IBM and Siebel Systems have signed a deal that facilitates business
process integration across Siebel's CRM software and other
enterprise applications.
The partnership has grown out of Siebel's Universal Application
Network (UAN) initiative, launched in April as a way to ease
integration headaches and the high costs associated with its CRM
software. UAN hinges on using standards to create prebuilt business
processes, common object models, and data transformation maps that
marry Siebel CRM with back-office systems.
Templates will address a process such as "place customer order"
that originates in a Siebel call centre application, but needs to
flow back into an enterprise's logistics, supply chain and billing
systems to execute successfully.
"From an end-user perspective, they don't want to see application
investments made in specific areas being disconnected from related
parts of their business," said Paraic Sweeney, vice-president of
marketing for WebSphere Business Integration. "They want a
mechanism for a business process that drives across multiple
applications."
Central to the deal is the first major version release of Siebel
UAN, which will operate on the IBM WebSphere Business Integration
platform. In addition, Siebel will license IBM's stable of 70 to
100 prebuilt business process templates and object models, many of
which came to IBM via its acquisition of CrossWorlds Software in
January. For its part, IBM plans to concurrently sell WebSphere
Business Integration server as the infrastructure platform needed
to execute the process integration, according to Sweeney.
The two companies are also offering a customised migration path for
Siebel customers who want to move away from their existing
point-to-point application integration architecture to the UAN
approach, Sweeney said.
Siebel has also said that it will use IBM's WebSphere Business
Integration platform internally to tie together its
applications.
IBM is not alone in working on Siebel's UAN. The CRM giant has
linked up with a number of integration vendors including Tibco
Software, Vitria Technology, SeeBeyond, and webMethods. Each is
developing its own set of business processes and process design
tools aimed at the problem. Siebel has also enlisted partners in
the systems integrator community, including Accenture, KPMG and IBM
Global Services to drive the implementation phase of UAN
rollouts.
However, the tight ties with IBM could translate into a difficult
balancing act for Siebel with regard to the other middleware
vendors, according to some analysts. "That's the challenge of
trying to be Switzerland," said Michele Rosen, industry analyst at
IDC.
Rosen questioned how the licensing of IBM's common object models to
define and map data such as "customer" across Siebel and other
applications is going to impact on the other enterprise application
integration vendors' object models that work with Siebel. "If
you're going to base your objects on those from IBM, then that
implies that there is a tighter connection with IBM than the
others," Rosen said.