Siebel Mulls Channel Relationships For Midmarket Push

One such tidbit showed that Siebel is paying renewed attention to the indirect channel. In his address, Siebel specifically cited the fact that 30 percent of IBM's revenues come from channel partners, and that 92 percent of Cisco's products are sold indirect. Later, in a meeting with CRN, he said that his company is actively looking at "traditional avenues" for pursuing the midmarket.

Siebel declined to offer any hint of a time-frame for when the company will announce the results of that effort, but Ken Rudin, vice president and general manager of Siebel on demand, said reseller interest in Siebel has spiked since Microsoft introduced its CRM application.

"Microsoft got the market all excited [for a midmarket CRM offering] but the notion of giving it to all 30,000 resellers really annoyed the channel," Rudin said. "They've been coming to us and we've signed up a small, manageable number." Rudin declined to cite specific numbers.

Of course, any midmarket strategy would entail a midmarket on-premises product from the company, which would sit between its hosted CRM On Demand service and its on-premise software for the enterprise. Siebel now offers a midmarket edition that, observer agree, has proved too complext for the market. A new version of that product, expected early next year, will have fewer features and be easier to install and manage, Rudin said.

But Siebel's main product thrust for the midmarket will be a direct result of Project Nexus, Siebel told CRN. That product, reported in CRN last week, is a companywide effort now under way to rewrite all of Siebel's software into components that can be assembled in either the Microsoft .Net or J2EE framework.

Siebel asserted that the company's software will support both competing Web services frameworks of .Net and J2EE. "I don't understand how some companies like Oracle can opt to go exclusively to J2EE," he said. "You can't cut out Microsoft. Both frameworks will win in the Web services world. With Siebel, customers can use the Web services of either or both [.Net or J2EE]."

For the moment, though, the company's hosted service is at top of Siebel's mind. He announced that next year will see the largest marketing campaign, "possibly in the history of the IT industry," to promote Siebel's hosted software. The campaign will be a joint effort with IBM. "It's highly likely in 2004 we will be the leading providing of hosted CRM," he told members of the press at the Las Vegas show. Siebel CRM On Demand will be released into full production in December.

Also next year, the company will offer a mix of licensing models for both its hosted and on-premise applications. Customers will be able to mix and match subscription licenses, term licenses and perpetual licenses for any Siebel software.