a powerful business integration solution for
customers, dramatically reducing cost and risk, accelerating deployment and
time to value, and improving return on investment,” Mills said in a
statement.
IBM and Siebel agreed to market Siebel CRM Applications and integrate IBM's
DB2 UDB database and Siebel applications in 1999. The two now share more
than 1,000 customers, including Bank of America, Caterpillar and Telstra. Siebel also announced ties to Microsoft's .NET platfiorm last October.
Read next
