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