Salesforce Wants UpShot's Customers

Hosted CRM specialist Salesforce.com Inc. says it, too, wants a shot at UpShot Corp. customers who may be reluctant to migrate to Siebel Systems Inc.

Just as Salesnet Inc. last week offered UpShot customers an alternative to staying with UpShot as that company is set for acquisition by Siebel within the next month, Salesforce late last week introduced the SureShot Migration program. The company says the program will enable a "seamless migration" from UpShot to Salesforce's hosted customer-relationship-management offering.

By switching to Salesforce, UpShot customers can avoid an uncertain future, says Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of Salesforce. "The choice for Siebel UpShot customers is clear: free migration to the leading software-as-a-service CRM solution or risk dying on the vine waiting for Siebel to figure out their strategy," Benioff said in a statement.

Siebel last week announced that it plans to acquire UpShot, a supplier of hosted CRM services, for $50 million in cash and up to $20 million more in potential earn-outs over the next two years. The acquisition is expected to close in November.

The addition of UpShot and its 1,000 customers and 100 employees is expected to provide a "quick start" to Siebel's CRM OnDemand hosted service announced earlier this month, according to Mark Sunday, a Siebel senior VP who will run the OnDemand program.

The SureShot Migration Program from Salesforce is available until Nov. 30. The program will provide UpShot customers with a migration tool that will automatically extract UpShot data and import it into Salesforce, the company says.

Salesforce will offer free migration for the first 90 days of service, and then honor terms of the customer's existing UpShot contract for the ensuing nine months, the company says.

Salesnet says it will let UpShot customers move to its CRM solution for 10% less than they're currently paying with a free "quick start" migration service. The Salesnet Trade-Up Choice Program will be available until Dec. 15.

Siebel's Sunday says the company will support UpShot customers on the existing product line indefinitely. The two lines will "ultimately converge into a single offering."