Siebel Open UI: Portlets Reloaded

Constellation Research

J. Bruce Daley is a former vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research, Inc.  , Title: Big Ideas Age Before Beauty Before there can be a wholesale conversion to the Cloud legacy applications must be converted. This will take decades and not every vendor has taken this obstacle into account when projecting growth. Professional Services Firms Need a Recurring Revenue Model The services business has a lot of advantages but one big disadvantage in that you are always going out of business. Some organizations are using the Cloud to offer clients new ways to spend money than just time-and-materials or fixed price projects. ...

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In his Siebel Essentials blog, Alexander Hansal continues his exploration of  the Siebel Open UI.

As described in an article earlier last year, Siebel Open UI enables us to display individual applets as "portlets" in any web portal. As of the early versions 8.1.1.9 and 8.1.1.10, this was supported but the functionality was to be considered "basic".

Siebel Tools: Quote List Applet with Business Object user property.

Quote List Applet standalone in a web browser.

Click to enlarge.

This post originally appeared in the Siebel Essentials Blog.

Predictions: the 2014 cloud game for serious players only

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Holger Mueller is VP and Principal Analyst for Constellation Research for the fundamental enablers of the cloud, IaaS, PaaS and next generation Applications, with forays up the tech stack into BigData and Analytics, HR Tech, and sometimes SaaS. Holger provides strategy and counsel to key clients, including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Product Officers, Chief HR Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, sell-side firms, and technology buyers.  Coverage Areas: Future of Work Tech Optimization & Innovation  Background: Before joining Constellation Research, Mueller was VP of Products for NorthgateArinso, a KKR company. There, he led the transformation of products to the cloud and laid the foundation for new Business Process as a…...

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Since quite some time there as been wide agreement on some criteria for cloud based applications - namely that they had to support multitenancy, all the way down to the database level, they had to be deployed to a public infrastructure, they would only have one production code line and so on.
 

Already slaughtered - no customizing

For a long time the cloud application vendors have been maintaining, that they cannot support any form or shape of customizing - as they otherwise would no longer have a cloud application. 

In my view this was a little bit of a self serving argument as it allowed the vendors to move fast and with little complexity from release to release. But to be fair more and more vendors start to support some  more or less elaborate ways of customizing their cloud applications. So already in 2013 we did not hear the  moniker - 'we are cloud we don't allow customization' (much) anymore.
 

The first to go in 2014 - database multitenancy 

We have already written in mid 2013 that database multitenancy - as we knew it - as being a database containing rows of data owned by different clients - is largely an architecture of the past. It was largely required due to hardware constraints for the very first cloud architectures - but should not be deployed for a modern cloud storage in 2014 and onwards. Too many advantages speak for the end of database multitenancy - most prominently access security, predictable performance, and operational advantages. 

You could argue that database multitenancy has already disappeared in new, state of the art cloud architecture - but probably 2014 will see the more wide stream adoption.
 

Next - public shared infrastructure

A table stake of cloud architectures used to be, that cloud applications had to be deployed on public and shared infrastructures. And while that is desirable for most applications, there are more companies out there, that do not want to have their applications being hosted on a public infrastructure. Some may say it may be triggered by the whole NSA / Prism sensibility, in my view the saturation of early cloud adoptions and the need of cloud application vendors to grow revenue wise, play an equal important role. 

And the vendors are reacting and gearing towards that - the AWS government cloud is an example. Salesforce supporting the HP Superpod is a similar one. And then with most cloud application vendors embracing OpenStack, a deployment of their cloud applications on a on premise OpenStack infrastructure is technically possible and in my view - likely in 2014.

Of course cloud purists will now roll their eyes - and start to argue... we will see what 2014 brings.
 

And then - one release for all

As cloud applications get more and more adopted - it becomes more of a challenge to upgrade these applications centrally and synchronously for all customers. Cloud vendors have for the longest time argued (and in my view even a little hidden) behind the fact, that if a single customer would have their own version of code - they would be no longer a cloud application. That's of course not accurate... and with more flexible deployments in 2014 - we will see cloud vendors to begin supporting different code levels by customer.  
 

Implications for customers

It will be key for customers to make sure their vendor supports the more complex code deployment landscape that results from slaughtering some of the sacred cows. Do not take 'that's not cloud' as an answer anymore in 2014.

Implication for vendors

If you are not revisiting you code delivery and configurability, 2014 maybe a rude awakening for you. Better to disrupt and be early on these trends than be disrupted by the competition. Look at OpenStack as the easy way out, that a number of the larger cloud vendors have already adopted or at least are heavily looking into.
 

MyPOV

Nobody knows what the future holds - otherwise those who knew would play the lottery and win every week.... but it's time for criteria that defined a cloud application for the longest time - are being revised by the market. Even sacred cows do not live forever.

In my view - a lot of that will happen in 2014. 

P.S. Don't miss the 2014 cloud trends that fellow Constellation Research colleague Ray Wang and me have put together here.

Salesforce.com Puts Less Emphasis On Social More On Business

Alan Lepofsky

Vice President & Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Alan Lepofsky - VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research. With almost two decades of experience in the collaboration software industry, Lepofsky helps organizations improve the way their employees work together to get their jobs done. Lepofsky’s primary research area The Future of Work, focuses on: integrating collaboration and business processes (Purposeful Collaboration), structuring work via Social Task Management, leveraging analytics and digital assistants to work more productively, the strategic impact of mobile computing on business transformation, and measuring workforce culture based on Digital Proficiency instead of age. Twitter: @alanlepoLinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/alanlepo     , Title: Big IdeasIntelligent Collaboration: The Intersection of…...

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This morning at Salesforce.com's World Tour event in New York city, I meet with Mike Stone, SVP Chatter Marketing to talk about Salesforce.com's messaging around enterprise collaboration. I mentioned to Mike that if you look back over the last few years, Salesforce.com used to put a lot of emphasis on social business and specifically the Chatter brand, however now both terms have faded from Salesforce.com's marketing. Case in point, out of 16 sessions on today's agenda the word Chatter only appears once.

Mike's response, "Chatter is the social heart of Salesforce1."

I could not agree more. Rather than talk specifically about collaboration or "being social", Salesforce is now focusing on their core business solutions of Sales, Marketing, Customer Service and HR. Chatter, and the collaboration features it provides, are integrated directly into those solutions. Those solutions, along with custom applications sit on top of Salesforce1, Salesforce.com's platform as a service infrastructure. Yes, Chatter is still available as a stand-alone enterprise social network (in both free and paid versions) but its benefits are greater when collaboration is used within the content of one of Salesforce's business solutions.  This type of integration is what I refer to as Purposeful Collaboration.

That's not to say Salesforce is not continuing to improve Chatter. Quite the contrary, actually. Areas such as files and communities are currently getting major attention, and latter in 2014 I expect to see enhancements and additions to areas like content creation and unified communication.

In the Constellation Research report, Salesforce Chatter: The Collaborative Foundation of Salesforce1 we provide details and competitive comparisons around the following five Chatter strengths:

1. Purposeful collaboration across multiple lines of business
2. Feature-rich file sharing capabilities
3. Customized post types enable work to be done in context
4. Recommendations to help you find expertise
5. Massive partner ecosystem emerging around Salesforce1

And weaknesses:
1. No long form content creation
2. No integrated web-conferencing or video chat
3. No advanced stream filtering
4. Unclear roadmap for social task management
5. Missing some key integrations 

If your organization is currently using Salesforce or considering becoming a customer, this report provides information and advice that will be useful to you.

News Analysis: Microsoft Dynamics CRM Acquires Parature For Customer Service Capabilities

R "Ray" Wang

Principal Analyst and Founder
Constellation Research

R “Ray” Wang is the CEO of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He co-hosts DisrupTV, a weekly enterprise tech and leadership webcast that averages 50,000 views per episode and blogs at www.raywang.org. His ground-breaking best-selling book on digital transformation, Disrupting Digital Business, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2015. Ray's new book about Digital Giants and the future of business, titled, Everybody Wants to Rule The World was released in July 2021. Wang is well-quoted and frequently interviewed by media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Cheddar, and Bloomberg. Short Bio R “Ray” Wang (pronounced WAHNG) is the Founder, Chairman, and Principal Analyst of Silicon Valley-based Constellation…...

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Dynamics CRM Gains Key Technology and Team To Take Existing Customer Care Assets To Next Level

On January 7th, 2014, The Microsoft Dynamics CRM team announced a definitive agreement to acquire Herndon, VA based Parature for an undisclosed sum.  This acquisition is Microsoft Dynamic’s CRM’s largest to date. Parature is an East Coast software start-up success story founded in 2000 by five Cornell students including Duke Chung.  Originally named Cyracle Technologies, the company’s first product addressed the live chat market.  Current CEO, Ching-Ho Fung, the first angel behind Blackboard, provided the initial angel investment in 2001.  Parature’s key investors include Valhalla Partners, Sierra Ventures, and Accel Partners.  The acquisition is significant for both Parature and Microsoft Dynamics Customers because:

• Parature fills in a key gap in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM offering. Microsoft CRM currently has a customer care offering that delivers core customer service with case management, universal queuing and routing, and light scheduling and field service.  Parature provides key self-service knowledge base software, core customer service,  live chat, mobile access, survey and feedback capabilities, social monitoring, and Facebook portal capabilities to the Microsoft service offering.
  
  Point of View (POV): Microsoft’s core strengths have come from the sales automation product and the tight integration with Office.  Since 2012, with the arrival of Corporate Vice President, Bob Stutz, the Dynamics CRM team has sought to round out the rest of the customer experience offering.   (Note: Bob Stutz was a key force in the development of Siebel CRM and SAP CRM.)  The acquisition of Marketing Pilot provided a key building block for marketing automation.  This acquisition of Parature adds to General Manager Jujhar Singh’s investments in customer care.  Dynamics CRM customers gain the knowledge base functionality in Parature, which is the crown jewel.  This knowledge base was recently rearchitected and one of the most modern in the industry.  Parature customers will gain greater investment in the customer service and support product line with deeper integrations to a full customer experience suite.

• Parature adds 70 million end users to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM ecosystem. The company has built a strong foothold in key industries such as education, gaming, high-tech, non-profit associations, online media, public sector, and travel.  Major brands include Ask.com, Asure Software, ATRA, Brenau University, BuilderMT, CompTIA, e-MDs, EPA, Florida Atlantic University, Hitachi Data Systems, IBM, IGN Entertainment, iWin, NASA SEWP, PlayFirst, SoftChalk, Threadless, Top Down Systems, TMA Resources, and Travel Lodge UK.
  
  (POV): Parature’s relentless focus on customer success has led to tremendous growth.  In 2013, Parature doubled its end user count from 35 million in 2011 to 70 million.  Microsoft’s team will need to retain key Parature talent and augment them to continue this level of momentum.  More importantly, Microsoft will need to maintain the same level of marketing and sales support if it hopes to maintain the same growth trajectory.  This may prove to be challenging given the current One Microsoft reorganization in progress.

The Bottom Line: Microsoft Dynamics CRM Shows Its Seriousness About Customer Experience

Dynamics CRM is the fastest growing part of the Microsoft Dynamics franchise.  In head to head deals, the Dynamics CRM unit is giving Salesforce.com the most competition.  The acquisition of Parature shows that Microsoft is willing to make strategic bets to accelerate time to market of key offerings such as customer care.  Parature accelerates Microsoft’s efforts in customer care by 24 months.  The additional talent and customer base will provide both Parature and Microsoft Dynamics CRM customers with a win-win.

As with any major acquisition, Parature customers should make sure that existing contracts and key personnel continue into the next 12 months.  Microsoft Dynamics CRM customers should consider the new customer care offerings in future investment plans.  Meanwhile, Dynamics CRM partners should get to know the Parature product lines as soon as possible in order to increase cross-sell opportunities.

Your POV.

Are you a Parature customer?  Wondering what it means to be part of the Dynamics CRM family? Drop us a line and we can assist.  Are you embarking on a digital business transformation?  Let us know how it’s going!  Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationR (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) com.

Please let us know if you need help with your Customer Centricity and Digital Business transformation efforts.  Here’s how we can assist:

• Assessing customer centricity readiness
• Developing your digital business strategy
• Connecting with other pioneers
• Sharing best practices
• Vendor selection
• Implementation partner selection
• Providing contract negotiations and software licensing support
• Demystifying software licensing

Related Research:

• Tuesday’s Tip: Seven Lessons Learned In Customer Experience Strategies During A Data Breach (such as Target’s)
• Tuesday’s Tip: Understand The Five Generation Of Digital Workers
• Monday’s Musings: The Chief Digital Officer In The Age Of Digital Business
• Slide Share: The CMO vs CIO – Pathways To Collaboration
• Event Report: Seven Trends From This Year’s Human Resources Technology Conference 2013 (#HRTechConf)
• Event Report: Metaio’s #InsideAR Conference Hails The Future Of An Always On, Always Augmented Reality
• Event Report: CRM Evolution 2013 – Seven Trends In The Return To Digital Business And Customer Centricity
• Research Summary And Speaker Notes: The Identity Manifesto – Why Identity Is At The Heart of Digital Business
• Monday’s Musings: The Controversy Surrounding Gartner’s CRM Market Share Analysis
• Research Summary: Constellation Cosmos – Cloud Bill of Rights for SaaS Apps, Actian and Netsuite Achieve Epic Status
• Trends: Seven Priorities In The Shift From CMO to Chief Digital Officer
• Monday’s Musings: Understand The Four Organizational Personas Of Disruptive Tech Adoption
• Event Report: The Tweet Stream From #DF12
• Event Report: Dreamforce X (#DF12) Emerges As The South By Southwest (#SXSW) For The Enterprise
• Monday’s Musings: The New Engagement Platform Drives The Shift From Transactions
• News Analysis: KANA Enters MidMarket With Trinicom Acquisition
• Best Practices: From First To Worst – Continental In A Post United World, Lessons In Next Gen Customer Experience
• Monday’s Musings: Seven Basic Privacy Rights Users Should Demand For Social Business
• Monday’s Musings: Balancing The Six S’s In Consumerization Of IT
• Monday’s Musings: A Working Vendor Landscape For Social Business
• Product Review: Google+, Consumerization of IT, and Crossing The Chasm For Enterprise Social Business
• Monday’s Musings: Using MDM To Build A Complete Customer View In A Social Era
• Monday’s Musings: Mastering When and How High End Brands Should Use Daily Deal Sites Such As Groupon
• Best Practices: Applying Social Business Challenges To Social Business Maturity Models
• Research Summary: Software Insider’s Top 25 Posts For 2010
• Best Practices: Five Simple Rules For Social Business
• Research Report: How The Five Pillars Of Consumer Tech Influence Enterprise Innovation
• Research Report: Next Gen B2B and B2C E-Commerce Priorities Reflect Macro Level Trends
• Tuesday’s Tip: Applying The Five Stages Of Adoption Towards SCRM Projects
• Monday’s Musings: Avoiding Failure In Social CRM Projects Requires Ecosystem Coordination
• Research Report: The 18 Use Cases of Social CRM – The New Rules of Relationship Management
• Monday’s Musings: Why Every Social CRM Initiative Needs An MDM Backbone
• Monday’s Musings: 10 Essential Elements For Social Enterprise Apps

Reprints

Reprints can be purchased through Constellation Research, Inc. To request official reprints in PDF format, please contact Sales .

Disclosure

Although we work closely with many mega software vendors, we want you to trust us. For the full disclosure policy, stay tuned for the full client list on the Constellation Research website.

* Not responsible for any factual errors or omissions.  However, happy to correct any errors upon email receipt.

Copyright © 2001 – 2014 R Wang and Insider Associates, LLC All rights reserved.
Contact the Sales team to purchase this report on a a la carte basis or join the Constellation Customer Experience!

News Analysis: Verint Announces Intent To Acquire Kana For $514M

R "Ray" Wang

Principal Analyst and Founder
Constellation Research

R “Ray” Wang is the CEO of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He co-hosts DisrupTV, a weekly enterprise tech and leadership webcast that averages 50,000 views per episode and blogs at www.raywang.org. His ground-breaking best-selling book on digital transformation, Disrupting Digital Business, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2015. Ray's new book about Digital Giants and the future of business, titled, Everybody Wants to Rule The World was released in July 2021. Wang is well-quoted and frequently interviewed by media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Cheddar, and Bloomberg. Short Bio R “Ray” Wang (pronounced WAHNG) is the Founder, Chairman, and Principal Analyst of Silicon Valley-based Constellation…...

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Verint Adds to Vovici and Contact Center Assets To Expand Customer Engagement Offerings

On January 6th, Melville, NY based Verint® Systems announced a $514M intent to acquire Sunnyvale, CA, KANA Software.  Verint is a software vendor with a core in analytical software.  Verint’s core offerings provide enterprise intelligence and security intelligence.  The acquisition is significant in the market because:

• Big data and analytics meet customer experience. Verint expects to expand its customer engagement optimization offering with the acquisition of Kana.  Verint’s core capabilites, Vovici’s voice of the customer assets, and Kana’s multichannel customer experience solutions allow customers to move from data to information to insight to action or decisions.
  
  Point of View (POV): Bringing intelligence into customer experience adds context and relevancy. This combination is a key step in moving from systems of engagement to systems of mass personalization at scale.  Constellation expects more acquisitions that combine the 5 pillars of digital business – social, mobile, cloud, big data and analytics, and unified communications.

• Verint gains key customers and industries. Verint’s key customer base of 10,000 customers gets 900 new customers in six key industires.  Kana’s base includes a variety of marquee brands and public sector agencies in the mid market to enterprise space.  Business service customers include Hyatt, Starwood, USPS, and Priceline.com.  Communications and media customers include O2, Comcast, Cox, Quest, Talk Talk Group, Telekom Austria, Telus, Time Warner Cable,  Tracfone, Virgin Mobile, and Vodafone.  Financial services customers include Admiral, Bank Leumi, Capital One, Chase, Citigroup, Domestic and General HSBC, ING, Barclays,  Standard Bank, and VHI.  Retail and wholesale clients include American Greetings, Avon, Carglass, Conrad, Foot Locker, Hanes Brands, Ikea, JCPenney, Macy’s, Martha Stewart, Redcats, Sears, and Walmart.  Utilities and energy customers include Brabant Water, Belpower, British Gas, Bruce Power, Delta, Eskom, Nicor, PacifiCorp, Scottish Power, Severn Trent Water, Stedin, and Water Net.  Public sector clients include Broward County, Chesire West and Chester, City of Boston, City of San Antonio, City of South Perth, City of Staffordshire, City of Toronto, and the UK HM Revenue and Customs.
  
  (POV): As with all pending acquisitions, Kana’s customers should seek out current favorable terms in renewals prior to the acquisition.  Customers should be specific on the key personnel they prefer and the specific road map requests they expect to have in the future product direction.   Constellation believes this acquisition is good for Kana customers as they gain a financially stronger parent.  Verint customers, especially the Vovici customers, can now see the long term vision of the customer engagement strategy.

The Bottom Line: Verint Validates Intent To Compete In Customer Experience

When Verint purchased Vovici in 2011 for $76M, most customers and industry watchers thought this would be just an additive play to the contact center offering and a way to block competitor NICE Systems. Building on the enterprise feedback management (EFM) market, Verint’s strategy of applying big data and analytical intelligence to specific horizontals such as workforce optimization and customer experience has emerged as a key differentiator in the market. Why? Voice of the customer programs need to blend multi-channel, leverage unstructured data, and easily loop back feedback.  Should Verint successfully integrate Kana, customers will have actionable intelligence across an end to end capability in customer experience and engagement in all channels.

Your POV.

Are you a Kana customer?  Wondering what it means to be part of the Verint family? Drop us a line and we can assist.  Are you embarking on a digital business transformation?  Let us know how it’s going!  Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationR (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) com.

Please let us know if you need help with your Customer Centricity and Digital Business transformation efforts.  Here’s how we can assist:

• Assessing customer centricity readiness
• Developing your digital business strategy
• Connecting with other pioneers
• Sharing best practices
• Vendor selection
• Implementation partner selection
• Providing contract negotiations and software licensing support
• Demystifying software licensing

Related Research:

• Trends: Real World Lessons In Optimizing The Customer Service Experience From Kana Connect
• News Analysis: Kana Express 13 Addresses Omni-Channel Customer Service for Mid-Market
• Tuesday’s Tip: Seven Lessons Learned In Customer Experience Strategies During A Data Breach (such as Target’s)
• Tuesday’s Tip: Understand The Five Generation Of Digital Workers
• Monday’s Musings: The Chief Digital Officer In The Age Of Digital Business
• Slide Share: The CMO vs CIO – Pathways To Collaboration
• Event Report: Seven Trends From This Year’s Human Resources Technology Conference 2013 (#HRTechConf)
• Event Report: Metaio’s #InsideAR Conference Hails The Future Of An Always On, Always Augmented Reality
• Event Report: CRM Evolution 2013 – Seven Trends In The Return To Digital Business And Customer Centricity
• Research Summary And Speaker Notes: The Identity Manifesto – Why Identity Is At The Heart of Digital Business
• Monday’s Musings: The Controversy Surrounding Gartner’s CRM Market Share Analysis
• Research Summary: Constellation Cosmos – Cloud Bill of Rights for SaaS Apps, Actian and Netsuite Achieve Epic Status
• Trends: Seven Priorities In The Shift From CMO to Chief Digital Officer
• Monday’s Musings: Understand The Four Organizational Personas Of Disruptive Tech Adoption
• Event Report: The Tweet Stream From #DF12
• Event Report: Dreamforce X (#DF12) Emerges As The South By Southwest (#SXSW) For The Enterprise
• Monday’s Musings: The New Engagement Platform Drives The Shift From Transactions
• News Analysis: KANA Enters MidMarket With Trinicom Acquisition
• Best Practices: From First To Worst – Continental In A Post United World, Lessons In Next Gen Customer Experience
• Monday’s Musings: Seven Basic Privacy Rights Users Should Demand For Social Business
• Monday’s Musings: Balancing The Six S’s In Consumerization Of IT
• Monday’s Musings: A Working Vendor Landscape For Social Business
• Product Review: Google+, Consumerization of IT, and Crossing The Chasm For Enterprise Social Business
• Monday’s Musings: Using MDM To Build A Complete Customer View In A Social Era
• Monday’s Musings: Mastering When and How High End Brands Should Use Daily Deal Sites Such As Groupon
• Best Practices: Applying Social Business Challenges To Social Business Maturity Models
• Research Summary: Software Insider’s Top 25 Posts For 2010
• Best Practices: Five Simple Rules For Social Business
• Research Report: How The Five Pillars Of Consumer Tech Influence Enterprise Innovation
• Research Report: Next Gen B2B and B2C E-Commerce Priorities Reflect Macro Level Trends
• Tuesday’s Tip: Applying The Five Stages Of Adoption Towards SCRM Projects
• Monday’s Musings: Avoiding Failure In Social CRM Projects Requires Ecosystem Coordination
• Research Report: The 18 Use Cases of Social CRM – The New Rules of Relationship Management
• Monday’s Musings: Why Every Social CRM Initiative Needs An MDM Backbone
• Monday’s Musings: 10 Essential Elements For Social Enterprise Apps

Reprints

Reprints can be purchased through Constellation Research, Inc. To request official reprints in PDF format, please contact Sales .

Disclosure

Although we work closely with many mega software vendors, we want you to trust us. For the full disclosure policy, stay tuned for the full client list on the Constellation Research website.

* Not responsible for any factual errors or omissions.  However, happy to correct any errors upon email receipt.

Copyright © 2001 – 2014 R Wang and Insider Associates, LLC All rights reserved.
Contact the Sales team to purchase this report on a a la carte basis or join the Constellation Customer Experience!

Creating Links in Siebel Message Broadcasts

Constellation Research

J. Bruce Daley is a former vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research, Inc.  , Title: Big Ideas Age Before Beauty Before there can be a wholesale conversion to the Cloud legacy applications must be converted. This will take decades and not every vendor has taken this obstacle into account when projecting growth. Professional Services Firms Need a Recurring Revenue Model The services business has a lot of advantages but one big disadvantage in that you are always going out of business. Some organizations are using the Cloud to offer clients new ways to spend money than just time-and-materials or fixed price projects. ...

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In his Siebel Essentials blog, Alexander Hansal continues his exploration of  the Siebel Open UI.

Among the many changes and new features delivered with Siebel Open UI is the way how reports are delivered to end users. You might have noticed the following changes:

After submitting a report, the application gets focus, so the end user can continue to submit (other) reports or use the application. When a report is complete, the user is notified by the message broadcast icon in the upper right corner. The message is implemented as a link, which allows the end user to download the report (see screenshot below).

Recently, we discussed the new features around message broadcasts in Open UI and personally, I was quite intrigued by the possibility of creating a download link in a message. So I decided to do some research.

When you take a closer look at the message which is automatically generated, you find it similar to the following:

Click to enlarge

Abstract: [D] ' Account List... ' report has completed.

Message: BO: Report Administration; BC : Report Output BC; Field :  ReportOutputFileName;File Ext : ReportOutputFileExt; Id: 9SIA-89EK9

As you can see the Abstract field value starts with [D] and the Message field value contains references to the following:

• business object
• an attachment business component within the BO
• a field within that BC containing the file name
• another field for the file extension
• the ROW_ID of the file

I admit that out of curiosity, I created a similar message myself, using [D] as the first characters of the abstract and referring to an attachment BC in the message. For my tests I used the Account Attachment BC and referenced an attachment I created for demo purposes.

The abstract I used:

[D] Click to download an attachment

This is what my test message looked like:

BO: Account; BC: Account Attachment; Field: AccntFileName;File Ext: AccntFileExt; Id: 9SIA-89EK5

(The Id value is the ROW_ID of an actual account attachment file)

I was delighted to see that I got a download link just fine and was able to download the account attachment

Further research showed that internally, the GetFile method is used when you specify the message like shown above.

Navigating to a View

Now when we specify the message like the following, there's a different story to tell:

BO:Account; BC:Account; View:Account Detail - Contacts View; Id:1-63Q9

As you can see, we still specify the BO, (parent) BC and an Id (of the parent BC) but now there is a view reference.

This will create a message with a link that allows the user to navigate to a view and open the record specified by the Id.
 

Note that there is also a different icon displayed.

Summary

Welcome to the new message broadcast. Three little characters in the message abstract "[D]", change the tune and allow us to create download links for attachments and navigation links to views.

This post originally appeared in the Siebel Essentials Blog.

2014: The Year of a Siebel Renaissance?

Constellation Research

J. Bruce Daley is a former vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research, Inc.  , Title: Big Ideas Age Before Beauty Before there can be a wholesale conversion to the Cloud legacy applications must be converted. This will take decades and not every vendor has taken this obstacle into account when projecting growth. Professional Services Firms Need a Recurring Revenue Model The services business has a lot of advantages but one big disadvantage in that you are always going out of business. Some organizations are using the Cloud to offer clients new ways to spend money than just time-and-materials or fixed price projects. ...

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Renaissance - a situation or period of time when there is a new interest in something that has not been popular in a long time.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Running down Siebel technology has been popular for a long time. Everyone does it. Competitors, investors, even parts of Oracle itself. There are a number of reasons this has happen:

• the product has not always been implemented right, 
• user acceptance has sometimes been slow,
•  the technology is complex and is designed to solve complex problems.

Finally Siebel technology, which is superb for office workers, has not always supported the field as well. In response to the product’s position in the market sales automation and customer relationship management (CRM) tools have been developed in the cloud. For many businesses, and especially small businesses, cloud solutions offer a better value than on premise applications. So is there really no role for Siebel in the future?

We content there is an important role for Siebel in the decades to come, especially in large organizations. For them, some of the disadvantages of the cloud outweigh the advantages. They include:

Cost – as with any buy/lease decision owning an application and running it yourself is going to be more cost effective in the long run. Although any exact analysis must be done on a case-by-case basis the breakeven point is often only a couple of hundred seats.

Risk – outsourcing applications eliminates some risks while increasing others. For example an organization must be concerned with the financial health of a cloud provider in a way it does not need to worry about an internal IT organization. By the same token building applications in the cloud is also placing responsibility for maintaining security on a provider which may or may not be a good idea.

Data transfers – moving very large amounts of information across the internet can be difficult.
Integration – although inclusion theory layer products hold some promise for new ways to integrate cloud based applications, most system integrators agree it is more difficult to connect products that are not owned by your company.

The bigger and more established the organization, the added number of systems that need to work together, the more data that needs to be transfer, the greater the risk, and the higher the cost.

Advantages of Siebel

In addition, Siebel has evolved as a product. New versions have come out every year since Oracle acquired Siebel in 2006 and more releases are planned until at least 2028. Two releases, a maintenance release in the spring and an enhancement release in the fall, were planned for 2014. The enhancement release in fall 2012 included some significant new functionality, most notably the Siebel Open User Interface (UI), which changes the top layer of the three-tiered architecture and allows the application to run on more devices and browsers and for the look and feel of the application to be customized. The new Open UI product has the potential to extend the useful life of many Siebel implementations and also improve new sales. Not only does the new interface open up new form factors (e.g. iPads, iPhones, Android, etc.), it also creates the possibility of completely changing the user experience.

Over the years, Oracle has added specific functionality for many industries, including pharmaceuticals, finance, telecommunications, insurance, utilities and the public sector.

Oracle Siebel has a strong analytics tool, Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE), integrated into the product.

Many different levels and flavors of support are available both from Oracle and from third parties. Under its Applications Unlimited strategy, Oracle plans to provide ongoing enhancements and support to all of its application product lines beyond the delivery of Oracle Fusion Applications. Support is also available from third parties like Rimini Street, Eagle Creek Services, and Spinnaker Solutions.

Training for Siebel applications continues to be offered both by Oracle as well as by third parties such as Quilogy Services from Aspect.

Third-party products from vendors such as aMinds, Buzzient, CRMantra, Customer Systems, earthIntegrate, invisibleCRM, KNOA and Selectica are integrated or being integrated both into the most current version of Siebel as well as older versions.

Many of the world’s largest system integrators have very active Siebel practices, including Accenture, Deloitte, Cap Gemini, Tata Consultancy Services, HCL and Wipro.

Finally Oracle Siebel itself can be run in the cloud either by Oracle or by third parties.

Therefore we are predicting that 2014 might be the year of a Siebel Renaissance when the advantages of the product and its place in the computing is recognized as being permanent.

Quips: #CES2014 Preview - Trends In Digital Disruption For Consumers Center Around Mass Personalization At Scale

R "Ray" Wang

Principal Analyst and Founder
Constellation Research

R “Ray” Wang is the CEO of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He co-hosts DisrupTV, a weekly enterprise tech and leadership webcast that averages 50,000 views per episode and blogs at www.raywang.org. His ground-breaking best-selling book on digital transformation, Disrupting Digital Business, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2015. Ray's new book about Digital Giants and the future of business, titled, Everybody Wants to Rule The World was released in July 2021. Wang is well-quoted and frequently interviewed by media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Cheddar, and Bloomberg. Short Bio R “Ray” Wang (pronounced WAHNG) is the Founder, Chairman, and Principal Analyst of Silicon Valley-based Constellation…...

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Consumer Trends Often Lead The Enterprise Space

The Consumer Electronics Show begins Tuesday, January 7th, 2014 in Las Vegas.  Dubbed consumer tech's largest event, Constellation expects to see a few big things for #CES14.  In fact, digital disruption is alive and well.  The five forces of consumer tech: social, mobile, cloud, big data and video converged early in the consumer space and has commoditized faster than ever.  Consumer tech often showcases what the art of the possible will be for the enterprise.  Five big categories for CES embody this digital disruption for consumers:

1. Wearables go mainstream. The self quantification movement has gone from geek to chic fashion. Major fashion brands and pharma tech companies scramble to get the latest designs out.  Products range from smart watches, to bio monitoring devices, and to fitness tracking. Purpose built, these consumer devices will be the stars for CES this year.
2. Internet of things drives data driven personalization at scale. The machine to machine and automation market is seeing a boost from home automation in lighting, entertainment, and security. The big push is to put sensors to create data driven products that can not only improve personalization but improve context and relevancy on devices.  The result will be smarter homes, smarter cars, smarter buildings, and lots of big data business models harnessed by the vendors.
3. Video gets cheaper and better faster. 4K TVs go mainstream and price points drop.  Expect more and more OLED and lower price points. The Koreans have an edge here but don't be surprised if someone else comes from out of the blue.  Integrated video with home entertainment and traditional PC's are creating new form factors like Steambox in the living room.
4. Maker movement expands accessibility. 3D printing and imaging improve in accessibility. The goal is to drive down price points, improve access, and drive up the ecosystem. Expect new business models to emerge that will enable more local production and mass personalization at scale.
5. Robotics revolution. A host of consumer grade robotics enter the market.  The current wave cover hard labor automation, telematics, artifical intelligence, connected experiences, and simulated human relationships.  As cognitive computing improves, expect robotics to take advantage of these improvements to improve the overall interaction and self-learning.

The Bottom Line: Mass Personalization At Scale Is The Unwritten Theme of CES2014

The low cost of sensors and computing power now enable data driven personalization at consumer scale.  The data behind mass personalization will enable context which will drive relevancy in the overall customer experience.  This is the dawn of the data driven consumer tech and data driven customer experience era.  CES 2014 attendees looking back will realize that the digital disruption in 2014 came from sensor enablement, creation of bigdata business models, and the launch of mass personalization at scale.  Expect the next stage in convergence as wearables tie back to sensor and analytical ecosystems in IOT, that then enable video, to create things.  Ah, you see you do get it!

Disruptive Technology Companies: Filemobile

Constellation Research

J. Bruce Daley is a former vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research, Inc.  , Title: Big Ideas Age Before Beauty Before there can be a wholesale conversion to the Cloud legacy applications must be converted. This will take decades and not every vendor has taken this obstacle into account when projecting growth. Professional Services Firms Need a Recurring Revenue Model The services business has a lot of advantages but one big disadvantage in that you are always going out of business. Some organizations are using the Cloud to offer clients new ways to spend money than just time-and-materials or fixed price projects. ...

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Filemobile offers a disruptive technology that goes beyond its niche in on-line media. The company, based in Toronto, Canada, at one level allows its clients to gather, curate, publish, and promote user generated content. At another level the company has developed an Inclusion Theory Layer product complete with mobile device support, API's, authentication, and an SDK that could be used to develop new business models.  Filemobile clients currently use the cloud based technology organize and assemble user-generated content primarily to build brand  or encourage customer engagement. The company reports seeing a lot of growth in internal intranet uses. A few have even begun experimenting with more disruptive ways to take advantage of the technology.

CablePulse 24 (CP24), a Canadian cable and satellite television channel focusing on local news from Toronto and Southern Ontario, used the geo-location features of the product to identify and solicit on-the-spot reporting from viewers during  the Southern Ontario Tornado Outbreak of 2009,  the largest one day flurry of tornados in Canadian history.  CP23 was able to scoop larger, better funded competitors and  break the station's viewership record in the process.

 Source: Flickr

The company's Inclusion Theory Layer product is called Media Factory. It was built from the ground up to handle different media formats in large quantities while also providing flexible workflows for moderation and publishing. Given the right API's there is no reason it could not be used with enterprise systems such as SAP or Siebel to build mobile composite applications.

Privately held, Filemobile clients include Gannett, Wall Street Journal, ABC, and Fox News, Life is Good, Tim Hortons, JC Penney, Farmers, Honda, and Fischer Price.

A good contact at the company is Marc Milgrom who can be reached at + 416 642 652 or at [email protected].

Getting Social with Siebel #4: Can I support other CRM Platforms

Constellation Research

J. Bruce Daley is a former vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research, Inc.  , Title: Big Ideas Age Before Beauty Before there can be a wholesale conversion to the Cloud legacy applications must be converted. This will take decades and not every vendor has taken this obstacle into account when projecting growth. Professional Services Firms Need a Recurring Revenue Model The services business has a lot of advantages but one big disadvantage in that you are always going out of business. Some organizations are using the Cloud to offer clients new ways to spend money than just time-and-materials or fixed price projects. ...

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By Richard Napier

At Buzzient we believe that you should not be tied up in multiple platforms for Social Engagement just because you have different departments or different platforms. For example, if your outbound marketing happens in Salesforce, and your helpdesk uses NetSuite, or your Italian operation uses another CRM.

Question 5 : Can your Social Engagement platform co-exist and be CRM vendor neutral?

At Buzzient, we think that is a fundamental rule – why should you need to have multiple systems. It’s all about the customer! Pick up some of the core documentation on the Buzzient resources area,

This post originally appeared in the On Demand Education Ltd. Blog