Update: Siebel Plots 'Nexus' Framework, Component Apps

The company is breaking out application functionality into components for distribution and reuse, company Chairman Tom Siebel told CRN Wednesday. Such strategies are being developed for what the industry is calling Service-Oriented Architectures--the next wave of distributed, componentized applications.

Toward that end, Siebel is recruiting and hiring software engineers with J2EE and .Net expertise to develop what it's calling "the Nexus service-oriented framework" that will run on both platforms. The goal is to build CRM, ERM and PRM applications with both horizontal and vertical functions, sources said.

A Siebel spokeswoman confirmed that the work is under way. The first manifestations of Nexus are Siebel's nascent Universal Application Network (UAN), its enterprise integration gameplan, and Siebel CRM OnDemand, a hosted application offered by Siebel and IBM. The full Nexus architecture is expected to emerge in early 2005, she said.

It is likely that Siebel chairman Tom Siebel will address this strategy at his Comdex keynote and subsequent press Q&A session next Tuesday.

Siebel continues to straddle the major development camps, with one foot in the Microsoft .Net world and the other in IBM's J2EE realm.

The company has already said it's working on Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft "Smart Client" capabilities that would tie Siebel functionality tightly into Office Systems front ends and .Net back ends. Siebel CRM OnDemand is J2EE-based.

And despite what observers say is an extremely tough CRM market, Siebel has been busy there. Last month, the company announced plans to buy Upshot, a hosted CRM vendor, just two weeks after Siebel and IBM announced their IBM hosting deal.

Siebel, a CRM kingpin and once-darling of Wall Street, has fallen on hard times of late. The economy continues to pinch enterprise IT spending in the market that Siebel dominates, and the company has struggled to penetrate smaller businesses. Some critics have said that Siebel's CRM costs too much money and offers too much functionality for many users.

In the CRM midmarket, Siebel faces entrenched competitors such as Best Software, Microsoft, Onyx and Pivotal.

But one integrator said not to count the company out. "Siebel's is still a strong product. Don't discount it," said Jay Fruin, president of Leveraged Technology, a New York-based CRM solution provider. "CRM as a category hasn't gone away; it's just gone to sleep. Microsoft doesn't enter any market unless it's a multibillion-dollar opportunity. I think 2004 will be a sleeper year for CRM and 2005 will be huge."