April 13, 2005
Siebel And The Enterprise Software Problem The ouster (or "resignation by mutual agreement") of Siebel's briefly tenured CEO today puts an exclamation point on one of my key takeaways from this year's InformationWeek Spring Conference: the continuing, astronomical costs of enterprise software deployments and the pain they can cause. One speaker referred to a $100-million ERP project, while another attendee privately referenced a $250-million ERP project (and one that is working in just some of this company's locations). One speaker all but implored companies to evaluate options such as on-demand applications and computing, so that they could regain some power and control over the critical factors where the enterprise software companies continue to fall down: cost, risk and time. One speaker went so far as to call "CRM" an acronym for "Can't Remember Much." These themes are anything but new, but what's so striking is the clear lack of progress by the vendors in breaking down the cost and complexity barriers associated with their products. So did Siebel's Mike Lawrie get booted because the company recently said it will badly miss its quarterly numbers? Probably. But neither Siebel nor many of the other purveyors of big honking applications have solved the larger and more important problems that their customers face. Ousting a CEO isn't going to help that cause. What's your take? Have the enterprise software vendors gotten any better, or cheaper? What should they be doing? Posted by Tom Smith
at April 13, 2005 01:37 PM
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