IfG.CC - The Potsdam eGovernment Competence Center

Egovernment is the new hunting ground for Siebel according to CEO Tom Siebel in London on Thursday, with BT helping the software firm to crack the UK public sector. Siebel said the public sector was never impacted by recession and spending cuts to the same degree as the private sector, although he admitted that governments typically follow four to five years behind the private sector in terms of IT investment.

But this meant, he argued, that public sector bodies are now ready to invest substantially in online services. BT and Siebel have a number of UK local government references sites to point to including Liverpool, Leeds, and Tower Hamlets in London.

Siebel said he was constantly astounded at how public sector bodies managed to provide the service they do while using aged equipment and technology. He cited the social security system in the US as an example. “I’m in awe of what they do,” he said. "These guys are running on old Hitachi dinosaurs of Cobal code and they deliver 250 million cheques, accurate to the cent, and once a month.”

BT said joint Siebel/BT offering can address the needs of all local authorities, "from the smallest district council to the largest metropolitan authority, enabling them to improve citizen services, provide universal access and more effectively meet the public's needs as they transform to meet the 2005 eGovernment delivery targets."

Meanwhile Siebel has maintained its CRM market leadership for another year, according to Dataquest. SAP comes second, but Oracle lost the number three slot to PeopleSoft. Siebel's CRM revenues are more than double those of SAP, according to Dataquest which based its figures on estimates of new license revenues for CRM software only.

Quelle: crm-forum