Informatica Powers Siebel’s New eBusiness Analytics

Event Summary

Informatica Corporation (NASDAQ: INFA), a supplier of e-business analytic and extract/transform/load software, and Siebel Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: SEBL), a provider of e-business applications software, have announced that Siebel Systems has incorporated Informatica's data integration platform within Siebel eBusiness Analytics 2000.3. Launched as part of the enhanced and expanded Siebel eBusiness 2000.3 application suite, Siebel eBusiness Analytics provides executives and managers with insight into their customer base and multi-channel e-business operations, including sales, marketing and service activities.

The vendors' intent is to provide the ability to consolidate front-office, back-office, and external data into a unified data warehouse to give companies a complete view of their customers. The warehouse will be open and pre-built, with out-of-the-box tools for in-depth analyses and reporting. Currently the out-of-the-box library of analyses covers sales, marketing, service, and product data.

"Informatica is widely recognized in the industry for its ability to unite disparate sources of data from across the extended enterprise for analysis," said Dan Lackner, vice president and general manager of Marketing Automation and eBusiness Analytics Products at Siebel Systems. "Informatica's data integration platform and open framework allow Siebel Systems to offer global organizations a 360-degree view of the customer as well as the scalability and flexibility they require."

Base pricing starts at $1,350 per named user. Siebel eBusiness 2000.3 is available immediately.

Market Impact

Informatica has a major share of the market for data movement tools, and has been moving quickly into the arena of e-business. This partnership with Siebel Systems, the market leader in customer relationship management (CRM), should provide them with insights that they can leverage in their own products, such as their eBusiness Operations Application, and, since it is partnering with an acknowledged leader, will provide Informatica additional credibility in the marketplace.

All of what were formerly known as ETL tool vendors (Informatica, Ardent, Sagent, Computer Associates, and others) are now re-branding themselves as concentrating on "e-business" in one way or another. Every vendor puts a different spin on what their product offers to a customer, and the result has been a very fuzzy and hard-to-define market. Whatever the result of the coming shakeout, Siebel and Informatica are sure to survive, and most likely thrive, in the new, (more) mature market.

User Recommendations

Any company trying to improve its e-business analytics should consider this offering. One of the biggest problems with e-business applications built from best-of-breed products (typically from different vendors) has been finding a way for the tools to understand each other's metadata. The fact that the data model (metadata definitions) for the warehouse is pre-built and "understood" by all parties (the data extraction, consolidation and analytic aspects) of Siebel eBusiness 2000.3, should significantly reduce implementation time, and increase overall return on investment.

Siebel's choice to use a "per named user" pricing model could lead to an immense license cost burden for larger customers. Companies with leverage against the vendors would be wise to attempt to renegotiate the contract to a "per concurrent user" model.