LOS ANGELES, Oct. 4, 2004 — Today at Siebel User Week, Microsoft Corp. and Siebel Systems Inc., a leading provider of business applications software, announced a new migration program designed to continue the strong momentum that has made the Windows
®
platform the leading choice for Siebel Systems customers.
Since the global strategic alliance between the companies was announced two years ago, the Windows platform has experienced significant customer momentum as Siebel Systems customers seek greater flexibility, lower cost of ownership and increased ability to integrate IT assets. As a result, Microsoft® Windows Server (TM) is the leading platform for running the Siebel application tier. Further, when clients are choosing an operating system upon which to run their database, Microsoft®
Windows Server emerges as the leading platform, with customer share increasing 50 percent in the past two years.
“Demand for lower costs, lower complexity and easier integration with other applications through the use of Web services has made Windows the most popular platform with Siebel customers,” said Sanjay Parthasarathy, corporate vice president of the Developer & Platform Evangelism Group at Microsoft. “Microsoft and Siebel are focused on enabling customers to meet their increasing CRM needs by helping them connect a variety of systems so they can unlock more value from their existing investments.”
New Platform Migration Program Helps Siebel Customers Migrating to Windows
The new platform migration program announced today is focused on helping customers migrate to the Windows platform as a part of the upgrade path to Siebel 7.7. The program will include joint services and support, a database migration offering, and workshops that provide the technical guidance needed to deliver successful customer migrations.
“We wanted to upgrade our critical enterprise Siebel 6.x applications to the latest 7.7 release and enhance Altera’s CRM capabilities with a fully integrated Microsoft platform,” said Bill Levesque, CIS Program Director of Altera Corp. “To accomplish this, we migrated Altera’s CRM infrastructure to Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft SQL Server (TM) 2000 to gain a new cost-effective technology platform with the agility, reliability and scalability needed to meet our market demands. This technology solution was part of a larger effort to provide new choices to the market, improve sales and service, and establish more effective self-service capabilities for our customers and field sales. By the end of 2004, we will have migrated more than 1,000 Siebel users to the Microsoft platform and implemented new solutions that would have been more costly to implement on the prior Oracle/UNIX based infrastructure.”
A recent Accenture study concluded that running Siebel CRM applications on SQL Server 2000 generates average savings of 38.7 percent compared with comparable UNIX solutions. The study revealed that on average the cost of procurement for Windows and SQL Server is 38.4 percent lower and administrative costs on average are lower by 30.9 percent, which contribute to the overall savings. More information on the study can be found at http://www.siebelonmicrosoft.com .
“Siebel applications are designed to leverage the power of the Microsoft .NET platform,” said Skip Bacon, vice president of technology, Siebel Systems. “Our customers benefit from our strategic relationship and the resulting technology collaboration that yields world-class integration, performance and scalability between our key product offerings at a lower total cost of ownership.”
About Siebel Systems
Siebel Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: SEBL) is a leading provider of business applications software, enabling corporations to sell to, market to and serve customers across multiple channels and lines of business. With more than 4,000 customer deployments worldwide, Siebel Systems provides organizations with a proven set of industry-specific best practices, CRM applications, market leading analytics products and business processes, empowering them to consistently deliver superior customer experiences and establish more profitable customer relationships. Siebel Systems’ sales and service facilities are located in more than 30 countries.
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.
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