Oracle OpenWorld 2014: Strategy and Roadmap for Siebel CRM

Two weeks ago, at Oracle OpenWorld 2014, Oracle held several sessions which focused on the future of Siebel CRM - the world's most complete CRM, as we call it. Our friend and fellow blogger Richard was at the premises and shared many exciting articles (and screenshots) with us.

Now that the dust and excitement has somewhat settled, it's time to reiterate Oracle's statements.

Siebel CRM is at the Center of the Cloud (and it's not Alone)

An image says more than a thousand words. The following is taken from an Oracle presentation.

Personally, I think that this is the most important diagram for Oracle Applications customers at the moment. Oracle, their customers and partners are on their way of bringing decade-long investments in gargantuan on-premise deployments of eBusiness Suite, JDEdwards, PeopleSoft or Siebel CRM to the ever so promising cloud.

And the reality is that for most deployments of huge enterprise-class applications with millions or even billions of transactional records and up to several hundred of interfaces, you cannot just 'pull the plug' and move everything to the cloud.

So naturally, Oracle sees their Applications Cloud as a co-existence and enhancement option for existing investments in on-premise applications. And that means a bright future for Siebel CRM.

A Roadmap for Endurance and Agility

This is the roadmap diagram shown to customers at OpenWorld on various occasions.

Click to enlarge.

Yes, it says 2022+, so there's a commitment from Oracle of delivering yearly Innovation Packs and monthly fixpacks for the next 8 or more years.

Innovation Pack 2014

The imminent innovation pack for this year will bring a lot of new features and enhancements and here on Siebel Essentials we will certainly cover them all once the product is generally available. Some highlights to watch out for (remember this is a roadmap and not final features, the lists below are not meant to be comprehensive).

Siebel Open UI Features expected for IP 2014

• New single theme (responsive web design) for all applications (desktop and mobile). The message is "Create a view once and deploy it across desktops and tablets".
• Sidebar (hamburger) screen menu
• List column lock (freeze)
• iHelp
• Flowchart editors (Marketing, Loyalty, Smart Scripts, iHelp, etc.)
• Hierarchy diagrams
• (Oracle) map renderer
• Calendar enhancements
• Edit and save attachments inline
• Expression Editor
• Refurbished Quote and Order screens
• Product Configurator administration views
• New communications panel

We've come a long way, haven't we?

What to expect for Siebel Mobile Applications in IP 2014

For Siebel Mobile Applications, the Open UI enhancements listed above mean actually a lot:

Everything that you missed in IP 2013 or before because Siebel Mobile Applications used different renderers (based on jQuery Mobile which will be NO LONGER used in IP 2014) is coming back because now there's a single theme for ALL applications. So this will be soon available on a tablet near you, regardless of what application you're running.

• MVG (Shuttle)
• Search
• Date Picker
• Signature Capture
• ...literally everything you have on the desktop, you will be able to use on the tablet.

Besides those already good news, Oracle plans to publish a new mobile application for Financial Services and a container app that allows better access to the device.

In addition, there are several enhancements planned for Mobile Disconnected Applications.

Other Features expected for IP 2014

• CRM Desktop for Service and Financial Services
• New OUI installers for Mobile/Developer Web Client and Siebel Tools
• Simplified IRM process

2015 and Beyond

As demonstrated by Oracle last week, Siebel CRM is headed for the cloud in earnest. This was the slide that made the audience hold their breath.

No more SRF, no file based configuration, no web templates. That's what it says. So it seems to be almost certain that there will be a time without Siebel Tools as we know it and the object manager will read all configuration metadata from the repository in the database.

When we log in to Siebel Web Tools (I made this name up) some day from now and relish in the web based IDE, will we miss the Siebel Tools fat client?

Summary

The Siebel CRM sessions at Oracle OpenWorld 2014 clearly demonstrated Oracle's commitment to the world's most complete CRM product. For the Siebel-believers that is expected and very good news. And for those who want to see Siebel CRM dead...well, it's here to stay, get over it.

If you want to check out the presentations from OpenWorld for yourself, you can find them on the Oracle Learning Library (OLL).

have a nice day

@lex

Oracle OpenWorld 2014 - Back to the Future

Having to watch Oracle OpenWorld with several time zones between me and San Francisco has the benefit of getting enough sleep and waking up to interesting news. Again, we have to thank our friend Richard for going the extra mile of providing us with fresh-from-the-oven news from the Siebel sessions. Some of the announcements sound like from another planet indeed.

Artist from 1900 imagining 'Aero-Cabs' in 2000

So will we have something like flying taxis anytime soon? Probably not. But will we have Siebel Tools in a browser? Maybe that's not so far away.

http://localhost/tools_enu: we will probably sooner have this than flying cabs.

Obviously we are close to a radical shift in the way we work with Siebel CRM. From Richard's post, here are some highlights of the near future of Siebel, some of which were already mentioned in an earlier article.

The general idea is to web-enable the Siebel Tools application, which - when you look at it in the current Siebel Tools fat client - is just one of 80+ application definitions with a bunch of screens, views etc. So this makes total sense and editing Siebel metadata from a browser is just a natural thing to do. Put in some nice features such as conditional expressions, slick drag and drop editing and versioning and nothing is going to stop us ;-)

Getting rid of the need to compile (and distribute) the SRF and other files on Siebel servers such as web templates in order to make the development more agile is something that more and more customers demand from Oracle. I have once stumbled upon old Siebel documentation and an abstruse server parameter (which I cannot recall or find at the moment) which actually enabled an object manager to read metadata from the SRF or directly from the database. Maybe some Siebel veteran who reads this can confirm but the first Siebel versions did not have a SRF file (and neither did they have web templates) to my knowledge.

So everything that goes around comes around, just like Shuttle Applets which disappeared in Open UI (for 2 years) and magically come back (at least that's what the Siebel team is planning) in IP 2014.

have a nice day

@lex

Oracle OpenWorld 2014 - Siebel Strategy Update

With great delight we follow the news from the US west coast, where fellow Siebel blogger and friend Richard from On Demand Education managed to get a seat in what we imagine to be a standing-room session.

In his article (please click here to read the full article and see all 'screenshots'), Richard points out the following important bits of information for everyone working with Siebel CRM.

• 84% of the customer base is on the latest Siebel release (8.1.1. or 8.2.2)
• Siebel CRM is a vital part of Oracle's CX strategy
• The roadmap for Siebel now extends to 2022 and beyond

In the (very) near future, we will see the release of IP 2014 which will provide fodder for many a post (not to mention that the Open UI related enhancements will make it into our planned book). Here are some key announcements for IP 2014:

• Responsive Web Design (RWD) for Siebel Open UI will enable customers to use any Siebel application on any device.
• New 'container' app for mobile applications with enhancements for disconnected mobile applications.
• Industry applications updates for Communications, Financial Services and Public Sector.
• CRM Desktop for Service.

Richard also lets us partake on the planned features for Siebel CRM that we will (probably) see in the not so near future (after IP 2015, but I'm just guessing). Those features are on the rumor mill for a while now.

• "Tools on the web"
• No SRF, no web templates
• Role based runtime configuration

But see for yourself in Richard's comprehensive article.

Of course, there are many others keeping us up to date on the Siebel strategy, such as Manuel Breschi from e-Up. Please click here to read his point of view on Oracle's Siebel strategy.

have a nice day

@lex

Oracle OpenWorld 2014

'tis the season again to turn our heads (or travel) to San Francisco where Oracle hosts its major event, Oracle OpenWorld, from Sunday, 28th September to Thursday, 2nd October 2014.

As usual, Siebel Essentials will try to digest the firehose of information and put into reasonably sized articles. This year, our friends and fellow bloggers Bruce and Richard are on the premises, so watch the On Demand Education blog for some Siebel related information too.

Maybe it's not just Siebel that attracts the crowd...

As a special service, we added a Twitter stream to our sidebar, so you can follow the event as it happens. If you tweet from the event, please use the #oow14 hashtag.

If you cannot make it to OOW this year, ensure you have bookmarked the live 'On Demand' video channel where you can see and replay the major events and keynotes.

have a nice OOW

@lex