LOS ANGELES, Oct. 4, 2004 — Today at Siebel Business Intelligence Summit, as part of an expanded strategic alliance focused on business intelligence, Siebel Systems Inc. and Microsoft Corp. announced optimization of Siebel Business Analytics for a variety of Microsoft®
products and technologies. Siebel’s new enterprise analytics applications, also announced today, are immediately available optimized for Microsoft SQL Server (TM) . The two companies have been working to enable joint customers to realize greater performance through tight integration of Microsoft platform and Siebel’s analytic solutions. As a result Microsoft SQL Server has become the fastest-growing database for use with Siebel Business Analytics, and Microsoft Windows Server (TM) has become the leading platform for Siebel Business Analytics deployments, enabling more customers to realize the TCO benefits of the Microsoft platform.
Siebel Business Analytics solutions are designed to increase revenues, lower costs, speed time to value and gain competitive advantage by providing powerful insight into issues and opportunities that impact business performance.
In addition, Microsoft announced its selection of Siebel analytic applications and has plans to make it available to 10,000 employees to increase sales and marketing effectiveness. This deployment will showcase the integration of Siebel analytic applications and key Microsoft platform technologies including Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Analysis Services and Microsoft Reporting Services.
Siebel Business Analytics platform and applications have been highly tuned and optimized to exploit the unique performance and scalability characteristics of the Microsoft platform. The companies have collaborated to ensure deeper integration of Siebel Business Analytics and Microsoft applications, technologies and services including the following:
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Windows
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platform integration. All Siebel Business Analytics products are optimized to run on the Microsoft Windows Server platform. Siebel Systems and Microsoft engineers have worked closely to ensure seamless integration between the two companies’ platforms, and have together performed a range of performance and scalability tests to enable high-performance support for large numbers of users. -
SQL Server Relational Database optimization. The Siebel Business Analytics platform includes a SQL Server-specific code generation engine that is tuned to access the full capabilities of SQL Server, delivering optimal performance and scalability. This ensures that all Siebel Business Analytics applications leverage the power of SQL Server to handle complex business intelligence queries and deliver multiterabyte scalability for thousands of concurrent users.
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SQL Server Analysis Services support. Siebel Business Analytics platform supports SQL Server Analysis Services through XML for Analysis (XMLA), an open standard providing connectivity to online analytical processing (OLAP) data sources. As part of this effort, Siebel Systems has developed an MDX query generation engine specifically designed to support Microsoft Analysis Services as a data source. Siebel Business Analytics offers a unique capability to simultaneously access both SQL Server relational data and Analysis Services multidimensional data to best answer a single business question. This enables exceptional flexibility for building analytic applications leveraging the strength and power of the Microsoft business intelligence platform.
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.NET Web Services support. The full capabilities of Siebel Business Analytics platform are exposed as Web services. This allows .NET application developers to focus on delivering business value by easily incorporating into their applications the power and performance of Siebel’s analytical engine to generate insight from raw data.
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Microsoft Office support. Siebel Business Analytics platform offers seamless integration with Microsoft Office applications and SharePoint®
Portal Sever. For example, Microsoft Excel workbooks linked to Siebel Business Analytics platform can be dynamically updated as corporate data changes, ensuring that decisions are based on the most current and relevant information. -
SQL Server 2005 optimization and integration. In addition, the Siebel and Microsoft product development teams are working together to ensure deeper integration in future releases. Microsoft is incorporating features in SQL Server 2005 for optimal performance of Siebel Business Analytics platform. Siebel will also be enhancing its Siebel Business Analytics platform to support new BI features in SQL Server 2005 relational database and Analysis Services. The companies are also working to enable tight integration with Reporting Services.
“We look forward to our continued work with Siebel to deliver further integration of Siebel Business Analytics with key SQL Server 2005 capabilities, including Reporting Services. This is additional evidence of significant customer adoption of Reporting Services, with more than 100,000 downloads in the first eight months since launching in January,” said Mike Tuchen, general manager of SQL Server Marketing at Microsoft. “With this continued collaboration, we expect to further increase our joint customer momentum.”
“We are pleased to announce our expanded relationship with Microsoft in the area of BI and analytics,” said Larry Barbetta, group vice president and general manager of Business Analytics at Siebel Systems. “Siebel Systems and Microsoft are both committed to leveraging technology to enable the rapid deployment of powerful analytic solutions that deliver demonstrable business results and are cost effective. Together we are offering our customers solutions that enable executives, managers and front-line employees to improve the quality of decision-making and business effectiveness across the enterprise.”
About Siebel Business Analytics
Siebel Business Analytics offers a range of complete enterprise and customer analytic solutions, Siebel Business Analytics Applications, that are prebuilt to include data integration, enterprise data warehouse models, and a wide range of enterprise analytic capabilities. Siebel Business Analytics Applications provide cross-value chain analysis across sales, marketing and service as well as finance, supply chain and workforce interactions. These insights are delivered through a variety of presentation mechanisms to satisfy the needs of all users across the organization.
Siebel Business Analytics Applications are available now. For more information, visit, http://www.siebel.com/analytics .
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.
Microsoft, Windows Server, Windows and SharePoint are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.
Siebel is a trademark of Siebel Systems Inc. and may be registered in certain jurisdictions.The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
For more information on Siebel Systems solutions and services, please visit our Web site: CRM — http://www.siebel.com/crm ; OnDemand Solutions — http://www.crmondemand.com ; Industry CRM — http://www.siebel.com/industry-crm ; Call Center & Service — http://www.siebel.com/call-center ; Sales Force Automation — http://www.siebel.com/sales -force-automation; Marketing Automation — http://www.siebel.com/marketing-automation ; Business Intelligence — http://www.siebel.com/business-intelligence ; Integration Solutions — http://www.siebel.com/integration-solutions ; CRM Services — http://www.siebel.com/crm-services
Except for the historical information contained herein, this press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risk or uncertainties. Future operating results of Siebel Systems may differ from the results discussed or forecasted in the forward-looking statements due to factors that include, but are not limited to, risks associated with customer relations, such as the availability of Siebel Systems’ products and services, customer implementation of products and services, relationships with customers, third-party vendors and systems integrators, concentration of revenues in a relatively small number of customers, existence of errors or defects in products, ability to successfully manage growth, significant current and expected additional competition and the need to continue to expand product distribution and services offerings. Further information on potential factors that could affect the financial results of Siebel Systems are included in Siebel Systems’ Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and its other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are available at www.sec.gov . Siebel Systems assumes no obligation to update the information in this press release.