I have analyzed more than 15 web services testing tools to find out SoapUI alternative applications.
Specifically I looked at 2 main aspects – product features and user friendliness.
I have learnt a lot.
And I am sure, you will too.
Here I have listed down 5 best SoapUI alternative applications that you can try.
But it is also true that…
Whenever I test web services, very first tool that comes in my mind is SoapUI.
Why?
I am telling you:
Working as a CRM Business Analyst, this is one of the most frequently asked questions that I have faced.
And you know what?
When I tell them about benefits of CRM, very next question that comes is –
What is best CRM for my business?
In today’s super competitive age, it is really difficult to run a business without systematic approach.
And I call that approach as CRM (Customer Relationship Management).
Future of Siebel CRM – it is still one of the most debatable topics in CRM.
And it is more confusing when you see a small spike in Siebel job trend.
Yes! I am serious.
Source: Indeed.com
But before we dig deep, let me thank you all for your overwhelming responses!
You may wonder why…
Well,
Last year I published an article about ‘Future of Siebel CRM’.
And, believe it nor not,
I have received 79 emails plus good social media responses and few comments as well.
But,
It is the time to rewrite the article with updated data and new statistics.
One question that many readers asked –
‘If there is no future of Siebel, why Oracle is still investing and releasing Innovation Pack every year?’
This is quite a valid question, isn’t it?
If there is no plan, why Oracle is still investing in innovation?
In this article we will go deeper to find answer. Also we will discuss about current CRM market trend, market share and where Siebel stands in 2017.
And yes,
I will answer – Did Oracle stop selling Siebel to new customers?
But now,
Take a look – how CRM market looks now and in near future.
(Source: Statista)
It is expected that by 2020, CRM market will reach 24 billion U.S. dollars globally.
However,
We see different prediction by Gartner.
As per Gartner’s enterprise software forecast, worldwide CRM revenue will touch $36.5B by 2017, up from $13.9B in 2010.
Though we see 2 different predictions from 2 different sources, bottom line is that CRM market is growing day by day.
Okay,
Now question is how CRM vendors are sharing this revenue.
| Company | 2013 Market Share (%) | 2014 Market Share (%) | 2015 Market Share (%) |
| Salesforce | 16.3 | 18.4 | 19.7 |
| SAP | 12.8 | 12.1 | 10.2 |
| Oracle | 10.1 | 9.1 | 7.8 |
| Microsoft | 5.8 | 6.2 | 4.3 |
| IBM | 3.9 | 3.8 | 3.6 |
| Others | 51.1 | 50.4 | 54.4 |
Source: Gartner (May 2016)
As a standalone vendor, Salesforce has maximum market share 19.7% where Oracle has 7.8%.
One thing to remember here,
Oracle has many CRM applications and 7.8% is the total market share.
My point is…
If we take only Siebel market share, it is less than 7.8%.
And here is the actual revenue vendor wise…
| Company | 2013 Revenue* | 2014 Revenue* | 2015 Revenue* |
| Salesforce | 3,330.20 | 4,268.50 | 5,170.90 |
| SAP | 2,621.30 | 2,809.40 | 2,684.40 |
| Oracle | 2,060.80 | 2,115.20 | 2,046.50 |
| Microsoft | 1,181.80 | 1,438.60 | 1,141.50 |
| IBM | 792.1 | 873.1 | 936.8 |
| Others | 10,474.70 | 11,681.90 | 14,307.70 |
| Total | 20,460.90 | 23,186.70 | 26,287.80 |
* Millions of Dollars
Notice,
Except Salesforce, all other 3 big CRM providers have lost their share.
Now,
There are many reasons and I don’t want to go into those details in this article.
But,
From above statistics, we can say that market is more inclined to SaaS based CRM application.
That means…
On premise model is one of many culprits behind Siebel market shrink.
However,
Probably you know that Siebel can be installed in cloud environment also.
To know more about Siebel on Oracle Cloud, read this, published by Oracle. (You can also follow or subscribe in Techonestop newsletter and get update directly in your inbox when I publish next article on Siebel on Cloud)
Not only On Premise architecture,
Here are another 2 statistics that also go against Siebel. (Source: Gartner)
By 2018, 4% — and by 2020, 10% — of $1 billion-plus organizations will run all their CRM applications on SaaS.
By 2018, salesforce.com will have over 15 million end users.
Well,
That is lot about Siebel architecture.
Let’s face real situation that we bother most – Siebel job trends.
This is surprising job trend!! Isn’t it?
Compare to Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics has smaller market share but job posting is quite high.
And,
Source: Indeed.com
Job opportunity in Siebel is much lesser than Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics.
(Want to be master in Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics? See recommendations below)
Also it is not difficult to understand that –
When customer base of any software goes down, job opportunities also go down.
But how far it will go down?
Is Oracle doing enough to improve Siebel customer base?
Answer – Yes / No / May be 🙂
There is no straight forward answer of this question.
But,
I have answer if you ask –
Gartner 2015 Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation states that “Oracle will no longer sell Siebel Sales to new customers“.But here is Oracle’s response –
‘The report states that Siebel CRM is no longer sold to new, greenfield customers which is not completely accurate. Certain customer requirements may strongly indicate that an on premise solution is necessary, for many customers, in specific industries or geographies, or with specific functional requirements and specific data regulations. We assess customer requirements to determine suitability of Siebel, along with our Oracle CX suite, to ensure we guide customers to the best fit for their needs: where applicable, this does include Siebel, including for new customers.’
(Source: Oracle’s Siebel CRM and Cloud CX Suite FAQ 2015)
Oracle answered almost similar kind of question in 2016 also.
I would suggest you to go through these FAQs.
So,
It is really a BIG UNKNOWN area.
But,
After so many negative talks, few things still go positive for Siebel –
1. Most importantly Oracle is still investing in Siebel.
Siebel Road Map shows Oracle has plan beyond 2030. This is really good news for all Siebel lovers.
Moreover without any future plan, Oracle would not invest in Siebel innovation.
2. 2016 was a land mark year for big data and Internet of Things (IoT). We will see same trend in 2017 and beyond. More organizations are storing and processing data to empower end users with most valuable data.
By 2020, the number of Internet-connected things will reach or even exceed 50 billion. (Source: Forbes)
Siebel is not far behind…
Roadmap shows that IP2017/18 will focus on Big Data, IoT, real time analytics.
3. Siebel can be installed on Oracle cloud or any other third party cloud like Amazon AWS. It is cost effective, faster and straight forward compare to physical server setup and maintenance. Already many Siebel CRM customers are taking advantage of private cloud hosting solution to reduce total cost of ownership. Oracle Managed Cloud Services provide a solution to manage Siebel as a managed cloud service.
4. Oracle has introduced many new features like IRM (Incremental Repository Merge), Siebel Open UI, Siebel Composer (web tools), Workspace. All these features will make Siebel development faster and easier.
Siebel Composer is the web version of traditional Siebel Tools. It is accessible in any browser using Siebel Open UI client.
Workspace is an alternative of Siebel local database. It gives a sandbox to each developer to configure application and verify changes before delivering to parent or main workspace. It allows multiple developers to work on same repository object in Siebel database simultaneously.
Workspace will be default with IP17 with enhanced features like full multi-level branching, multi-release development.
Siebel Composer and Workspace will bring better agile development in Siebel.
5. Siebel is integrated with many other Oracle applications (Like Eloqua, ATG, Sales cloud, Responsys) to deliver world class customer experience.
(Source: Oracle OpenWorld 2015)
So,
Do we have enough opportunities to build career in Siebel?
This is another difficult question to answer. Probably I would like to hear from you.
But,
I would suggest you to diversify CRM knowledge. Instead of knowing Siebel or any other particular CRM, know how CRM works. It will give you more job opportunities than knowing any particular CRM application.
There are many training courses and learning materials on the web for Salesforce and MS CRM.
But if you ask me to recommend ONLY 3 COURSES, then try these –
Now,
What do you think about future of Siebel CRM?
Please share your thought below.
To download this article ‘Future of Siebel CRM in 2017’, click here.
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Have you seen ‘LINKED COMMENT‘ in YouTube? Few days back, one of our readers asked us a question – ‘What is YouTube Linked Comment? Why can’t I reply on all linked comments?‘
Well, before discussing the solution, let me give you brief background about our reader’s situation. Our reader has a popular YouTube channel with 50+ videos. He has noticed that few comments on his YouTube videos are marked as ‘LINKED COMMENT’. Also few of such comments have ‘Reply’ option active and for others there is no ‘Reply’ button. So he wanted to know what is YouTube Linked Comment and why there is such behaviour difference between two linked comments.
Google marks a comment as ‘LINKED COMMENT’ if it is coming from Google+. Suppose you have shared a video on Google+ and your viewer has commented on that video from his Google+ page. You can see that comment on your YouTube video but marked as ‘LINKED COMMENT’.
This is because your viewer has restricted replies on Google+ page settings. As the comment came from Google+ page and viewer has restricted replies, there is nothing you can do here to make the ‘Reply‘ option available.
To verify further, you can go to your viewer’s Google+ page and locate your video where he has commented. You should not see ‘Add a comment‘ box.
There are couple of workarounds that you could try to get the ‘Reply’ option.
– You could ask your viewer to add you in his Google+ circle. If your viewer has given reply permission to his circle, you will get the ‘Reply’ button back.
– If the first workaround does not work for you, copy the comment and post it as a new comment. This will make ‘Reply’ option active.
Was it enough to clear your doubt? If you have any question about YouTube Linked Comment, Please feel free to comment below.
Keep in touch, follow TechOneStop on Facebook / Twitter / LinkedIn / Goolge+.
In our previous article (
), we told you that recently Bloomberg has published a report saying Salesforce has hired financial advisers to assess different takeover offers from potential buyers. Though Salesforce didn’t say anything on acquisition but if it happens, it will be the largest takeover in Software industry. Right now Salesforce has around $49 billion market value and it is also expected that shareholders would demand a premium over its stock price that the buyer needs to bear. This confirms one thing that the potential buyer needs an extraordinary deep pocket to afford the cost.
Several analysts have kept Oracle, Microsoft, Google, IBM and SAP as potential buyers list. But recently SAP has denied the idea of buying Salesforce. Spokesperson from SAP has confirmed that SAP has no intention to take over this cloud based CRM Company. Oracle Corporation also has showed disinterest in acquiring Salesforce. Safra Catz, one of Oracle’s two CEOs, has said that “If it’s acquired by someone else, it’s probably good for us.” IBM could be a potential buyer but the current market value of Salesforce.com is surely a big challenge for them. All these facts are supporting only one company and that is Microsoft.
Already Microsoft and Salesforce have an agreement to promote each other’s products. Also over the last few years, Microsoft has showed its interest in CRM and now by acquiring Salesforce, it could try to extend its presence in CRM business, mainly on cloud. Recently Marc Benioff, Salesforce’s CEO has offered a tweet that shows Microsoft and Salesforce, both are looking for closer relationship. Recently Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella told that the company aims of $20 billion annual revenue from cloud business by 2018 and Salesforce acquisition will definitely help to meet the target.
So…
SAP has already answered negative
Oracle has showed disinterest
IBM would not go for it because of high market value
and all other facts point to software giant Microsoft only
Till now neither Microsoft nor Salesforce has opened up their mouth but won’t get surprise if one fine morning you read ‘Microsoft has acquired Salesforce‘.
We are still waiting for more details, keep follow us for further updates.
***Latest update: It seems, Microsoft is also not interested to take over Salesforce because of its huge market value. We have to wait few more days for next story!
Read more: 5 Best Cloud Based Free CRM Software For Small And Medium Business
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– according to Bloomberg recent report. It is still not decided who is going to take over Salesforce but if it happens, this will be the largest accusation in the software industry.
Salesforce, the giant cloud based CRM software provider, was established by Marc Benioff in 1999 after a career in Oracle. According to Gartner, it has more that 16% CRM market share with stock market capitalization of almost $49 billion after an 11 percent surge on the news.
According to Bloomberg report, Salesforce has hired financial advisers to look at takeover offers. Though it is still not clear who will win the race but it seems, buyer list is not large – potential buyers are Microsoft, Google, Oracle, SAP (Germany), Tencent (China) or Softbank (Japan). But whoever is the buyer, it needs extraordinary deep pocket. Considering Salesforce’s growth, it is expected that shareholders would demand a premium over its stock price that the buyer has to afford.
According to Bloomberg, even if there is no extra cost, it will be the biggest deal in software business. In 2008, Microsoft tried to acquire Yahoo for close to $45 billion but it failed.
Though Benioff, Salesforce’s CEO, didn’t comment anything on potential buyers but it seems, he is more inclined to see Microsoft Salesforce deal. Recently he has offered a tweet that makes this rumor more strong.
Only time can tell us that Salesforce is really for Sale or just speculation. But if the deal is done, buyer will have biggest CRM market share over night.
If Salesforce is acquired by Oracle, will it see the same fate like Siebel? We will discuss this in our next article.
Read More: Siebel Vs Salesforce – is it valid comparison?
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