Siebel is set to lose its second major contract in as many weeks after reports that IBM is planning to ditch the company’s CRM products and replace them with software provided by SugarCRM.
‘Big Blue’ is following HP out of the door after the company revealed that it too would be replacing the platform with products provided by SaaS vendor Salesforce.com.
The changes have been sparked by a change of ownership of Siebel, which was bought by Oracle – an arch-rival of both IBM and HP – back in 2005 for £3.5bn. It is thought to have take a few years because of existing long-term contracts.
Analyst Pat Walravens at investment bank JMP Securities said: “IBM was the world’s largest deployment of Siebel applications, and we view this replacement as yet another indication of the pressure on Oracle’s application business.”
SugarCRM distributes its software through 400 resellers worldwide.
Earlier this year, it was claimed that the rise of social media and mobile is driving major growth in the CRM market, with spend doubling during 2011 and revenue hitting £12bn ($18bn), as brand owners splash the cash to update their systems.
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