Bill Gates to Speak at Siebel User Week

Siebel Systems (Nasdaq: SEBL) has announced that Siebel User Week will be held from October 20-23, at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Bill Gates, the Chairman of the Board of Microsoft, will give the keynote speech.

Siebel Systems expects 3,500 customers, prospects, and partners to attend. To register for Siebel Worldwide User Week 2002, visit www.siebel.com/userweek.

Rich Chiarello to Run Siebel Sales

Richard P. Chiarello has been named Senior Vice President, Worldwide Sales for Siebel Systems. Mr. Chiarello held senior management positions at Computer Associates (CA); he was the Executive Vice President and General Manager of Worldwide Sales and Channels and played a key role in the launch of Unicenter TNG.

During its first 20 years in business CA, the world's second-largest independent software company, had not developed a best-selling product until it came out with Unicenter. Chiarello is credited with creating and implementing strategic sales plans for the direct sales force as well as the reseller channel, which led to Unicenter being a market leader, generating more than $2.5 billion in revenue.

Prior to working at CA, Mr. Chiarello held various sales, staff, and systems engineering positions with IBM. More recently he was CEO of Liquidgolf.

Mr. Chiarello will assume his new responsibilities on October 1, 2002.

Salesforce.com Signs 5,000th Customer

Salesforce.com recently announced that the company had signed its 5,000th paying customer. Salesforce.com's customer base ranges in size from small start-ups to mid-market companies to large enterprises. They also cut across many vertical industry segments, including technology, manufacturing, media, insurance, financial services, and professional services.

Flagship customers include Autodesk, Dow Jones Newswires, Ericsson Microelectronics, Fujitsu Technology Solutions, Paymentech, Putnam Lovell NBF, Siemens PT&D, Textron Fastening Systems, USA Today, and Wachovia. Recently Salesforce.com reported customer wins at The Weather Channel, Kikkoman, Le Meridien Hotels, and Segway LLC, manufacturer of the first self-balancing electric-powered transporter.

This means the San Francisco based company has now closed more companies for its CRM solution than Oracle, PeopleSoft, SAP, or even Siebel.

Launched in 1999, by Marc Benioff, a protégé of Larry Ellison and an early investor in Siebel Systems, Salesforce.com has a different business model than its older and larger competitors.

Instead of selling a software license in perpetuity that customers bring in-house to install and customize, Salesforce.com has adopted a "software as service model". Customers pay a monthly fee and access the software through the internet. This has some advantages and disadvantages.

The pay-as-you-go model means customers pay less of the cost up front, see a more immediate return on investment and have lower total cost of ownership depending on the size and length of their engagement. For Salesforce.com the model means a more predictable and steady income stream.

Salesforce.com has also leveraged the internet to add customers in 107 countries around the world but only recently set up a direct distribution system. Salesforce.com offers international customers real-time access from anywhere in the world, multi-language support in eight languages, and multi-currency capabilities.

Thanks to its model, salesforce.com can make continuous upgrades more easily and rollout functionality more quickly than competitors dependent on consultants and internal IT resources

One question that remains unanswered about Salesforce's business model is, "How well does it scale?". The company currently has 70,000 users which is about equal to the number of employees a single Siebel Systems customer, IBM, plans to roll out to its sales, service, and support staff.

The model also means that Salesforce.com is not surrounded by nearly as robust a business ecology as Siebel Systems.

Students of the software business would do well to pay attention to future news coming out of Salesforce.com for the following three reasons:

• The business model may come to be widely adapted in software business,
• If its current momentum continues, Salesforce.com may emerge as the clear number two in the CRM market,
• Salesforce.com may be the first example of a dot com company that actually thrives.

Advantech Upgrades to Siebel 7

Advantech (TAIEX: 2395), a global supplier of industrial computing hardware and software, has upgraded to Siebel 7. Advantech completed the deployment of Siebel Sales, Siebel Call Center, Siebel eMail Response, Siebel eService, and Siebel Marketing in only 90 days across nine locations in the United States, Taiwan, Singapore, France, the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, and Germany.

"To stay ahead in the highly competitive automation industry, we have to constantly enhance and increase the efficiency and quality of our customer service." said Andy Wang, Chief Information Officer of Advantech.

Advantech is one of the world's largest suppliers of industrial computing and manufacturing platforms for communications, industrial automation, and embedded computing. Headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan, with distributors in more than 60 countries, Advantech employs over 1,200 people worldwide and offers more than 400 PC/Web-based products.

Akibia Wins Consulting Prize

Akibia Consulting has been named Best in Class in The Fourth Annual Users Choice Awards sponsored by Real Market. Competing in the CRM Consulting Services category, Akibia Consulting received this recognition based on the high ratings for service, quality, and ROI that it received from customers throughout North America.

"As a consulting organization exclusively focused on CRM, we are very excited to be chosen for this award based on our customers' satisfaction," said Adam Honig, President, Akibia Consulting. "I was pleased when Gartner placed us in their Magic Quadrant, thrilled when we received Siebel's Gold Star Distinction for superior customer satisfaction, and I am very proud that we have now been selected by our customers for the Real Market Users Choice award."

The Users Choice Awards is the only awards program in which CRM products and services are judged by the end-user.

"This is the fourth annual Users Choice Awards and this is the first year any company has won in the category of CRM Implementation Services," said Gary Lemke, President of Real Market. "Positive customer input highlighting satisfaction and ROI made the difference for Akibia."

Hummingbird Appoints Tony Heywood Senior Vice-President EMEA

Tony Heywood has been appointed by Hummingbird Ltd. as Senior Vice President for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), reporting to Fred Sorkin, Chairman and CEO.

In his new role with Hummingbird, Heywood will be responsible for business development throughout the EMEA market, as well as leading the sales organization in that region.

Prior to joining Hummingbird, Heywood was a Senior Vice President of International Operations with Xchange. From 1997-1999, Tony was Open Text's executive vice president of EMEA, expanding that division to encompass 40% of the company's revenue. He has also held executive positions at Platinum Technology/LocusComputing Corporation and Uniplex. Tony holds an honours degree in computer science from Newcastle University.

Headquartered in Toronto, Canada, Hummingbird Ltd. (Nasdaq: HUMC) employs 1,300 people in nearly 40 offices around the world. Over five million employees use Hummingbird to connect, manage, access, publish, and search their organization's content. Tony can be contacted at tony.heywood@hummingbird.com.