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Navigor has launched Oracle’s Siebel-on-demand solution for SMBs in South Africa. Navigor hopes to push the new Siebel-on-demand offering as a solution for the CRM requirements of SMBs. The CRM is available as a rental option thereby putting it within reach of businesses of all sizes. Low entry costs, good broadband connectivity, no maintenance costs are some of the advantages that small businesses can hope to avail with the new Oracle offering.

Navigor will help businesses modify and categorize the CRM solution as per customer requirements. A little strangely, Navigor feels that convincing SMBs about the benefits of a hosted solution will be a challenge. It would be interesting to learn of other places apart from South Africa where SMBs need to be educated about the benefits of a hosted solution.

Oracle has stated that the growth prospects for its CRM and on-demand CRM solutions are looking good in the Asia Pacific region. The company’s partner base in the Asia Pacific, consisting of Siebel CRM On Demand resellers and implementation experts, has increased to more than 48 in the short span of 12 months.

A little unsurprisingly the company sees itself as the CRM market leader, though SAP, Salesforce.com and even Microsoft may have their own definitions of a CRM leader. Here’s Will Bosma evangelizing on how Oracle is the CRM Holy Grail for companies in the Asia Pacific. I wish, though, he had said something a little more original than exceeding customer expectations. 17% of the CRM market in the AP region is under Oracle’s control.

The news about Oracle today is reading like a press-release version of that 2001 Japanese cinema classic, Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack.

The software behemoths aren’t destroying Tokyo with fire breath and the like, but there is a lot of bellowing and stomping going on involving three of the biggest names in the biz.

Computer World is running a bit more on the software lawsuit of the year, i.e. Oracle v. SAP AG, with SAP reportedly now hoping to settle with the big O. Oracle v. SAP, a case “about corporate theft on a grand scale, committed by the largest German software company,” in the opening words of the complaint.

Oracle originally brought the lawsuit against SAP in the US Federal District Court in the Northern District of California on March 22. The lawsuit alleged that King Ghidorah – i mean, SAP was guilty of violations to the Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and California Computer Data Access and Fraud Act, Unfair Competition, Intentional and Negligent Interference with Prospective Economic Advantage and Civil Conspiracy, i.e. they ripped off Oracle data. Read more

A roll call of news from the big O, then, to cap the workweek.

Oracle Corporation doled out some nice awards this week, namely its top performing Oracle Partner Network partners with awards for delivering Oracle application solutions to small- and medium-sized businesses in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Certified Advantage Partner IBM of France took the Oracle EMEA SMB Partner Award for Sales Performance; certified partner Abast Solutions (Spain) took the Oracle EMEA Partner Award for Customer Success; and the Oracle EMEA Oracle Accelerate Excellence Award was called a tie between certified partner De Theus Technologies (France) and certified partner Pyxis Consulting Group (Germany).

IBM France is a strategic systems integrator partner for Oracle and boasts a large Oracle applications practice. Abast Solutions is a twenty-plus year veteran of the IT market with more than 1000 customers. De Theus Technologies and Pyxis Consulting Group were among the first EMEA partners to submit an Oracle Accelerate solution for Oracle’s review following the programme’s launch in March.

The Oracle Accelerate programme based on “the company’s approach to fully address the diverse IT requirements of SMBs…” Meanwhile, from the technological heart of the Asian “region,” news outlet SDA-Asia reported on a statement out of Oracle stating that Oracle CRM On Demand is “gaining momentum” in the Asia Pacific market, which Oraclers now reckon will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 18.9 percent between 2006 and 2011, to reach $846.4 million in total software revenue in 2011.

The Oracle brain trust figures one-quarter of new business software will be delivered as software as a service by 2011.

Lest we forget Oracle also does actual CRM work, the big firm recently announced that Yarra Valley Water, a Australian water and sewage services provider, has selected Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing to provide a reliable, scalable billing platform for the 1.5 million Yarra Valley customers in the Melbourne area. Yarra Valley Water’s legacy CRM system had been in place since 1995.

Finally, for those of you interested in the Oracle v. SAP corporate espionage lawsuit (and who doesn’t love a good lawsuit?), Oracle legal counsel Geoff Howard of Bingham McCutchen LLP got to exchange a little legal gunfire with SAP yesterday.

Oracle brought a lawsuit in the US Federal District Court in the Northern District of California against SAP and TomorrowNow in March. The lawsuit alleged that SAP was guilty of violations to the Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and California Computer Data Access and Fraud Act, Unfair Competition, Intentional and Negligent Interference with Prospective Economic Advantage and Civil Conspiracy, i.e. they ripped off Oracle data.

Henning Kagermann himself spoke to the media after SAP legally filed in the ‘suit, explaining that TomorrowNow was authorized to download materials from Oracle’s Web site on behalf of TomorrowNow customers.

Kagermann also admitted that “SAP acknowledged that some inappropriate downloads of fixes and support documents occurred at TomorrowNow. Importantly, SAP affirmed that what was downloaded at TomorrowNow stayed in that subsidiary’s separate systems. SAP did not have access to Oracle intellectual property via TomorrowNow.”

In return, Howard stated that, “SAP CEO Henning Kagermann has now admitted to the repeated and illegal downloading of Oracle’s intellectual property. Oracle filed suit to discover the magnitude of the illegal downloads and fully understand how SAP used Oracle’s intellectual property in its business…”

Sounds confident, eh?

The press release came ran something like this: NetSuite Inc., a vendor of on-demand, integrated business management application suites that provide ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and e-commerce functionality for small and medium-sized businesses and divisions of large businesses, today announced that it has filed a registration statement on Form S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission relating to the proposed initial public offering of its common stock.

Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC will act as sole book-running manager for the offering. In addition, WR Hambrecht + Co will act as co-manager of the offering. The number of shares to be offered and the price range for the offering have not yet been determined. Copies of the preliminary prospectus for the offering, when available, may be obtained from Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC, etc.

But then came the flurry of commentary and reactions to the whole Larry Ellison connection thing from the blogosphere and mainstream media, not to mention the red ink of the balance sheet.

According to NetSuite numbers required for public release upon announcing an IPO, For the quarter ended March 31, the company reported net losses of $3.7 million on sales of $23.2 million. In 2006, NetSuite generated $67.2 million in revenues and net losses of $23.4 million.

Even more catching to the collective imagination, though, and thus reported everywhere was that Oracle Corporation CEO Ellison “controls about 74 percent of the stock in the San Mateo company through Tako Ventures LLC. Netsuite said it plans to use some of the proceeds to repay a $7.5 million balance on a secured line of credit to Tako.”

NetSuite will be selling ten percent of its shares in the IPO and hopes to garner $75 million.

Focus Solutions Group plc closed the week with the announcement that the firm had launched “an integrated front office and customer relationship management solution that is integrated with Oracle CRM solutions, into the EMEA financial services market.”

Additionally, the folks in Focus PR announced that the unnamed CRM solution had been delivered to an unnamed Oracle/Focus joint customer.

The solution promises to allow a rich set of client data to be transferred from either application along with compliant documentation. Focus is providing fact finding, needs analysis, risk profiling, and quote-and-apply functionality as part of the solution, which will be targeted at retail banking, insurance and wealth management organisations.

Mobile on-demand business applications provider Vettro was proud to announce its Oracle status to that of certified partner. Vettro representatives also announced validation of its integration of Vettro 360 Sales to Oracle’s Siebel CRM On Demand.

Vettro 360 Sales for Siebel CRM On Demand seeks to provide mobile users with the ability to access, create, and manage business information in real-time from standard wireless smartphones or PDAs.

Vettro is currently deploying the Siebel CRM On Demand solution for Dot Hill Systems. Dot Hill will deploy Vettro 360 Sales for Siebel to increase use of SFA/CRM information.

Vettro is a mobile application provider specializing in Global 2000 businesses. Among Vettro’s clientele of 300 are Bell Mobility, BostonCoach, Carillion, Carey Limousines, Cigna, Clemson University, Cytyc, General Electric, Honeywell, Mac-Gray, Merrill Lynch, SuperShuttle, and YRC Worldwide.

Oracle gave out its inaugural Retail Excellence Awards at this week’s Retail Executive Forum at The Boulders Resort in Scottsdale, Ariz.

And the winners are…

(Drumroll.)

Wal-Mart Stores for Outstanding Program Implementation!

Nordstrom for Greatest Financial Impact!

And The Children’s Place Retail Stores, Inc. for Innovator of the Year!

The Oracle Retail Excellence Awards were launched this year to recognize “customers’ outstanding achievements in maximizing business value through innovative best practices and efficient operations leveraging technology.”

Winners were selected by a committee which included Oracle Retail’s Duncan Angove, this prestigious group included AMR Research Vice President Rob Garf, Bain & Company Global Retail Practice Director Darrell Rigby, Harvard Business School’s Walter Salmon, Loeb & Associates President Walter Loeb, IBM Partner Fred Balboni, and Accenture Partner Andy Hogenson.

Congratulations to all the winners! To everyone else, well, there’s always next year! And finally, our sponsor would like to remind you that “Oracle is the world’s largest enterprise software company.”

Thank you and good night! Surf carefully.

Tata Motors passed a milestone this week, as folks from the company announced that its integrated customer relationship management/dealer management system initiative has now covered 1000 locations in India and abroad.

Implemented in phases since 2003, the combined on-line CRM-DMS initiative now supports over 15,000 users within the company and among its channel partners in India and abroad to conduct customer-facing transactions. The complex implementation is accomplishing in part via partnerships with heavy hitters like CMC, IBM, INCAT, Oracle, Mercuri International, Quality Kiosk, TCS, Tata Indicom, TIVS (Tatanet) and VSNL.

Tata Motors built the DMS using Oracle’s Siebel verticals and now uses Siebel CRM and Siebel Analytics for all pre- and post-sales operations. The implementation was performed on IBM’s high-end Power5 servers and enterprise storage. Reportedly, Tata’s is one of the largest Siebel CRM implementations anywhere in the world.

Tata Motors has also partnered with IBM to become IBM’s first automotive on-demand client in India.

Over at the day job – a.k.a. the Budapest Business Journal – we recently scored an interview with Oracle Hungary CEO Peter Fuzes. An edited version of the piece in which Fuzes discusses Oracle’s European status as no. 2, acquisitions in the region, and ERP programs, runs below. Thanks to reporter Robert Higginson and the generally fabulous BBJ editorial team.

BBJ: What expectations does Oracle have for Hungary given that it is a small market with SAP far out in front?

Fuzes: We are experiencing a very strong consolidation wave not only in Hungary but also on the overall world IT market. Customers are looking for solutions from IT vendors that will keep them up with new innovations. They are looking for stability and vendors who will follow the technical improvements and can offer a visionary approach in terms of new IT architecture and IT solutions. We can see that small companies are struggling with providing customers a complete vision for the future and the capability to execute it. Oracle is one of the market leaders that’s acquiring and also growing through its own development, providing customers with the features and functionality that they need. This is the same in Hungary, where the market is becoming consolidated around a few larger companies.

BBJ: How many larger companies do you think the market has room for?

Fuzes: Globally, there are four major companies playing a strong role in IT: ourselves, SAP, Microsoft and IBM. In Hungary we see the same trend whereby local systems integrators are acquiring smaller ones. Companies like Freesoft and KFKI have played this role in Hungary.

BBJ: Oracle has bought many firms, especially in the US, but how can you make your solutions take account of European- and Hungarian-specific issues?

Fuzes: If it’s a very special solution for one particular, we rather work with a local partner company to tailor the solution to the requirements. The acquisitions we’ve made have focused on technology or customer-oriented solutions but not only for one country. When Oracle makes an acquisition it’s not for one specific feature but rather a solution that can be used by many companies. We’ve acquired more than 30 companies in the past two years and it’s required a very effective internal machine to integrate those companies into Oracle.

BBJ: Local ERP firms see their niche in providing locally specific solutions that could be added onto a big company’s system. Do you intend to cooperate with them or fight them and offer all solutions yourself?

Fuzes: What we’re doing with a number of local companies is to offer them our core solution and if they have a module that’s specific to the Hungarian market we then work with our partner who offers it to the customer as a total solution.

BBJ: Would you work with companies that are direct competitors in that they offer their own full ERP suite?

Fuzes: Yes, we see the opportunity in working with such companies. The customer needs infrastructure, the operating system, database, ERP and other solutions. It’s quite possible a company would provide the ERP solution to the customer and we put a reporting structure on top of it that provides the customer with business intelligence and other reports. There are many cases of this in Hungary already and it is very common in IT these days. It would be great for us if the customer only bought wall-to-wall Oracle, but when the customer already has a preference for existing systems the question is how we can work together. We’ve done a lot of work on standardization and interoperability to ensure that our business intelligence or our middleware, for example, works with other ERP solutions.

BBJ: Are you eyeing up any acquisitions in this part of the world?

Fuzes: We acquire firms that complement our portfolio. While we’re growing our portfolio through our own internal developments, we know we can grow faster through acquisitions. If we see a special feature that doesn’t exist within our portfolio, it could happen that the company’s in this part of the world.

BBJ: You said a couple of years ago that the PeopleSoft/JD Edwards would help you gain ground on SAP. Where do you stand now?

Fuzes: Globally Oracle is growing much faster than SAP, even without taking our acquisitions into account. With the newly acquired companies we’re growing around ten times the speed of SAP. In Hungary, with PeopleSoft/JD Edwards and our eBusiness suite, we have closed the gap between the new sales of SAP and the new sales of Oracle. SAP still sells more than we do but not much more these days.

BBJ: Is it true that a lot of ERP installations made in the 1990s could be ready to be replaced? Does this represent an opportunity for Oracle or do customers tend to upgrade with the existing provider?

Fuzes: On a worldwide scale there are quite a number of cases when a customer decides to swap from SAP to Oracle, or vice-versa. In Hungary for whatever reason we haven’t really seen switching by customers who have large systems installed. Probably the reason is that Hungarian customers are eager to customize within their own systems, which costs a lot. Customization is a good short-term solution [but] by doing this the customers lock themselves in, since it then becomes horribly expensive to replace the system.

BBJ: Do you put Oracle at number two on the local ERP market or is Microsoft claiming that spot?

Fuzes: We put ourselves in the number two position, although we’ve seen that Microsoft has had some success. However, when there’s a competition for a large system installation it’s usually between SAP and us. Microsoft is more of a threat in the SME market.

BBJ: Who is winning the battle for the SMEs: Local smaller firms or the big international providers?

Fuzes: If you talk to a small firm that has its own ERP solution, they will tell you that the small firms are winning, but my view is that there is a major consolidation wave going on and that the big firms are winning it. Even a lot of smaller firms who have their own ERP system are considering selling a large firm’s ERP system. They put their own specialized modules on top of it to resolve the one problem that can’t be solved by the large company’s ERP system, rather than competing for the ERP system.

BBJ: Is it in the SME segment in which the action is, or is that the industrial segment?

Fuzes: The SME is certainly one of the most dynamic. In the industrial segment, the tax increases of the austerity package have seen firms hold back on new investments. The financial services segment comprising banks and insurance companies is booming, though. People are taking more loans from the banks and signing more insurance contracts, and this is driving the need for ERP, CRM. data warehouses and Business Intelligence. Also, over the last six months, we’ve had large governmental projects related to EU accession, such as biometric passports and Schengen border agreements, and governmental reforms.

BBJ: Given that companies have had to pay part of the development costs themselves, what kind of take-up of EU funds has there been for ERP development on the part of Hungarian SMEs?

Fuzes: On a regional comparison the take-up in Hungary has been reasonably big and in terms of the money available compared to the money consumed, Hungary has exceeded several of its regional peers. It started slowly with the government set-up unable to distribute the money faster in the initial phase.

BBJ: Does the Hungarian language pose problems for localization of software?

Fuzes: It hasn’t been a big issue for us, but it is more difficult to follow the regulatory changes that are more frequent than in other countries. The regulatory environment is less predictable than in Western European countries.

BBJ: How quickly can you react to these changes?

Fuzes: There are two solutions: one is to update the system on the spot to solve the problem, maybe spending one or two days on the customer side, and the other way is to change something within the system and then distribute it to the customer. It normally takes a few days or a few weeks as there are legal deadlines, and we have to give the software to the customer in time to keep to their deadlines.