By Siobhan Kennedy
Despite the CEO of Hewlett-Packard Co publicly stating yesterday that it had evaluated Siebel Systems Inc’s CRM software alongside Oracle Corp’s for its new CRM alliance, a spokesperson for Siebel told ComputerWire no such evaluation had ever taken place.
When HP chief Carly Fiorina announced that her company would use and co-sell HP’s salesforce automation software yesterday, she said that HP had chosen Oracle over leading CRM vendor Siebel because it offered the best web-based solutions and offered them on a pay-as-you-go basis. But a spokesperson for Siebel told ComputerWire that despite numerous attempts to make HP talk to Siebel, the company flatly refused. We’d been trying to get in there for several months, but each time HP said it wasn’t available, or canceled meetings, she said. No meaningful discussion ever took place, let alone product evaluation. The spokesperson said that Tom Siebel, the company’s CEO, had personally written to Fiorina about six weeks ago when he heard that a CRM deal was in the pipeline and asked that Siebel be considered. But HP wrote back denying our request.
The news marks the latest flashpoint in Siebel’s ongoing bitter war with Oracle, which recently included threats of lawsuits between the two vendors over what each claims to be defamatory marketing material. If you’re HP and you’re Carly and your major competitor is Sun who’s in bed with Oracle then what are you going to do? the spokesperson said. รก
