By William Fellows
Siebel Systems Inc CEO Tom Siebel believes that the 40 or so companies offering front office software will be consolidated down to no more than ten within three years. He told ComputerWire that few if any of them are likely to end up within Siebel as he’s now focused on growing the business organically.
Siebel says he expects one vendor to own at least 50% of the market, a second to have 15% and a third 10%. Bandying around numbers like a 68% ERP application market share now, Siebel clearly believes his company will be in pole position. Indeed Siebel likes to characterize his company as the world’s second largest application vendor behind SAP AG, a point of some dispute with Oracle Corp.
Siebel estimates that by next year, the front office market – using IT to create and maintain customer relationships – will account for the largest portion of ERP spending. It was worth $3.2bn in 1998 and should come in at about $4.8bn this year. CRM, which was worth $950,000 in 1997 is expected to be worth $3.15bn in 2000; industry-specific solutions will bring in $2.72bn in 2000 up from $1.15bn in 1997; human resources should be a $2.17bn market in that timeframe, from $610,000.
Siebel warns that the problems yet to be solved will prove more difficult than those already taken care of. Data synchronization and replication was a difficult problem, but trivial compared to what we face going forwards, he says.
